Black Mountain Honey: Let's Talk Bees with Laurence Edwards - Episode 53

Good evening everyone and welcome to another episode of Let's Talk Bees. I was amazed at how much money was bid last time on my cap, so I had to do it again. There's only about 3 of these caps left. I've got another cap, another brand new Black Mountain honey cap here today with the tags, with everything on it. And today's charity is going to be, um, I forgot what they're called now, British Heart Foundation. I was going to say, I was going to say something else there. My dad died from a heart attack when he was 55. So British Heart Foundation, real great charity, very close to my heart. Excuse the terrible pun, I obviously didn't mean for that to come out like that, but it, it's true. It's a, it's a real, uh, a charity that hits home, that one. So we will auction off that cap today. I'm not expecting it to get to the lofty heights of £250 like it did last week. That was just a crazy anomaly. But I'll send that hat out to whoever bids the highest. And if you want to bid, just stick it in the comments And it will show up on my StreamYard thing, and each time they come out, I will announce them, and we can see how high we will get. What else is going on in the world of Black Mountain Honey? Well, we are taking all of the payments through now for anybody who has placed a nuc. So if you have placed a £50 deposit for a nuc, then you will have got an email, possibly two emails over the past few weeks requesting outstanding balance payments. You've not got to pay your balance until the 28th of Feb, so you've got good a good six weeks to pay it. But if you've not got that email, you're thinking well. I placed the deposit for a nuc but I've not got an email, then drop me an email at blackmantonhoney@gmail.com and I will forward you over all of the details. We, we don't have many nucs left at all. Like, it's crazy how they're, they're selling like that. We, we sold out the overwintered ones very early in January and we're not far off sold out of the spring ones, and we're not doing, we're not doing late ones this year. So once they've gone kind of from early to the middle of June, there won't be any more nukes. So if you're interested in nukes, uh, get involved very, very quickly. The first bid has already come in. Glenn has bid £20 for the hat on Facebook. So hello Glenn, thank you for the bid, much appreciated. I will start at the top. Let's answer some questions. This is a new slot for me, so doing half 7 on a Friday night, confirmed every 2 weeks when we start in the season, it'll be Friday night. So Friday night is the live stream night. Uh, somebody in the comments Said it's it might do Friday because everyone does their inspections don't they on Saturday or Sunday or the majority of people do so having the live stream before that is probably quite useful and out of Friday Saturday Sunday I think Friday suits me the best as well get it out of the way so let's answer some questions I will be here I'll answer every single question as best as I possibly can and if I do not know the answer I will say I do not know the answer and as always with Black Mountain Honey anything don't just take my word for it go and go and try it for yourself go and break it challenge it see if it's right see if it's wrong. Work it out yourself. That is that is the kind of name of the game. Right, so John has been very kindly organizing stuff in the background. Thank you, John. I have got a nighttime pucker tea. Very nice. There we go. Refreshed. John was here early and encouraging people to hit the like button, which I would definitely back up. Thanks, John. Denby Honey says, "Good evening, Lawrence. Looking forward to this tonight." Good to see you here. John says I'm not here yet, but I was. I was lurking in the background. Mark Burrows, channel member, says evening all. Evening, Lawrence. Hope all is well. In my she, I think that's shed. In my shed, knocking up at least knocking up the last 40 supers ready for the season. Still got 1,300 frames to make. Enjoy the stream. Knocking up 40 supers—that is a serious amount of work. It's not it's not easy knocking up supers, and that is a lot of frames to go as well. So I feel your pain, and you corrected it there. It wasn't the shed. It was a good guess. Another channel member, Adam Goodall. Hi, Adam. He says good evening. I hope you're well. If you could. all the way back to the start of your beekeeping, what would you change? Oh, we're straight in with the deep questions, I love it. Adam, you always ask really good questions. I would change a lot, so let me— I'd probably change everything. So what would I not do? I definitely wouldn't try— oh, a few little things I wouldn't change. I wouldn't scrimp and save. so much. So I think every beekeeper does this, you spend like £350 on a nuc and £400 on a beekeeping jacket or whatever, you know, you spend your money on your bees and then you don't want to buy a foundation, so you try and go like foundationless and stuff like that. I did that for ages and it was a mess. And it's— for every penny that you save not paying for foundation, you lose it on your honey crop. But it's fiddly and it takes loads longer to get the frames up and running, and then they build it all wonky and join it all up, and then you're constantly messing around and disrupting the bees, where really if you'd have just fronted up the money for some foundation at the beginning, the bees would have been well on with it, drawing those frames out, up in the next one, making loads of honey in the supers. So faffing around with foundationless frames, I would exile to Room 101. Trying to go treatment-free, because it didn't work for me, so I wouldn't go through the pain of trying to go treatment-free. This will rile up a lot of people, but I gotta be— I gotta say it honestly, haven't I? I wouldn't try using the local feral mongrel stocks because I did that for years and just kind of persevered with it because it was the done thing and was constantly just out spending my time chasing swarms and picking up feral stock. And, you know, oh my God, there's a swarm, I'm gonna go and get it, or get a cutout, and then trying to make the bees work. And then what would happen is you'd Put all the effort in, put all the work in, and then they'd get to six friends and they just swarm. You just think, what am I doing? And then they sting you loads as well. So it's not to say that all local feral stock are like that, but I just for the effort that I was putting in, I didn't feel that it was not repaying me. But I didn't feel like I was making a difference. I didn't feel like I was getting anywhere. I didn't feel like I was even you know scrap the honey for one minute. I didn't feel like I was building like nice healthy populous bees. Can you say that populous bees? But you know I mean like big prolific nice strong colonies that are doing something. It just felt like I was collecting. Collecting swarms, housing them for a bit, and then letting them go. Shouldn't really like beekeeping; it's just like letting them do their thing. Buying all the types of different types of hive that I have—that was silly. But it's I'm I'm with you on this well as well, Adam. You're kind of similar to this one, but you you go all in on something, and I wish I dabbled a little bit more in the no in the fourteen by twelves and the Langstroths and the other hive types. I wish I dabbled in them. before committing to buying like 200 boxes. So buying like 200 14 by 12 boxes, trying to save money again. At that point, it was all about trying to save money, making the wrong choices. But I put like a bit too much money into it, so then I couldn't go back. So I couldn't, couldn't change exactly what I was doing. But I would change loads. There's loads of things that I would change. But then, do I regret any of the things that I've done? Absolutely not. Like, I'm very happy with how my beekeeping journey is going. I like— I love where I am at the moment. It's a very apt moment to mention it as well. We hit 50,000 subscribers on YouTube this week, and I'm not one for, you know, doing like loads of milestone posts or stuff like that, but I do feel very, very privileged to have such incredible support across, across all of the social media platforms. But YouTube is the biggest one. Facebook is catching up with YouTube. Well, at the beginning of this year, I started off with like 40,000 YouTube subscribers, and I think about 3,000 on Facebook, something like that, 3,000 to 3,500. And we've got, we've got 31,000 on Facebook now. Facebook has really taken off since I actually started posting some videos over there and not just posting links to YouTube. And I kind of think, well, I missed a trick there, should have done that before. But yeah, so there's, there's loads that I would change, but then really I wouldn't change, I wouldn't change anything because It's um, it's very good, and you only learn through making your own mistakes anyway. Great question though. John says, Mark, if the beast from the east hits, you will have plenty of time to make friends. Very, very true. Hopefully we won't see another beast from the east anytime soon. Mark says, still time for them depends how long the wife lets me skip bath time for the kids. Yeah, you just got to plug away, keep them going. John Denham says, good evening. Good evening to you too, John. Glenn has bid twenty pounds for the hat. Thank you, Glenn. Lynn says good evening all, and she also says big shout out to all in moderation for help on Discord. You should be paying him, Lawrence. Very good. He's John, is superb. Name your price, John. You can have whatever you want. He does an excellent, excellent job upon anything in which he touches. Does great job on Discord. Great job on nonsense beekeeping, and then sort stuff out on here as well. So thank you, John. You are brilliant. You know you're good. Uh, £50 for the hat. Thank you, Mark. And channel member as well. Another channel member, Robert Bones, says good evening. Hello, Robert. Vlad says, if you had to do it over again, would you use standard Langstroth hives or horizontal hives like horizontal Langstroth hives? So it's a good question because I was kind of thinking about that on the previous question, like, would I stick with nationals? And, and again, you'd— if, if the nuc market wasn't there, I would use Langstroth. I'd use standard Langstroth hives, definitely. Because I prefer, I prefer like how resilient and rigid that you can't really break that much on a Langstroth, and they're very, very easy and simple to make. And I hate the lugs on Nationals. I really do not like the lugs. And the thing is, is a lot of people do like the lugs. I prefer the lugs when I'm picking them up, lifting them, because they're easy, big, long, nice lugs, but they break. And it's really annoying when they break because there's not a huge amount you can do to repair the frame to kind of keep it in your operation for that much longer. So I would go with Langstroth hives for the for that reason, I definitely wouldn't go with horizontal hives. I am not a fan at all of any horizontal hive, and I persevered with a few for, for a good few years. The only, the only thing I like with a horizontal hive is if you have it split up for nucs, and then I think it's quite, quite a useful thing to have that you've just got like numerous nucs there that you can go in and change the divider boards around a little bit and give you some different configurations and use it for queen mating and queen rearing as well. Then it's, then it's very, very useful. and it gives you a nice table to use in the apiary as well. But I would stick with National in the UK. If I was anywhere else in the world, I would go with Langstroth. Mark Pluke says hello. Good evening, Mark. Things are nice and dry over in Llandudno. Denny Rays B says building 300 layens frames with plastic foundation for expansion. Very nice. Good evening. Why is there a price difference between overwintering nucs and standard ones? If not, why? There's no price difference. So we just— we, before we sell out of all of the overwintered nucs, we just take a £50 deposit. So we take a £50 deposit for the overwintered nucs, and then the remaining £300 is payable now. So we sent the emails out now, and then once we get to that point and we know we've only got X amount of nucs left, we just kind of cut out that middle bit of the deposit because it's not, it's not that long until we actually have to send the nucs. So it just saves us having to contact people and and collect additional payments and mark it all on a spreadsheet. And then it gives me a nice clean line in the sand in order to manage the orders, the many orders that are on the website, because otherwise it becomes really, really confusing. So there, there is no price difference. Um, and then you're saying, if not, why? And, and the reason is because we sell out every single year before we even get a chance to start sending them out. So there's no, there's no price difference there. They're effectively the same. They turn up relatively similar-ish times, within kind of like 3 or 4 weeks of each other. And the, the only difference is the age of the queen. One's overwintered and one's not overwintered, so there's not really a huge amount of difference between the two. Do you think the Instant Vap is the best, easiest way of vaporizing oxalic acid? Got a gas vat with the supplied torch, not finding it easy. So 100%, the Instant Vap is brilliant, and I have tried every single version of any oxalic acid sublimation tool. So I had like the, the panhandle ones that you had to connect to a battery— rubbish, um, but they worked. But I didn't like them, they weren't very easy to use. I tried— what was the one called? It was like the— I'm gonna say the Vaporox. It's not the Vaporox, is the handle one. I got given a trial of an electric one with a battery that you put in, but I forgot what that one's called. But that was very, very expensive and nowhere near as good as the Instant Vap. The gas vap is, is okay for a couple of hives, but then when you start doing it on numerous hives, it's just impossible to get the heat right. And if you can't get the heat right, then everything starts blocking up in the tube, and then it either doesn't come out or it comes out too quick and you're not ready for it and it's too hot. And so not, not a fan of the gas vat. Got numerous gas vats. I've got the Sublimox as well, which is, um, one that you plug into a generator, or you can put it on an inverter and use a car battery on it as well. And that's a similar ish design to an Instant Vap, but not quite as good. And now I've got the Instant Vap and it's brilliant. Absolutely love the Instant Vap. It really, really is very, very good. And it's just not— it's not even in the same league as the gas Vap. And I know it's an annoying thing to say because the Instant Vap is really, really expensive, but it is well worth it. And I like the old one, I have to say. I've got the old one, and normally when a new version of something comes out, I get quite soon after I bought the old one. I get quite annoyed, but having held both of them hand in hand, I'm glad I got the old one. The old one's like a lot more solid. And I don't like to say this if Duncan's listening, but I think it's not Duncan's fault. I think it's been like a little bit value engineered, the new one, which is a case of, you know, how can we save money on the design? Let's take out that, let's take out that, let's take out that, and let's kind of spin it that we're doing something innovative. But really you're reducing the functionality of it. And, and what I'm specifically talking about there is the new one, you just get like, well, there's a light and you have to like know what this light is telling you, whether it's on or off or flashing or whatever, or different colors. Whereas the older one's got like a, got like a target temperature and then the actual temperature. And I just find it like you can see what's going on, a bit more intuitive to use. Um, but I would say, yeah, the best one is definitely the Instant Vap. And I have tried every single one. Andrew Rogers says, can't believe it's all going to kick off again in 3 months. Ah, it's just started, isn't it? I know, I, I already— as soon as we get into the new year and I send that email out, that is it for me. We are straight back into it. It is pretty much full-time, but I love it. It's good stuff. Hollow Oak Stores, uh, Nikki says good evening from Devon. I think I've connected the right person to the right company. Hi, Nikki. Duncan Newton, channel member, says good evening. Friday evenings are great for the live stream. I'm glad that it is going to work for some people. I appreciate we're never going to get it right for everyone, and it needs to be— it needs to be Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, just because then it can be kind of repeatable. And I think Friday is going to be a suitable day, and then at least people can catch up on Saturday and Sunday if it's— unless it's the other way around and it's a week out of date. Good evening. Hi, uh, so good evening. We are new to beekeeping. Is it possible to explain the brood box sizes for national hives, please? Thank you. Hmm, so in terms of, in terms of like the National, the National, the modified National is a beehive, UK beehive, that was designed in the war, during the war, maybe just after the war at some point, as a way to reduce the amount of wood that was used for the design. It does, it still doesn't kind of like make sense properly in my head why there's reduced wood there, but I guess it's to do with the kind of the fact that you've got the, the 2 bars and not so much wood on that side. don't know, still seems like the same amount of wood to me compared to a Langstroth. But it comes in a couple of different variants. So you have, um, you obviously have the shallow boxes which are generally used as supers, and then for brood boxes there are 2 different sizes for Nationals. So they're both 460 by 460 mil square. I'm just making up, making up the figures now. That's right, 460 mil by 460 mil square. And then I don't know the 2 different depths, but you have a standard depth and then you have a jumbo depth. And you'll see, you'll see them referred to as kind of like different things as well. So the best way of thinking it is you have a deep national, and that's what the DN4 stands for— deep national. So when you get a DN4 frame or DN1 frame, that means deep national 1, deep national 4. And a deep national is the standard national that the majority of people use, and that is what all of our nukes come in. You can also get like an extended one, it's called a jumbo, it's called a 14x12. That is like a big, much bigger frame one. It's the same cross-section, so it's still 460mm by 460mm, it's just a deeper frame. That's the only difference. To it. I think that's the question. If that's not the question, ask, ask it again in a slightly different way and I'll give you a different answer. But hopefully that gives you the information that you need. Lynette says, just starting on making frames, only got 50 but another 100 on the way. Good luck. I, I do not like making frames. It is a long old job. Veritas Waves, hello Veritas, how are you? Debbie Perfect, love, love surname. Uh, channel member says, when do you start putting Apivar strips in your overwintered hives? So I, I've def— I released another video on this today. Definitely confused some people with, with Apivar and the treatments that I use. So this is my varroa treatment that I use at Black Mountain Honey. We use Apivar once a season and we use apibioxal once per season. That is, that is what we do. We take all of our honey off in August, middle of August, and as soon as you take our honey off, we go in and we put the Apivar strips in. regardless of how many we need, whether it's 2 or 3 or 4 per colony, depending on how many frames of brood there are at that time. 1 strip per 5 frames of brood, leave it in for 8 weeks, and then I take the strips out. And then in the middle to end of November, that's just the time that I go in. And if you've seen today's video, you'll see why that can fully fluctuate. But, uh, we go in mid to end of November, I try to get a broodless period, and we use apibioxal sublimation once to knock down all of the mites. That is what we do. So the videos I've been doing recently about spring treatments for Apivar, that's just if people have got issues or, you know, they've inherited some bees and they're wondering about how to get them in the best shape for winter, or they were going treatment-free and they're realizing probably not the best idea and the bees aren't looking very healthy, so they want to kind of get them back on the right track. The videos that I was showing were saying that Apivar can be used in the spring, so if you put it in kind of 1st of Feb, take it out 1st of April before the supers go on, it's a very effective treatment so long as bees aren't fully clustered up and they're kind of moving around, which they will in most polyhives in February and March, and it's a very effective treatment to get the bees looking good for the new season if they need it. So do I use Apivar in the spring? Definitely not, because I used it in the autumn and I used apibioxal in the kind of late autumn, early winter, and the bees are looking really, really good. So I'm not just treating them for the sake of treating them and spending money on them and putting unnecessary chemicals in if I don't need to. I just use it once per year. So in answer to your question, when do you start putting Apivar strips in your overwintered hives? We do all of them from the middle of August through to the middle of October. There we go. Oh, before we get to David, got a new channel member, Jonathan Saul. Welcome, Jonathan. David says, hi Lawrence, I went to put fondant on my colony and move the crown hole cover expecting to see bees, but there were none. I lifted the crown board and they have clustered in the corner. Should I be concerned? So as long as they're like a big cluster of bees still in the corner, I wouldn't be concerned. But, you know, if you've got— if it's covering like a quarter of the box, I'd be looking at it and thinking there might be a failed queen in there. But you just don't know at this point in the year, and there's nothing that you can do. That's the only thing I would say. As long as there's weight in the box and they can get food, there's nothing that you can do. If they can't get food and they're struggling, I would take the crown board off, I'd put the fondant directly on where that cluster is, and then I'd put a super or something on top and insulate around them. and try and keep them warm that way. But there's like, there's nothing you can do at this point in the year. You can't requeen, so you just have to cross your fingers and hope that there is a decent queen in there and ensure they've got food and see what happens in the spring. I'm confident, I'm confident for you, David, they're going to be good. I'm setting up 2 new sites to house 20 hives each. I'll be starting with 10 hives. How would you plan to expand to fill the 2 new sites as soon as possible? Well, I like questions like this. So he's setting up 2 new sites to house 20 hives each, already starting with 10 hives. So what I would do Is I would start with 10 hives on one site. I would go double brood immediately, early on in the season as possible. I'd put your— it's not going to work doing that. I should have got my pen and paper out, shouldn't I? I forgot to do that. When we get back into the live streams, we'll do, we'll do the, the tablet and we'll draw it. But I would start off with a single brood box, put your nuc into a single brood box, let it start expanding out like that. And then if we're talking kind of like April, May time, as soon as they get to 80% of the frames in that box full, so if it's a 10-frame box, if they're covering 80% of those frames, 8 frames, I would put another box on top and then I would continue feeding. So the whole time I'd be feeding them 1:1 sugar syrup, building them up, making sure that they're not storing any of that excess syrup but they've got everything that they need in terms of carbohydrates, and we don't need to feed pollen sub because at that point in the year there's tons of natural pollen, but If you're in a position where there isn't natural pollen, you can feed pollen sub as well. Get them up onto a double brood, and then I would make a split. So as soon as you get them onto 2 brood boxes, I would just do a straightforward— you can call it a walkaway split, but I wouldn't do a walkaway split. I would add mated queens in there, but I would just— I'd split the bees without even looking, without even trying to find the queen, and just give it a new floor and give it a new roof and take it to the new apiary. So then that would be your split. So you, you'd have to go through each of the ones that you've made the split on, determine where the queen is. Obviously the one with the queen, absolutely fine, continues. And then the one without the queen, you wait 8 days, knock down all the queen cells, put the new mated queen in, wait 24 hours, pop the tab, release her, and then that's your first split. And then I would just repeat that process exactly the same again and then do the splits within the same apiary. So to go from 10 to 20 to 40, so 20 in each of those locations. And you should definitely be able to do that in a single year, like easily in a single year. If you're feeding them 1:1 sugar syrup, you'll turn those 10 hives into 40 hives in one year, no problem whatsoever. Even potentially get a super of honey out of some of them as well, depending on how long your seasons are. But if you start that off really, really early and you just constantly feed— and you might think, oh, I don't want to feed, I'm just going to leave the bees to it. Slows it right down. And also doing walkaway splits and not adding in mated queens slows that right down as well, unless you're in an area where you get like really consistent mating. So you know the weather's going to be good, you know you're going to get good matings, then walkaway splits would be fine. Just don't do that in the UK because you'll be cursing when you're kind of going through all the colonies trying to find all the virgins. We did that David one there. So Veritas says, overwintered in the US is normally about 25 more on average in my area. I charge the same for spring split nucs and overwintered nucs. So normally it's the same over here. The overwinter ones are kind of like slightly more expensive, but for me, they're just as much work as the other ones, and we sell out every single year. I've done a couple of blogs on it as well, talking about like the difference for beginners, and I would say there is a strong argument there. Don't come all coming in rushing at once to change your orders, but there is a strong argument there for beginners for it actually to be preferential for them to have a spring nuc as opposed to an overwintered nuc, because you've got a, you've got a much younger queen in a spring nuc, which means it's far less likely to swarm in its first year. Makes it easier for the new beekeeper. You're getting it probably 3 or 4 weeks later than the earliest of the overwintered nucs, so it means that you kind of like got a little bit more time to get things ready. But specifically in the UK as well, it means that you're getting a smaller colony right slap bang in the middle of the swarm season. So an overwintered nuc, if it builds up nice and strong and catches people out, it can swarm in the first year quite easily. And I would say a lot of people will get caught out by that. Whereas if you buy a spring nuc in the first year, install it middle of May, by the time you get to kind of like the mid to back end of June, the colony is just going to be getting to a point where it might think about swarming. And then you're past the longest day, so that swarm urge does go down a little bit. So I would say a A lot less swarms are lost from the spring nucs compared to the overwintered ones. So, and then you're kind of thinking, well, maybe I should charge more, maybe I should charge more for the spring ones because they come with, you know, they've got a younger queen, which is definitely better, and they're less likely to swarm, so more likely to get you much more honey, so we'll charge more for them. I appreciate, I appreciate like the logic behind overwintered ones being more expensive in it's a tried and tested queen to get through the winter. But, you know, the queens that— like, they are starting to mate the queens now, they're starting to graft queens in Malta. They're so far ahead of us on the spring and the summer nucs. So the queens are well mated, and then it comes with good customer service as well. So if there's ever any issues with any of the queens in the first season, we'll just replace them free of charge. So there isn't a huge difference between the two. I need to cough. There we go. Veritas also says, I found the spoon Chinese OA vaps that plug into a 12-volt battery inconsistent in temps and don't last that long with heavy use. Instant Vap is 100% the way to go. Fully agree with that. John says, David J. Bisco, having a shallow eek that allows you to put fondant on there helps. So answering that one, thank you, John. Andy Says, good evening, Laurence. When making up frames, do you recommend adding foundation in advance or doing it just before you need the frames? That is a very good question, and that is one that me and Richard for years have slightly disagreed on. So I'll just have a sip of this because I'm coughing too much. So I always put the foundation in, have always put the foundation in when I've been making up the frames, and I've not seen any issues whatsoever in terms of like breakage, or they're not drawing it out as well. I just like to get it done and get it onto a box and then say, right, that box is done, done, done, proper done. Richard doesn't do that. Richard does— puts all of the frame together and puts one bottom bar on and then gets them all done, all of his frames. So he's done all of his frames for next year. He's done 10,000 frames for next year already, Richard. 10,000 frames, crazy. But no wax in them. And then what he'll do is he'll go back at the end, put the wax in, put the top bar— or like the bottom bar— put the top— yeah, the bottom bar in to lock it in place. And then goes— and he likes the freshness of the wax. I have to say, I don't think it makes a massive difference, and I think both methods are valid. But he makes me laugh so much, Richard, because I keep on saying to him, like, I'll come down, you're doing frames, I'll come down, we'll make up some frames together. And well, let's have a chat in it and do a live stream. Like, we'll film it like it's a live stream and then we'll upload it. And he's like, yeah, I don't know. And I'm like, what do you mean don't know? Like, it's— I'll just come and help you make some frames. And he said, yeah, but I've seen your frames. I said, what do you mean you've seen my frames? He's like, I've seen the way you do them. He's like, they're not— yeah, they're not that great. And I'll be the first to admit, like, I'm pretty cack-handed and not not the most patient person in the world, so it's good that Richard's doing the frames because Richard is the, the biggest perfectionist I've ever met in my entire life. So he won't even use a nail gun. I said to him, just use a nail gun, like, it's really, really quick and they're solid. And he said, yeah, it's not as good. So he has a very specific type of Japanned nail that he likes to use. It has to be exactly the right size and the same head, and he gets them, he gets them directly from Thorns because he said that they're the very best ones. And they do like different grades, and he gets the very best grade. And then he's with a little pin hammer. He's done 10,000 nails with the pin hammer. He's crazy, but they are very, very good frames. So there's no right and there's no wrong answers to that one, and many people do them differently. What I would say is don't start knocking them about and put them out in the cold because they will— the risk really is they become quite brittle. So if you're going to put them out in the cold and then they start getting banged around, they will break. But if they're just going to sit in like a warmish environment— thing is, with a warmish environment as well, they can start to bow. So I think, I think Richard is right. It's just me not wanting to touch stuff a second time around. Right, Bob Bob says, where do you bulk buy frames? I'm going using Langstroth Jumbo. I want to buy them by the thousands. So with frames, we always use second quality frames because there's just the, the price difference between the first and second quality is, is huge, and the quality difference is like negligible. So when you get— you just— the only difference is you get the occasional knot, and like a knot in wood doesn't make any difference apart from when it falls out, or apart from when it sits kind of like on the top of the frame. So you might lose, you might lose 1 frame out of 50 buying seconds, not the end of the world. And it's like a 50 or 60% uplift if you want first quality frames. So we buy all of our frames from Thorn Thorns, and Richard won't have it any other way because I quite like the Maysmore frames as well. I think the Maysmore frames are quite nice, but Richard insists on getting all of the frames through Thorns. So we get second quality frames through Thorns and obviously buy them in bulk. If you're buying them through Thorns in bulk in the sales, get seconds quality, they'll give you a decent price. Come in packs of 50, they're generally pretty good. So I think we paid like £20 £25, something like that, £25 for 50 national. Langstroth Jumbo is always going to be more, probably going to be up like £34, £35 for 50. But there we go. Says hello. Hi, JK Photography, hope you're well. Says thank you. My pleasure. Channel member says good evening from North London, finally caught a live, looking forward to my 2 overwintered nucs. Thank you for sharing and showing how you do things. My pleasure, Jason, thanks for being a channel member. Hope you're in the the red part of North London. Definitely North North London is red. It's so and sorry if I've offended you there, but you know Arsenal fan, innit? Mem says see you had a fight with a lawn mower. Been to the barbers. Oh man, how bad it's gone. I I um I had kind of like my hair over like that, and I looked up to my wife and she said I look like Hitler. I was like that's that's really not very nice, but I did. I don't know what I don't know what I'm doing with my hair. What am I doing with my hair? It's just gone a bit. Yeah, here we go. Fluffy hair, but if I could do it like that, it didn't. There you go. Stop talking about my hair. Hollow Oak Store says it is Nikki and Mark. I knew I got that right. Hi, Nikki. She says question: Bit late ordering instant vaps. Should have everything here in a week or so. What's the best time weather conditions to vape the bees and where is best to buy the powder? Controversial, right? So if you, if you watch today's video, it's interesting because I went into a vid to do a video today to see if there was any brood in some of the colonies. I suspected there was brood and there was no brood. And I checked another couple of colonies, there was no brood. So that hard cold spell for us up in North Wales, and you know, the last— barring the last couple of days, it's been going down to -10 overnight up here. That's clearly impacted the bees because this time last year there was loads of brood and this time this year there is no brood to be seen at all. So appreciate that's going to be different depending on where you are in the UK, but for me in North Wales at the moment, most colonies do not have brood, if that sample size that I looked at today is anything to go by. So best time now, early as possible, because I think there are a lot of colonies are in a brood break at the moment, and I think they will start ramping up that brood rearing very, very quickly. In terms of weather conditions, you want it as hot as it can possibly be without the bees flying. They're the parameters. So around like 10°C is, is perfect. If they're flying, you can still do it, but just wait until they go in overnight. Where is the best place to buy the powder? So the only legal product you're allowed to use in the UK for this is ApiBioxal. Comes with loads of added gunk in it as well, which is brilliant. If you're anywhere else in the world, you can buy just pure oxalic acid. I think it's dihydrate is called, and then that will work. That'll work in the UK as well. It's just illegal to use it, so you definitely can't use that in the UK. You have to use apimoxal, which gunks up all of your equipment, which is a bit rubbish. John says, saw Abello's video on their trickle treatment and the results. Didn't get around to doing mine end of last year, so contemplating doing it. Do you think it's worth it as they will have brood? So just kind of on the back of that comment, I went through a few colonies today to try and see if there was some brood because I was quite stubborn and wanted to prove that there was, and there wasn't. So if, if their colonies are broodless, very, very effective treatment. And you saw it was effective because you saw all of the mites that came down. Hi Lawrence, you ready for the season and what is new for you this year? Uh, so definitely not ready for this season. I, I did the worst thing in the world this year because I wanted to get organized and I kind of like set myself some jobs, and then in the winter things get a lot easier Compared to like what they're like in the summer. So then I get hugely ambitious setting up things like this online beekeeping course that I really do want to do, but it's just turned into something that's too big to start. But not only that, because it's too big to start, I'm not doing the things that I would normally be doing at this time of the year, like waxing up frames and stuff, because I think, well, if I'm going to spend time doing something, I want it to be this online course. So I've just been procrastinating since Christmas, really, really badly procrastinating. It's I've been doing a thing that I do, that's called like power procrastinating, which is whenever I'm not doing anything, I have to like fall back onto one of the things that I have to do, which is like emails, um, chasing up payments, reconciling accounts in QuickBooks, um, writing blogs, doing videos, social media posts. I'm always doing something, but I'm just not doing the things that I need to do. Power procrastinating is quite a good technique if you, if you don't want to get anything done. You still get stuff done. It's just not the stuff that you want to do. Like I am. I tidied up the garden the other day. But beautiful garden now. It's lovely and tidy, and I'm going to jet wash the patio, and I've got loads to do, and I've not got enough time to do it. But we'll we'll get there. We'll get there. Luckily, I've got a very very good person managing all of the nukes for me, Richard. So he is on on the ball. Good man, Richard. Adam says you recently did a blog on the nail Brad Naylor. You mentioned that you used to make up super. Boxes. Do you find that an 18-gauge brad nail is strong enough to hold boxes together, or have I got that— have I got the wrong end? Yeah, so it's, um, it's not, it's not anywhere near strong enough. It's— if you get an 18-gauge brad nail, the one that I had can do like a 50mm brad with it. And if you, you have to glue everything up together, and then you can put a few in just to kind of like hold it together while the glue sets. It's kind of what a nail, a nail does anyway. So, so it does work, but you need a good 3 brads in each kind of bit of it. It's kind of go in and do quite a few of them. So I stopped doing it because it just looked a bit messy and you get the old brad kind of like spitting out. And I just, I just think a single nail is probably just as quick as opposed to going boom, boom, boom, 3 with the brad gun. If I was doing it, if I wanted to do it for making up boxes, I'd just get a 16-gauge one, go all out and get a proper 16-gauge one and then use like stainless nails nails on it and possibly not glue it because they'd be so good with the nails. But I don't make up that many things anymore, which is quite nice. Right, oh, got lots of questions. Right, not many bids for the cap. I think we just ran out of luck, didn't we, last time? But , I'm happy with your £50 bid for that cap. So if you would like a cap and you would like to bid, all money going to the British Heart Foundation, just stick your bid on the comments. But I'm honestly not offended. I can't believe the last one got to 250. It was crazy. Marcus Bug says, evening buddy, what's your thoughts on cassette swing cage electric honey extractors? Do you think they're worth the extra money? They look the business but are quite a few quid for a 12-frame. So no, straightforward no, I wouldn't go with it. I, and I've had one, you know, my— I had the old— I had the 24-frame radial slash 6-frame cassette cage one. And if you're, if you're doing honey— sorry, heather honey extraction— that is the only reason that I would consider a cassette swing cage one. The idea is that it's like slightly gentler on the frames and it extracts tangentially as opposed to radially. And they are good, like they're really, really nice and really well made, especially like the Abello one that I had was great, I loved it. But it's really, really annoying when you're used to hitting 24 frames in the radial And then you've got to go down to 6. And the difference in the jump for me was just, I just preferred to use the 24-frame in the radial the whole time and dreaded heather honey extraction, which I've changed now to use a hydropress instead, which I'm hoping to get into use this year. But I would— if there's no need for you to use, to extract heather honey or need any sort of tangential extraction for anything, just go with the standard radial one. Just get as many frames as you can. time. That would be my recommendation. Evening, Laurence. Am I right in thinking the Carniolan queens are less hungry over winter and cluster smaller? So yes, definitely. They have ridiculously small clusters compared to Buckfast colonies and then ramp up super, super quick in the spring. So they are, and then it's just a case of trying to stop them swarming, which is the challenge for Carniolans. But but they're good. People like them. Money Mally Mao says, "Can you use royal jelly for arousal?" Whoa! This has gone X-rated. I'm gonna don't know. I think you need to be trying this one out and report that next week. I'm gonna guess no. I've tasted royal jelly before, and it's absolutely disgusting. So that's definitely the most random slash X-rated question that I got on here. They're generally. Generally don't get questions like that, but good question. But I have no idea. Sam Cotter says, J.E.I.L. Second best comment of the night so far, right? Lee Leatherbury says, also the million-dollar question: when do you think the overwintered nukes will be ready? As we have had two winters in one, very mild in that cold snap. So I've had so many people message me saying, when when are they actually ready? So we we don't know. We don't know when they're ready, and I don't commit to anyone and give them anyone a date. late at this point in the year. So if we get perfect weather from now until spring, considering we're very, very much still in winter at the moment, the first batch of overwintered nucs will go out the last week of March. That's the best, best case scenario. If we get any more cold weather, any more snow, and it knocks anything back, you're already looking at kind of first or second week of April. And then considering The amount that we need to— the amount that we need to send, and then the amount that we can actually get on the Royal Mail delivery wagons, it's going to be about 12, 12 to 13 weeks worth of deliveries. So it's going to be like all of April, all of May, and then probably most of June as well. So you'll be one of those weeks. So all I do is I get the orders, I filter the orders So if you— some people ordered in June last year, so they're obviously like top of the list. And then the people who ordered in September last year are going to be high up the list. And then people who ordered in December are going to be, are going to be lower down the list. It's the fairest way to do it. But a lot of people do have holidays and stuff, so it all like juggles around. So what we will do is once everyone has to pay by the 28th of Feb, and then once we get their payments in, we start scheduling. So we'll probably start scheduling first or second week of March. And that means like sending out emails to people to say, this is the date that we're proposing, so we're going to send it to you on the first of Wednesday the fourth of April or whatever it is for delivery on Thursday the fifth of April. Is that okay? And then you come back and say yes or no, and then we agree when the dates are going to be. So that is how it works, and until then it is fully flexible. I'm afraidly. Aura Collins says, hi Lawrence, greeting from Manodilo Manodilo. Is it wise to relocate a hive in winter? So apologies if I butchered where you are, just I've never heard of, never heard of that place before. It sounds, sounds nice. If it needs relocating, then yes, and as long as it's cold and the bees aren't flying for the last couple of weeks, you can just pick them up and move them without having to worry about the 3 feet or 3-mile rule. Says the bee sculpture video you did was amazing, so much detail. I'd love one. It was, it was pretty cool. It is like the number one flop video of, of the whole of Black Mountain Honey though, and it's all— it's always that way when I try and do something like a little bit different, in that it's such a niche focus for Black Mountain Honey. Everyone wants to see beekeeping. If you do something else, they're just like, no, I don't want to see that. And, and fair enough, you know, it's not— you know, no one— I don't expect anyone to watch the videos, but it, it flopped badly, that video. So I'll have to just kind of keep on, keep on plodding along, keep on trying to do stuff that's more related to beekeeping. But I did, I did like it, and it's cool. It's on the side of my house now, so it will forever remain there. And we'll, yeah, we might do something else again in the future. It was cool. Derek says, hefted my hives back in November and haven't touched them since. Shall I see, shall I leave them still or look and feed fondant anyway? So definitely don't feed fondant anyway. Only feed fondant if they need to be fed fondant. See, loads of people just feed fondant for the sake of feeding it, and not a fan of that. I only feed if they need it. I did, I did say I did used to kind of agree and subscribe to that philosophy, which was just get it on and, you know, an insurance policy. But once you, once you learn hefting, you know, you know you've got a box full of stores left and you think, why I'm not putting fondant on, I've got a box full of stores, they'll just eat the fondant and then get to spring and not grow because they're backfilling everything with— well, they're already honey-bound with all of the stores, let alone the nectar that's coming in. So I like to kind of like try and get them to eat as much of the stores as they can and then see them well in the spring. But I would definitely be going in hefting, if not every week, definitely every other week at the moment, just going up every colony, give them a good heft, because they will, they will start accelerating through That food once the brood rearing gets going. Lee Leatherbury says, Richard the James Math beekeeping, love it. He is exactly like that. Derek does blank comment. Hello, Derek. The Old Bald Bad Railway Modeler, best best name yet, says, no question, just say hello, and my wife is looking forward to her bees arriving when they're ready. Nicola and Jamie. Hello, Nicola and Jamie. If you have any questions, just give me a shout, but I'm. I'm also excited for sending everyone's nucs out. Evening, Lawrence. You mentioned using CO2 for AI queen bulk transfer. Great idea. Does the CO2 need to be food grade? Not much info online on how to use it properly, i.e., dosage. Um, so I don't know. I don't know if it needs to be food grade. So I got food grade. It's— I don't think it makes a huge amount of difference in terms of the price anyway, but I've got a couple of big CO2 tanks That very specific process, and it's it works well. Veritas says, laugh out loud. I understand Richard's thought on the frame building. I'm the same way. I use a low VOC exterior wood glue and hammer grip right ceramic coated nails with a finishing hammer for every single frame. That you know there's two type of people in this world. There's there's bullshitters and people who don't do proper jobs, and then there are people like Richard and Veritas who do proper jobs and are not bullshitters. And let's see if you can guess which category I fall into. Richard says stack silver, gold, and honey. Good, good advice. Julian Lawley says, evening, Lawrence and all. Can't believe this weather. Bees out everywhere. Ah, need the brood gap. Yeah, it's caught, it's caught people out. I think the weather down south is, it's topsy-turvy at the moment. I saw what I saw the other day where it was like 2 degrees in Bristol and 14 degrees in Aberdeen or something like that, and it just is flipping all around the place, isn't it? But I quite like it. I, I really enjoy— I said it on the other stream, I like this hard frost. I like it like crunchy underfoot. It's nice, like a prolonged cold frost with some snow. I really did enjoy that. Looking forward to the spring. Bees flying yesterday and bringing back pollen. Oh, nothing better than the first, first bit of pollen coming in. Do you use open mesh floors? Would you swap them out in winter? So I use open mesh floors and leave them open Open all the way throughout winter. Again, this is one of the ones where Richard is not a fan of open mesh floors. He's got some and he's got a lot more solid floors, and he said he's changing out all of his open mesh ones to solid because he thinks that, that they build up a lot better in the spring. So we might try, we might try and sort some of those out. Just seeing Lynette's new one. Jasper, hey! He's, he's over there, over there today. Just chilling out. Sorry that I put that one up. Where's Jasper, my dog? He's normally around, but he's had his he's had his food, so he is chilled. Nikki says, "I was in North Wales last weekend. It was bitterly cold, but the snow was very pretty. It was very, very nice, wasn't it? Very cold, but very snowy and beautiful." I um oh no, I'm thinking about Harry. Harry says, "Evening Lawrence. What do you use for your hive notes reminders? I know Griff uses." to show which hive needs attention? What do you use? So I've gone through a number of different ways of doing this. So I, I used to use bricks, um, bricks on top, but then they— the hive still blew over when I put bricks on there. So, uh, I wanted to use straps, I got rid of the bricks. I had a little disc. I still think the disc is the way forward, it's the best one. If you buy, you know, the little discs that you get with— I love doing that on that camera, a bit of a— there we go. Um, you know, the discs you get, like a nuc entrance disc if you just get a part of your beehive and you like spray it, you could have a quadrant or you could have 8 different colors, however many different colors that you want, and then you put the nuc disc over it and then you can just like turn it around. So you've got like a, a way of indicating different things within the hive. So you can have it red to say that they swarmed, or you can have it green to say that everything's okay, or you could— the, the iterations are pretty much endless. If I was serious about wanting to keep good records of what's going on in my hives, I'd probably use something like that. I just find that I don't really need a huge amount of notes to be going on because in the production colonies, got quite good at not letting them swarm by doing demarays. So all the colonies are in pretty much a similar situation and a similar status, so I don't really need to kind of know the differences between the two. And then if anything big happens, you can see it's quite apparent that something big's happened, and then you can change like the configuration of the hive to show that. So it might be really tall and they might have swarmed, so you might take 2 supers out and a brood box out, condense them back down, and then you know that's the one out of the 20 in the apiary that's had that happen to it. I do keep pens with me, so I keep oil-based pens. If there's something I need to know, I just write it on the underside of the lid and occasionally like spray paint over it if there's too much stuff written underneath it. But they're my two methods. They're not the best. They're not the best methods. Bricks are good though. I think bricks are a really good method. I like the idea of bricks, and you see people like color up the different bricks and put paint on one side, and it can tell you kind of like a million and one different things. I don't like the idea of standing up bricks vertically though, because you know they just blow over in it, and then it looks like something else has happened. But I think I think bricks with different colored faces is is a really good idea. David says, our frame making starts tomorrow. I find making them by hand as therapeutic as actually watching the bees. We use a good old-fashioned hammer. It is therapeutic, it's just a bit slow, isn't it, with a hammer? I like it to do it a bit quicker. I love that bid, respect for the £51 bid, David. This is kind of bid that I would make, but good man. Right, your top bidder at the moment, £51. Veritas enjoys building frames as well. Uh, Ora Collins, we answered that one, right? David also says hit the like button, everyone, be much appreciated. You know what, I'm nearly at the bottom. There's only 5 more, 5 more questions slash comments down there. So you know the rule, we get to the bottom, we finish the stream because everyone has had their questions answered. 6 more comments to go. Uh, John says, on the sculpture, if you get bored of how it looks or if it weathers badly, you can always paint it green and call it splodge. How is she? Could call it splodge. She's good. I looked at her colony today. Lots and lots of bees in there. I didn't go sifting through it, so I think she's still alive. Fingers crossed. Julian says, laugh out loud, I'm definitely the latter. Budget and make it work. Nothing wrong with that. Manodilo is in Carmarthenshire. Very nice. I'm shocking with geography. Not even just Welsh or English or United Kingdom geography. All over the world. Terrible. David McDowell says, "Hello, bud. Got the honey jar sorted. Talk about getting the correct jar weights and measures was a slight minefield. People grams and mils are too different." Oh, that's just ridiculous. Right, let's change that over. I genuinely thought we had that fixed. There we go. It's not as good that one, is it? It's not as good that one, but it's good to have like a backup on, so it should stop people. Flicking off while I, um, sort out the cameras, but I will carry on. So David was talking about different jars. It is a good point, that one. Not many people realize that when you're buying jars, you get some— there you go, got that one back on— that it comes up as kind of milliliters or grams, and everyone thinks, oh, it's a 227-gram jar, so I'm gonna buy a 227ml honey jar, but it's not like that. It's a 190 round is the closest to a 227. So you buy a 190 milliliter jar, it's the best for a 227 gram portion of honey, but it works out really still about 250 gram portion to get it up to the top to make it look good. I'm definitely one for making it look nice in the jar as opposed to making it look, um, making more money by selling a very accurately dosed portion of honey. Not sure what the Trading Standards point of view of that is. Um, but I think if you're consistently over the top, I don't think there should be any issues. Although I'm told sometimes that if you're out by 5% either way, it's just as bad. Um, but I think it'd be a hard argument, wouldn't it, to say you're giving people an extra 20 grams, you're in trouble? But you never know. Uh, Veritas says, I use screen bottom boards in summer and open the bottom cover in the mornings if I know the temps are going to be high, but I always swap out all the screen bottom boards to solids for the winter. So I think depending on where you are in the year, it's good, good advice. In the UK, it doesn't generally get that cold. It's been quite cold this year, but with a poly box on top, nice insulation at the top, I find they do very, very well still with open mesh floors. Greetings from the Caribbean. Greetings to you too. My mentor has been poorly. He's in his 90s. He had 2 colonies left at of the year. I really don't know if he will let them die out, sadly. Oh, it's horrible to think of stuff like that. I always think whenever I see abandoned colonies, like, how, how did they become abandoned? And I guess it's generally due to illness, isn't it, that people can just no longer look after the bees. It feels a bit sad. Could I have your opinion on double brooding, pros and cons? I'm seriously thinking of double brooding all my hives, extender boxes on nucs. So for nucs It's kind of like a no-brainer because they do very, very well on that configuration, but you could argue a double nuc is more than ready just to kind of be upgraded to a full-size hive. In terms of double brooding, it's a difficult one because you are, you do have to balance like what you're trying to get out of your bees. If you're just, if you're making loads of splits and all you're ever doing is making splits, making nucs, double brood without a doubt. If you want to give your bees the the best chance of not swarming and you're happy to sacrifice a little bit of honey for that, definitely double brood. If you want to get the absolute maximum amount of honey from your bees, single brood and potentially do a demerare in there as well. You'll lose a lot of additional honey with a double brood system because it gets left down in the brood box, but it means that your bees are less likely to starve. It means that you're less likely to have to feed a huge amount at any point throughout the year, so it kind of smooths out a lot of the peaks and troughs. But if— I don't know, I do like a double brood configuration, I have to say, but we make a lot of splits, and if I was doing just nuc production, I'd probably stick with a single brood configuration. What brand of queen marking pen do you use? So I use a Toma oil-based pen, but I use pretty, pretty much any oil-based pen is good, although I've got a couple of experimental devices for queen marking later on this year which should be quite JK Photography says, do, uh, does no— does no one use a 10-frame jig to make frames these days? Um, I've seen, I've seen a few people make jigs, mainly in America. People make jigs to make up the frames, but you can't tell Richard how to make up frames because he knows how to make up his frames and he definitely doesn't want to make a jig. I like jigs. I like jigs for anything if you can get them working well and it speeds things up. Definitely got my vote. Hi Lawrence, any advice to brand new beekeepers? We've been offered a complete setup from a friend who's retiring. I believe he has 4 hives. We'd love to hear your thoughts. So you can get some good bargains that way. You can end up with much cheaper kit, a nice kind of healthy, healthy, happy, well-looked-after bees with no disease, or you can just end up with an absolute car crash of an apiary that's got loads of black comb, loads of varroa, bees that are angry, bees that chase you, and European foulbrood. And if you get the National Bee Unit involved, they'll come and condemn it and burn it all for you and then let you start again. But that— it's not good. We're going to go to the other camera. We'll finish off on the other camera. We won't chop and change. There we go. It's not as good, this camera, is it? But you know, At least you can see me and it doesn't flicker out this camera. I've still not worked out the camera situation. I just, I'm trying a million and one different things and it's just this camera seemed to just stop working and all the other ones are buffering. So apologies for that. Um, so that's not a hard sell to be like, come on, buy the nucs because they're like, you know, we'll sell the nucs anyway. That's genuine advice. And I know people that have been really badly stung, excuse the pun, buying secondhand equipment like that, because if you, if you've got a colony there with bad disease like European foulbrood or American foulbrood, you are burning all of that stuff and then having to scorch it and try and reclaim whatever you can. Oh, it's not good. Uh, I missed that one. So, uh, John says, rather than switching over to solid floors, guess leaving the Varroa tray boarding is an option. Yep. So of people do that. I don't have boards in on mine because I don't monitor for the Varroa. Going for made-up frames from Denrosa from now on, up to 30 hives, so time is precious. Their website is up and running. So that— so I didn't— I won't use— I won't use their frames anymore. They're— I don't think they're anywhere near as good quality as the Thorns ones. I don't think the wood's as good quality, and I'm not 100% keen on the way that they're put together, and they swell quite a lot, and the sizing's a bit off. But they are really cheap, and they do say we huge amount of time, but they're just not— they're not like perfect. So I'd, I'd say I'd probably use them, but Richard won't use them. Uh, says, get a techie in, worth the money, mate, for your camera. I don't know what's going on with the camera. I don't think— I don't think a techie could solve it. I've done a million and one things for that camera, and there is just— just needs to go in the bin. And I've tried 4 other cameras as well. Nightmare. And talking of nightmares, jars are a nightmare for Lee as well. What are your thoughts on drone foundation in the supers? Bigger cells, more honey per square inch, or is it nonsense? So I don't think it's nonsense. I think it is marginally more honey per, um, kind of per square inch, but the bees do not like to work it anywhere near as much, and they will only work it if forced and if everything is drone foundation. So it's not like you can just do it on one super or one frame. You need to go in with everything Or they start neglecting it and not doing it, which is a little bit frustrating. So I've got a couple of boxes like that, but I wouldn't do— I wouldn't do all of it. And then I'm pretty sure the foundation works out— it's like quite a bit more expensive as well, so you're paying more for the foundation in most instances. Adam Goodall says, just made jig for making frames, it's great. I do love a good jig. Mem says, so my campaign to save Splodge worked. You wanted to get rid of her and she is a top queen. Looking forward to some videos of her long-lived splodge. Very, very well. Um, gonna keep her going, see how she goes. Do you know if there is anything new at the Telford Beekeeping Show? See you there. Um, not— I've not been really looking, to be honest, to see if there's anything new, but I will be there. And I'm going to be on the Abello stand, so I'm going to come and chat to some people on the Abello stand, and I'll be wandering around as well. This isn't— this isn't the way that I thought it was going to go, gents, with the 50p bids, I have to say. It's all good. Someone needs to— we need one of the Simons to come in and power through with some mega bids. Um, but it's fine. £50 is a brilliant bid, so thank you. £51.50, the bid is with Danny's Bees. Uh, Veritas says, yeah, I live on the border of Maine, New England, USA, Canada. We get weeks of negative temps in Fahrenheit, 0 to 20, so I wrap, tuck, quilt, box my hives. So I think that's probably a good idea over there. That is mega, mega cold. Steen says, I treated did the bees days ago using the dribble method. I checked today and the mite drop from one colony was 100+ mites. So even though late, well worth doing. Definitely a good idea with varroa treatments. Better late than never. My one Twitch viewer says, with polyhives, how would you deal with AFB if you can't burn the hive? Unfortunately, you have to burn the hive. In case of burn it, um, I know what you're saying there, if you can't, if you're not allowed to burn it, but just Yeah, I shouldn't really say that. You've got— you need to send it off for specialist waste disposal and treatment because the only other option is to burn it. Yeah, and when I say burn it, I don't mean scorch it the way that I do, where you can still use it. You just burn it indefinitely, which is a bit smoky. So you're supposed to send it off for proper waste processing. Uh, PS, time for a sip of tea. Thank you very much. Uh, so Steen says, so thanks for the advice. And we got to the bottom. So unless anyone wants to bid a final bid for my hat, £51.50, it is with Mark. I don't think, I don't think anyone's going to get in quick enough while I do my, my outro here, but thank you for the bid, much appreciated. We're gonna— oh, David's coming in £52. So Mark, we do know what we'll do. We'll do— I'll give you, I'll give you 2 minutes for both of you, best and final offers. So you get one chance to, to bid for the hat, and, uh, and then that's it, you're done. Um, so John, John's off. I'll give you, I'll give you a couple of minutes for your final bids. But there we go, got through another live stream. Half 7, I think that's going to be a regular Friday night, uh, occurrence. So we're still— the next one will be in 4 weeks' time, and that will be kind of like middle of Feb, and then we'll do one middle of March, and then from the middle of March we'll go back to every 2 weeks. So we'll go middle of March, 1st of April, middle of April, etc., etc. And then yeah, we'll see how it goes. But I enjoyed doing the live streams. I will continue to work with the cameras, but I think just having, having a backup camera is probably a good idea, isn't it? And you get to see like all of the, the microphone and stuff in this lens here. But, um, oh, here we go. David's just come up. We'll talk about this while the final bids come in. Says, Cayman did a great job explaining queen rearing. Can you do one using the one hive starter finisher, maybe using BS Honeybee Nuc and/or the Abello hive in-depth detail. So, so yeah, I can do that. I'm going to plan— I'm going to do another— my old queen rearing video, it's like the audio wasn't very good, so I plan to do another one of those this year. So I'll do it as a merged one and, um, it'd be good. We'll do that combined starter finisher. Sounds good. Have a good week. Adam says best Langstroth hive. I, I like the, I like the Abello one. Do you like the Abello one? I do, I do. That's, that's the only one that I can really give like an in-depth review on because I've used it on a lot of my hives. Um, I am using the annual hive. The annual hive is, is good as well, but it's just a few too many like bits for me. But you know, it's well, well cheap in comparison. Uh, Veritas says good stream, thank you for all of your involvements. Uh, David says, how do I pay? Drop me an email and I will, I will let you know. But it would just be, you just donate directly to the charity and then send me a screenshot and I'll send you a hat. Uh, so says thank you. Uh, Venmo? No. So we'll— I'll send, I'll send a link. Yeah, there's no, there's no money changes hands here. You just get to, um, just pay, pay the donation. Uh, hats Well, sorry, what's the best hats best to view on? I keep on missing the times. So it's going to be half seven on a Friday, and I'll let you know in advance. J.K. says, "Is there any new tech you have seen for bees?" Not really. I should go to more shows. I'm possibly going to go to Apimondia. Might might go to Apimondia this year, which is in Copenhagen. which we have a lot with. Like, you'll see all of the new tech there, so maybe we could do that. Everyone's jumping in with all the questions that I was doing my outro. I love it. Evening, Laurence. As this year is going to be my first full year of beekeeping, I'm currently overwintering my first Langstroth hive. I'm looking to do my first ever splits from it, buying some of your queens. What is the best way to get the super frames drawn out quicker, as I only have foundation to start? Any tips? So I think you just need to go with the pace of the bees when it comes to drawing out super frames. Like, you could put a top feeder on, feed them 1:1 syrup, but you risk contaminating the supers, and I just think the bees will just do a better job of it left to their own devices. Adding syrup in at that time of the year is just a perfect storm to get them to swarm, so I wouldn't do it. I would just leave the bees to it, and you'll find that over the course of the season they'll get through a good few supers worth of drawn frames. My tip would be though, have it all ready to go, because when you get that flow come in, it might only be 2 or 3 weeks, but you just need to be there constantly putting new boxes and new frames on. If you, if you put a box on and then come back a week later and they've drawn it all out and you've not got the next box ready, then, you know, you're gonna have to start having issues with that. So get it, get it, um, get it as soon as possible. John is sharing the old queuing rearing video on No Nonsense Beekeeping. Thank you, John. David says, excellent as always. Thank you, David. Cheers, Derek. Uh, Dave Smith says, hi, one of my hives is looking a bit shoddy. Can I— can a hive pull through winter? So you just need to, yeah, cross your fingers, make sure it's got enough food, keep it warm, and then see what they do in the spring. But I've had some shocking hives pull through winter when it looks like there's kind of like no bees left. Uh, Stuart Henderson says, are you going to get more hats made for Telford? Oh, could get some more hats made Salford, possibly. They're a nightmare last time getting the hats made. No, not getting the hats made. People were just, you know, getting angry about the price of it and stuff. Oh, Mark's firing in with the bids now. It's gone up to sixty. Gone to sixty with the bids. I love it. Love doing the bids. There was an interim bid of fifty-five as well, so he's got you on both there. Veritas says, "Can you share the link to the charity for those who want to donate without the bidding of the hat?" I don't see it in the info section of the stream, so I'm just going to send him a link to the British Heart Foundation website. But people don't— people don't need to donate unless, unless they really, really want to. Well, what I think I'm going to do going forward though is I'm going to set up my own kind of like JustGiving page or something like that, and we'll pick a charity and then we'll do all of these for a JustGiving page. And then that way we can kind of like keep track of what we— what we're Generating in terms of donations, because it'd just be quite nice to look at that. And what I'll just do, I'll do a different raffle every week—not a raffle, like a charity auction every week—and we'll just just raffle off some stuff. Got loads of stuff knocking around that we can raffle off. And if I've not got anything, I'll just raffle off a queen. Here we go. So we do a Carniolan queen or a Buckfast queen or whatever, and just to get some money into. The JustGiving page. So I'll work out what— I'll work out the details for next week, and then we can have ongoing, um, JustGiving donations. David McDowell says, missed you doing Nabi this year. No one else on YouTube managed to cover what you did last year. I'm glad about that. I've really, really enjoyed going out there and filming it. And if I went to Happy Mondial, I would do something similar, you know, try and do a full vlog of the whole event. It'd be pretty cool. Oh, JK Photography, £5. Thank you very much, much appreciated, sir. Thanks for sharing your knowledge. My pleasure, thanks for coming along. Bubble hats for Christmas. That could be good, we could do bubble hats. Is there any correlation with excessive inspections and swarming? I've not seen that. I saw someone the other week saying, don't go inspect your colonies every single week, you're disrupting the bees and making it really difficult for them. You must not inspect your bees every week outside of the swarming season. And it's like, yeah, but the swarming season is like quite a lot of the season. So yeah, don't go inspecting your bees every week in February or October, but kind of April, May, June, July, I would say go and inspect your bees every single week. And then August, maybe don't. So for the last 4 weeks of the year, you don't got to do that. You don't have to do that. You shouldn't talk in such poor language, Lawrence. Thank you, Lawrence. Thank you to you too. Nice. Says raffle off splodge. That would be, that would be a good idea. We could raffle splodge. I kind of, I kind of— splodge is a very like, uh, special place in my heart now though. It'd be hard to see splodge go. Great idea. Uh, yep, yep, ding ding. Hello, how you doing? Says, I think I have lots of small mite things eating my overwintering supers, producing fine dust. Can you treat, or shall I burn and start again? So if it's just like a fine dust coming out and you're seeing it, you can shake it out, there's dust coming out, absolutely fine. It's just pollen mites, and the pollen mites will just eat and process the pollen. Um, they're doing you a massive service there because otherwise the pollen will go moldy in the frames, but the pollen mites dry it all out and it comes out like a powder, and then the frames are good to use. So if it is just, um, like a dusty stuff coming out, then they are good to go. You're not going to do anything. David McDowell says, when you— when do you clean your floors? I've only got solid. Is it worth using the blowtorch there and then? I never clean my floors. It's like a really Strange thing that people say you need to like spring clean your floors each year. Tell you what I do: I lift the box up, put it off to one side. I get the I get the floor. I just like brush all of the dead bees off it if there's any dead bees on it, and I put it back down again. And I put the brood box on. That is my spring clean professional. Veritas says I've had bees swarm in October. I don't know where they thought they were going, but they did. Do get the occasional one when it's when they're quite congested at that point in the year. You get a nice. warm day. I love your logo, it's brilliant. He says, hey Lawrence, Dan here from Fabelmans. Hope you're well. Can I pay my nuc balance via an online link at all, or is it bank transfer only? So if people want to pay by a link, that's fine. Just drop me an email and, um, I will, um, send you a payment link. That's no problem. Looks like Danny's Bees won it here. Thank you, Lawrence. I would have gone higher, but I have another charity thing for cancer research coming up. No problem at all. Thank you for getting it up to where it was. So the winner of the hat is Dunny's Bees. Well done. If you drop me an email with your address, and then I'll let you know. I'll let you know how to make your donation to British Heart Foundation. Maybe what I'll do is I'll set up the JustGiving page first for the British Heart Foundation, and then you can pay it on there. You can be the first person to donate on it, and we will see how much we can generate in 2025. And if anyone wants to donate anything. in a raffle, you can do that as well. If you've got like a cool beekeeping thing that you think somebody might like and that you don't want, then we can certainly do that as well. Where are we up to? Nice to see you back. Thank you, Stephen. Thanks, this is my first year, I've got 3 hives, I will definitely keep an eye on my dodgy one. Thanks from Norfolk. Thank you, Dave. We've done that one there. Congratulations, Danny Bees. Hi, Laurence, I'm Looking forward to my nuke. Lots of people looking forward to nukes at the moment. And there we go. Mark says yay. He's happy. Another hat being raffled off. Got through all of the comments in record time, hour and ten minutes. So we will call it a day there. Thanks again to David and Mark for bidding. Really, really appreciate that. We'll do something again next week or week after or whenever we're back in four weeks' time. But yeah, not long now until the beekeeping starts. And I'm just very happy to kind of get things going again. So I hope you all have a very good weekend, and I'll see you on.