Black Mountain Honey: Let's Talk Bees with Gruffydd Rees - Episode 33

So here we go, we are live for another episode of Let's Talk Bees, and this time it's not just with Laurence Edwards, it is with Gwyneth Griffiths. So welcome to the show, and that is a fine hat that you've got on, I absolutely love it.

Thank you very much. It's not, it's not as good as your hat though, you've got a better hat than me today.

It is a good hat, I have to say, it's very warming. It's cold at the moment, so I thought I'd put on my bestest woolliest hat. But if anyone didn't know, we both went to the beekeeping show at the weekend and we decided to exchange hats. So I thought that was very good. Griff didn't come to the stream with his hat on, he just put it on for the first— what we're doing, the first minute with your hat on and then it's coming off, innit? There we go.

Yeah.

But thanks for coming on, Griff. It is quite a momentous day, I think, or yesterday, in terms of honey judgment. So we have just decided to come on and have a little bit of a chat about raw honey. Is it right? Is it wrong? But more importantly, what have you got in your cup of tea?

Just, just tea and sugar, I'm afraid. It's either honey and now sugar, but sugar at the minute.

Very nice. Well, I've got a relaxing herbal pucker tea this evening. I can't drink— I can't drink tea this late at night. I'd never get—

Yeah, no, uh, over 10 years in the council made me a hardcore tea drinker.

So I used to love tea. I used to do a good like 7 or 8 cups of tea a day, and then since I moved over to herbal teas, they That's it. I'm, I'm turning into— I don't know, I'm saying old man, but I don't know, something else.

You'll be drinking vanilla lattes and oat milk and everything before you know it. Yeah. And, uh, you know, not wanting to keep bees no more.

I know. So we're, we're both kind of like right at the coalface, I would say, of this debate over whether you should use the word raw or not. So do you want to just give me like your opening thoughts? Do you like the word raw? do you not like the word raw?

Yeah, so that's a really good question, and that's, that's the big debate. Do, do I like the word raw? I like the word raw. People search it, people want it. Do we need it? Not really. The question is then, well then, why do you need it? Well, it takes us back basically years ago. Uh, this, all this happened because Hilltop and Ian Rose had a big fight over it. Now, I don't know if you remember when Hilltop started becoming big and he got launched in supermarkets. Well, his key, uh, USP was he had raw on all the labels, and I think he took, uh, a huge market share from Rose. Uh, he did very, very well, got listed in multiple supermarkets, and he basically, uh, more than anybody else trained the consumers to look for Raw because he was in all this— well, not all, but you know, a lot of supermarkets UK-wide— trained all the consumers to look for Raw. So everybody's buying his honey, and I think his honey was outselling Rose. So I don't know that for a fact, but it must have been— it must have had an effect on Rose because Rose then decided to take legal action on it. And I think Uh, from what I remember, he, he did say this to us in the, in the Beef Farmers AGM one year when, when the meeting was at Hilltop. I think his local authority was taking him on, not Rose directly, but I think there was a bit of argy-bargy in between them, 2 big, 2 big players on, on the bulk honey market. And then he decided to pull the raw from, uh, from the labels, and then all the trading standards across Wales came down hard on everybody that used raw. I was pulled into a meeting, uh, with a lot of local beekeepers and bee farmers, uh, in Kilmarnockshire. We got pulled into the Botanic Gardens. They basically, you know, schooled everybody in one meeting, uh, bring your label, bring your honey. I think they— I can't remember if they, if they took honey off us that day to test it as well, but they wanted to look at our labels. And basically I was told then and then, right, you've got to change Take the raw off your labels completely, or you know you're going to end up in trouble. And we took raw off, and we haven't used it since. Since then, the the seas has changed, as as they say. It's not as strict. It doesn't seem to be. But for years, I thought I was we know not thought we were under an unfair advantage because you'd see a lot of these London-based companies. Heavily using raw. You know, we don't sell bulk honey to any packager. We sell all of our honey direct. We jar it up, we ship it UK-wide. That's the business model. And when you sell online, you know, whether you're on Amazon, eBay, or with Google terms, you know, where people search your product, people search for raw honey. And no doubt we lost a lot of sales because our labels didn't say raw, and all this honey in London did say raw. So we basically, if I could set the score, if I was in charge, I would ban the word raw. Because basically the reason raw exists for the beekeeper is we want to differentiate our honey from the bulk honey, you know, the Chinese syrup type honey that's on the market, or, you know, the, the cheap imported honey that's in the supermarkets. We want to differentiate that our product is superior to theirs. Now, everybody within beekeeping world knows this, but when you've got big budgets in the supermarket level selling honey, and you know, if when they were using raw and that now they're not using raw, and you know, there's been a huge confusion still from those days where, you know, people are looking for raw, and if you, and if you don't have raw on your labels, you're gonna sell less honey online. Simple as that. If you're selling locally in your farmers market, etc., people can talk to you. You can tell them where your bees are. It has probably no effect, uh, on the stalkers. People come to me and ask me, is your honey raw? Well, I would always say, well, what I, I think is raw, but I'm not allowed to say it. What do you think raw is? And they'll come with a question and say, well, you know, you haven't pasteurized the honey or blah blah blah. You say, no, I haven't done that. You explain the way you process it and, you know, you get the sale. Online, you can't do that. Basically, you've got like three four seconds when someone scrolls through all the different honeys available, and then they they pick it. So if I go if I think the clever thing to do is double back and ban raw because the risk is once you approve it, it's going to end up in the supermarkets again. They're going to use raw, and then the whole thing is going to be diluted again. Then we're going to need to find another word. To call our honey, because the truth is people think, oh, you know, beekeepers, they damage the honey because, you know, they've got a heated honey sample, you know, all this stuff. The truth of the matter is probably 99% of honey on the market is either stored in barrels or buckets. Even small beekeepers, you know, they can't jar everything up in one go. The honey will crystallize like steel. You've got to warm that honey up to reliquify it to bottle it again. Well, basically, that is where it's going to ever get the biggest amount of heat for the longest period of time. So what scares me more than anything is I'm not sure, you know, who's been consulting. I know the BVKA are pretty keen on bringing the word raw in, but you've got to think of the small family farm, you know, the honey farmer producing the bulk of the British honey on the market. If they say, you know, you can't use commercial kit to extract honey or anything like that, then it's— that's gonna damage the, the biggest, you know, bulk part of the honey produced in the UK. And if they go down the road or say, well, it's got to be a 3-frame hand crank extractor and you can only use a kitchen sieve, and, you know, if they go too hobby scale on the definition, then that's going to have a negative effect on the home honey industry in the UK. So, you know, that, that's, that's my biggest concern, because once, once you go over 50 hives, I mean, you know, you've got to start buying equipment that's going to improve efficiencies for you to be able to extract honey better, more efficient, uh, produce a better quality honey. You know, you're gonna have to spend money on kit. And once they say, well, you've got all that stainless steel in the honey house, you know, that ain't raw. You know, that's the problem. So if they are going to bring it in, I hope they bring some kind of test so you can test the honey, because the test exists now. When we test honey, we look for the HMF has got to be between these 2 parameters, and there's different things we look for. They give a parameter, it's got to be between these 2 numbers. But whether they bring raw, they bring the higher parameter back a little bit, and your honey's got to be in there. At least then you know, you know, because if, if someone says, well, this is raw, unless they can test for it, it means nothing.

You're right.

That's what I'm worried about, you know. It's— if it's only the, the, the person with 5 hives in the kitchen that can sell raw honey in the end, then, you know, it's, it's, it's all— it's a massive can of worms. And I think beekeep— it's turning beekeepers against beekeepers. Um, we're in an awkward situation where, you know, where you can't use it, you can use it. I've spoken to some training standards, they say you can if you can prove your honey's raw. Others say definitely not. So I mean, I do— I don't know what the current answer is. That's all I know is as long as people use raw and other people can't, they are under an unfair advantage selling online.

And this is the situation that I've got myself in this week in terms of arguments with people— not arguments, we'll call it like discussions on Twitter. Where they're saying, by you wanting to use the word raw, you're trying to infer that my honey is cooked and you're trying to put your honey above all of the other UK honey on the market, which is exactly the same product. And I say, but it's not that, is it? What I'm trying to do is, at the moment, like, so let's come clean, Trading Standards has said to me, you cannot use the word raw. Yeah, so upon everything up until 2 days ago, I could not use the word raw. Where, like you say, all of my competition use the word. So like, I'm at a massive disadvantage because people search, like, you know, they'll search for raw honey UK or raw honey Wales. And because I can't put raw on there, so I'm at the disadvantage and everybody else who's using the word is at the advantage. If I had my way, yeah, we'd completely ban the word. But not only ban the word, trading standards everywhere, England, Wales, every single department would have to proactively prosecute people for using it. say, if you don't, like, oh, right, we found it, take it off now. Not just like reactively prosecute, which is what they do at the moment, which is if someone makes a complaint against you, they'll say, okay, yeah, no, you're right.

Yep.

And then they'll put enforcement action in there. However, like in terms of the actual use of the word, I think it's a great word. I think like to try and get the consumer, the end user of any type of food to understand like quality standards and why that's important. is the most difficult thing in the world. And to get them to like understand or use a word and ask for a word like raw is the most difficult thing possible. So we're in this unique situation where like we've done the hard work, people understand what it is, but you're not allowed to use it. But what I'm going to quickly do here is I'm just going to share the honey regulations. So how boring is this? I'm going to— I'm just going to quickly throw the honey regulations up here for a very specific point, because what I don't— what I would never support and what I don't ever see happening Is anybody agreeing on what raw means? So they say, right, raw means this temperature for that long, this level of HMF, this filter size. I don't think we'll ever get to that, and I don't think you can realistically get to that. But it's this point here, this is where the ruling was made, which says the product name of a relevant honey may be supplemented by information relating to its specific quality criteria. So Odyssey said, right, we're going to use the word raw. because we think that the way that we're extracting this honey, raw defines the, the kind of process in which we're going through. So it's not necessarily like a stipulation that we're doing X, Y, and Z. We believe that the consumer knows what that is. And then the judge has ruled that using that word under kind of Section 5, Part 4, Section 5, wasn't misleading. So it did leave it completely open to all of the, um, Trading Standards Offices to kind of reflect on that and, and potentially put further challenges in there. But I'll get that out of the way. Like, if they could get rid of the word raw, I'd be completely up for it, as long as it was enforced. But then here's the analogy that I would use there. So say I'm a butcher, and you come in and you say, I'll have 2 steaks. Actually, no, I'll have 2 raw steaks, please. And you say, well, I've got some, I've got steaks, I've got 2 steaks I can sell you that. They said, no, no, no, they have to be raw. And you say, well, They're not cooked, but I can't really call them raw. But the customer says, no, I want raw steaks. I'll only buy them from you if they are raw steaks. Then the butcher next to you in the market says, I've got raw steaks. They're exactly the same steaks as the other guy selling them. He's like, no, I've got raw steaks. Yeah, do you want to come buy them from me? And the consumer says, yeah, I want raw steaks. This guy's just saying they're steaks, but I want raw steaks. So I'm going to go with the guy that's selling raw. And it's exactly the same. It's like the steaks are the same. The honey is the same. But the consumer want— they know what they want. And even if they don't know what that really means, they kind of have a really good idea what that means. They know what the quality standards are. They're probably linking that back to the fact that it's not coming, being imported. It's not sitting there in barrels. It's not being overly heated, overly filtered. So I really sit— I'm like sitting on the fence a little bit with it. I'm not 100% sure where it's gonna go, but I think it's gonna cause a lot of arguments along the way.

Yeah, and it'll, it'll probably go to court again with some, with someone, um, because the, the problem is now the training standards there, they've had, you know, their pants pulled down in court. Very embarrassing. No, they can't, you know, you just can't let that sit. So you'd think that the government or the, the people who are above trading standards again on a government level, that they're going to be asked to come in here now. Because basically, if you're trading standards, that you're basically being paid to do a job, and now you think, well, this— the honey regulation says this, now I can't do my job. So, you know, they're gonna look for guidance, and it's, it's gonna go one of both ways. They're either gonna let people use raw But then they've got to work out what is raw, and then, you know, how on earth do you work that one out? Unless the easy cop-out is it's just cut comb is raw, nothing else.

And I would support any— yeah, any judgment like that. I would support if they just said, right, you can't use the word, or, you know what, if you've got a frame of honey that comes from a hive that's never been frozen, that's never had varroa treatments in it or anything, and it's cut comb, then that can be called raw. But they just, they need to kind of spell it out. But I do, I feel a bit sorry for Trading Standards in this instance because I don't think they can win. They're going to get themselves into a pickle whichever way they go.

Yeah, and I, I think the likes of you and me, uh, you know, we're above the radar. So if you and me do something, there's a good chance someone's going to report it, but because, you know, we're above the radar. Now I don't want to be the guy above the radar that gets, gets pulled in to go to court, so, you know, I, I'm staying off the word Raw for now. I think it's just, it's just too hot at the minute. Um, you know, they're either going to want to take Odyssey— I can't remember, was it Odyssey they called?

Yeah, Odyssey.

Yeah, they're either going to take Odyssey back in and, you know, they'll go to the— is it Supreme Court they go to after, after normal court, or there's, there's, there's different layers of courts that, you know, you can appeal. So I'd have thought maybe they'd want to appeal that. And, you know, decisions can get appealed in, in a higher court and then get, get pulled back. So that can happen. They may look at this thinking that, you know, this, this is the kind of worms it's going to kick off. Um, I would have thought the Packers would, would be very much against anybody using the word Raw because That they're the ones, you know, they, they— the reason raw exists is because of the packers. You know, this— the beekeepers' way of trying to differentiate their honey from the packers, that the packers are not gonna want a big word splitting that market up there. There's too much money there, so they've got to protect their business and their asset of selling honey in the supermarket. So, you know, they're not going to want that word floating around. Um, no, I think if raw is going to make an appearance, I think the safest way to do it is you just label cut comb raw. You know, you just— the honey is still under the wax, you know, man hasn't taken it out. And you know, if in, in the, the generic terms of if you're going to eat a raw piece of honey, well, it's got to be in the honeycomb really, for, for me. Once, once you spin it out, filter it, you know, you, you fiddle a bit, you fiddle a bit with it.

You know, you, you do, but then I, I could— I'd come back, I guess, with the analogy of maybe like orange juice. Do you know, like, if you, if you eat a piece of orange, okay, that's a raw piece of orange. But you know what, if I've just kind of like pressed that orange to get the juice out and I'm drinking the orange juice, I'd say that's raw orange juice as well. I wouldn't say, oh, that's just—

Yeah, I mean, it's just— it's— it was— that's true as well. I mean, and, and that's the thing, we— anybody could take, take a view on it, but then the counter view is just as strong as the opposition view. You know, there's not a— there's not a clear right answer here, really. I mean, you know, no, what, what other way could you, could you differentiate, you know, homegrown honey to mass imported, you know, Chinese honey, basically? You know, I suppose Provenance is something you could use. You know, you could say, well, this is Welsh, this is English, this is Scottish. Then you've got these big packers, uh, you know, I'm not going to name any names here, I don't want to upset anybody, but some, some big packers, they still advertise their honey and they wear a bee suit to, to try and give the impression that, that they are still the beekeeper, you know, when, when they, they're shifting, you know, hundreds if not thousands of tons of honey that's imported. So, you know, that's a bit naughty as well. I mean, that's, that's what we're up against. And, you know, that's, that's where, that's where the problem lies really, is from the beekeeper's point of view. When it's from any kind of farmer, you're thinking, well, how on earth is there honey in the supermarket at that price? You know, some of it, some of it is so cheap I could hardly— by the time I buy the jar and put the label on it, I mean, I'm almost at the same price as what some of the supermarket honey is. So you know, that's that's the problem there. That you know, that's what's bought all this raw and everything in. And I think that problem there needs to be fixed. You know, this this honey coming in coming into the UK. I'm not saying it's fake. I'm not saying it's real. It's been proven that honey in the supermarket has been adulterated in the past. The EU proved that not not that long ago. Um, you know, if you were to tighten things up there, then maybe, you know, it'll be a more even playing field. But, you know, I think I saw on Twitter the other day, I think Black Dog Honey showed me a photo, it said produced in the UK, produce of China. So you think, oh, it might have even said produce of non-EU countries. Well, for me, someone could look at that and go, well, actually, we're not in the EU anymore. It must be UK, but there's a funny rule with the labeling. Stuff like that is wrong, you know, and, and that's why that, you know, people feel that we've, that we've got to use raw to say it's homegrown. You know, maybe that we've got to work out a different campaign. There needs to be a different word, is, you know, home produced or homegrown or Some kind of scheme where you get a special badge that you put on the jar to say, you know, member of the bee farmers, you're approved, or they know how much tonnage you produce. You know, there's loads of, I suppose, different ways of doing it, but I don't know. I don't think raw is— the hotter raw gets and the more people that get on it, the whole thing is going to backfire.

And, you know, yeah, this is what Murray was saying, is like, what's the next buzzword? And I don't think there would be a next buzzword. And I don't think there necessarily needs to be a next buzzword. I just—

you—

I just— the playing field needs to be leveled. So for me, it's not about one-upmanship. It's not about saying my honey's better than yours because I'm calling it raw and yours isn't raw. It's about meaning that, like, nobody can call it raw, or everybody can call it raw if it is.

Yeah.

But I think you're spot on with your comments about, like, fake honey and adulterated honey and cheap honey. And I'm surprised, you know, that you haven't had, like, a celebrity take it on. you know, you've got like Jamie Oliver or Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, and they've kind of gone through all of the industries, haven't they? Kind of like chickens and fish, and, and no one's jumped on the honey one. And I just, I just think, is there someone in the background that stands to make many millions of pounds through the cheap importation of fake honey? I don't know. And I'm not saying or implying that anyone is doing that, but like, there's no way that the, the honey that's on the shelves that's 70p for a pound Is pure honey. Like, it's not, is it? It can't be.

No. And I suppose that the biggest risk is if everybody puts raw on honey and then you get a parameter to test for it. Murray made a good point, is if they put a parameter test and, you know, a lot of bee farmers fail, I can guarantee you that the Chinese will find a way to pass it.

They, they probably would find a way to pass it, but like, let me flip it around. So I'm the packer now. Yeah. Um, and I don't want, I don't want this word raw to come in because at the moment it doesn't matter here whether I've got some honey that I've just taken out of a beehive and I've pressed it into a jar and said, right, there you go, there's some raw honey, or I've got some honey that I've kind of imported that I've taken up to like 64°C. And let it sit there for 3 days and then ultra-filtered it through like whatever filters you want to run it through and then blended it with a bit of Chinese honey, a bit of Russian honey, a bit of whatever honey, put it all together in a jar. Basically, for them at the moment, that's honey, and it's the same as the guy who's putting honey into a jar straight from his hive. So if I was in their shoes, I'd be like, definitely don't want this. Like, we're on to a winner at the moment because everything is called honey. So I can understand, like, if there was someone there to try and say, we definitely don't want this word to be used, like, they're going to put huge amounts of money behind it and they're definitely going to fund, like, legal challenges and things like that. But, like, I don't— it's definitely been misconstrued, I think, over the last few days that I'm, like, a real champion of this word. Like, this word drives me mad because, like, I have the struggle that I'm trying to compete with people online who use it. Like, and I just— I want to go, like, onto Amazon now. If I go onto Amazon here And just type in honey. I'm not even typing in raw honey. I'm gonna type in honey, and then like you just like filter through. So let me share my screen again. Let's have a look. And I've literally just gone. I've not even set this one up at all. I should have set it up. Here we go. Guessing you can see that. Can you see? Can you see that, Griff? Is it on the honey page?

I, I, I, I could see it.

Okay, if you can see it, that's fine. So there we go.

I've just, I've just gone on to honey there, and you've got the first one. This sponsored ad says raw honey, 1 kilo.

Pure natural wild raw honey.

Pure natural wild raw honey. So I mean, you know, all the illegal words is, is in the description there. So, you know, pure and raw.

Pure and Raw, Pure Raw Honey, Vanilla Fur Raw Honey, Wildflower Raw Honey. Like, these are all different companies, and all, all I've typed in here, I've not typed in raw honey, I've just typed in honey. Another one, Pure Raw Honey, Organic Raw Wildflowers. It's going to see my one come up in a minute. Like 7,000th. Raw, vibrant, living, organic acacia honey. We could have another— I could have a whole nother discussion about organic and what's, what's allowed with organic. Pure, raw, natural, right? So there we go. Let's, uh, let's stop sharing there. Um, so you, you all know this already, but that's to kind of like— yeah, that's to give context that that is what I'm up against. And this is when, like, I hate to use Murray because Murray's just got— Murray's got a very Valid view, but what Murray doesn't have is he's not he's not at the retail end. So for him, he's just got a packer and he sells everything to a packer. And like he said, some of the packers he sells to call it raw, and some of them don't call it raw. But for him, he's like, "I don't care. Like I'm just selling it." But I said I said to Murray, like I guarantee you, if there was another Murray McGregor in Scotland, and Murray said, "Right, my honey's not raw," and Murray McGregor version two said, "Well." my honey's raw. And this packer had to make a decision and they said, well, all my customers want raw, right? I'm gonna go and buy the 120 tons from Murray McGovern Mark 2. I bet you Murray would care about it then. And I don't want to put words in his mouth. And I'd love to have Murray on here and have the discussion with Murray. And he knows the offer is always there. But I just think because we're at the mercy of that search engine, because we're selling direct to the customer, the customer knows they want raw honey and every single person selling on honey Outside of the EU, inside the EU, wherever they may be, they know that they need to put raw on there because that's what the customer wants. So like we just we're a huge huge disadvantage, and I just I just don't know how they're going to level the playing field without actively prosecuting everyone.

Like you said, it affects the people selling online. So you know affects you, me, or all the other people that that you know business model is is selling direct online. That's that's the market is affecting, and I know a lot of dodgy stuff happens on the internet in different you know markets or whatever. Well, this has been going on for years, and it's like I remember when I lost Raw, and I and I told the trading standards guy, well, you know, what are you going to do about all all these guys, all these London-based companies using Raw? Well, you know, it's not that's not my remit. That's that's up to the trading standards in in that county to do that. And you think, well.

Yeah.

And I, I know another beekeeper, I think he wrote to his MP as well, and he, he came up to just a dead end. Nobody cares, you know, with, with that small of a, of a problem, I suppose, you know, in a grand scheme of trading standards problems, the word raw is probably at the bottom of the list, um, of things to sort out. And You know, it needs to get— it needs to get sorted out because you've got half these companies on Amazon nobody's ever heard of anyway, you know, and they rank really well on Amazon. They've got someone clever there behind the scenes doing descriptions and the SEO and whatever, and they're obviously paying for that, for to be on the front page. Um, something, you know, the likes of a small business like you or me, we can't do. You know, I can't have a guy working here full-time, sorting out my Google SEO or my Amazon SEO, and check that every week, make sure everything's performing. I just can't. I can't afford that. You know, I'm just selling a homegrown product and trying to get it out there. But yeah, it's— and it's been unfair for years. No one's done anything about it for years. And you know, the pressure is on people like us now to put raw on the label, then it may be the likes of you and me that gets in trouble because the, the guys in— the train sanders in Wales have come down on it harder than anywhere else in the UK because this problem originated in Wales. You know, so my—

sorry, so my take on the judgment now is that raw is an acceptable term in order for that, that quote, Part 4, Section 5 of the honey regulations. If you believe that the method that you're using is not misleading and that it is a raw honey, then you can use that because that is the latest court judgment that is out. Now, if Trading Standards— so, so I've gone ahead and I've changed all of my listings back to raw. Now, if Trading Standards run me up on Monday morning and said, um, we're not happy with that, can you please take it down while we kind of work it out, I'd say yeah, it's fine. Like I said, I'll always obey what Trading Standards tell me to do. Like, I'm not there to cause trouble. Whatever they tell me to do, I will do it. But my understanding at the moment is that the latest court case is saying that that is not a misleading term. And as part 4, section 5 of the Honey Regs, the product name of relevant honey may be supplemented by information relating to its specific quality criteria. For me, the use of the word raw is now acceptable under that section there. So until kind of I get further guidance on it, I'm going to leave the word raw in there. It's, um, it's interesting, the Odyssey case, because I had a phone call like 12 months ago, 18 months ago from the marketing director, I think it was, at Odyssey saying, have you got 10 minutes for a chat? And they basically filled me in on exactly what happened and they were just irate because they didn't feel they'd done anything wrong. They felt the use of the term was correct. They'd had a complaint come in against them. So it wasn't Trading Standards kind of proactively saying you can't use the word. They'd had a complaint that said you can't use it. So they were following it up and they said, do you want to kind of come in on the court case? Will you be like— will you be a witness, or will you kind of provide like a statement because it's the same things happened to you? And I said, I'm happy to provide whatever information you want and write them like a big long statement. But I said, I don't want to— I don't want to get involved in the— you know, I just don't want to— I basically just don't want to be involved in because I've got like too much to lose, and I can see it going the wrong way. Like, I can't believe— I'm really surprised that the judgment went their way. their MD is very passionate about it and just wouldn't say no. So I said, I'll give you all of the background information as to what's gone on with me, like the complaints that have come in, how we've taken it down, the impact that we've had on the company, wrote it all out for them and just— but said, I don't want to come and kind of say anything in court. So anyway, we kind of parted ways and then the next thing I heard was, you know, that the case was successful, which I think it is amazing, but it doesn't solve anything. This is the problem. It's just a line in the sand to say, right, on this very one specific case, The term that they've used is not misleading, and that's all it comes down to. But I genuinely don't know where it goes from here, and I hate the fact that it causes divide in between like the UK beef farmers kind of ultimately, because we all need to be together and like supporting each other at this point. It's a difficult one, isn't it? It's hard to know which side of the plate to sit on.

If you don't use raw now, or you know, in say they approve it 100% right down the line. If you don't put raw on your labels, you're implying that your honey is not as good as the raw honey.

And again, this is what Murray didn't like. But the question that I've always asked, and I know we've got Paul Horton on here as well, this is an interesting sideline to this, is that when Trading Standards pulled me up about using raw, they said you cannot use the word raw because it's not a reserved description in the honey regulations. So it's not baker's— sorry, it's not baker's honey, blossom honey, chunk honey, comb honey. All of the reserved descriptions said can't use raw, not a reserved description. Why don't you use the word unpasteurized instead? And I said, well, how is that any different? Like, like, it's exactly the same, isn't it? It's not a reserved description. They said, yeah, no, no, but unpasteurized is fine. You can use the word unpasteurized. So I said, okay, I use the word unpasteurized. It's not what people want. They want raw, but I'll use unpasteurized. But then My question, and this is the question that I had to Murray, is why doesn't unpasteurized get such a bad rap the same way that raw does? He says if you call your honey raw, it's inferring that all other honeys are cooked. But if you call your honey unpasteurized, surely then you're referring to all other honeys as pasteurized. I just— some people hate the word with like an absolute passion. It really like triggers them, and I just don't understand. like the divide over it. I think it's a really useful term.

Yeah, I suppose it's, you know, I've gone through it once and had to change the labels and get all new professional photos taken. There's a, there's a cost involved. And it's the same if I were to change, if I were to go back to RAW. I gotta send all the, all the photos up to date you can't use anymore because it doesn't say RAW on it. So there's work involved and cost regardless, you know.

And I, I wouldn't, I wouldn't update my labels one way or another. Like, for me, it's, it's search engine only. Um, but yeah, I can see how that would impact others. Sorry, I completely forgot that before I cut you off, the, the final bit of that was that I spoke to Paul Horton, and hopefully I'm not speaking out of line here, Paul, but he had, he had a letter from Trading Standards which said you cannot use raw. and you cannot use the word unpasteurized. And it's that— it's the lack of consistency, isn't it? It's the case of, well, do you know what, some so-and-so in Essex is using this, and they say, well, that's out of my jurisdiction, speak to Essex Trading Standards. And you speak to them and they say, well, yeah, unpasteurized is fine, um, but you can't use it because you're Flintshire and we don't like it. I just— it just needs— it needs to be black and white, doesn't it? It needs to be.

Yeah. And, and it comes back to basically, you know, What are we fighting against? Well, we're fighting against the honey in the supermarket that hardly ever crystallizes. It's always the same color. It's in a squeezy bottle. Well, if I were to put my honey in a squeezy bottle, give it 4 weeks, you're not— you're not gonna get any honey out because it's got to set like steel. Now, for me, you know, that is raw or unpasteurized. I mean, the honey is set in like it's supposed to within the time frame that it's supposed to. You know, I haven't meddled with that honey to keep it runny for a year or longer. You know, I suppose that's what people are trying to get out, where if my honey was in the supermarket in a plastic bottle, probably no one would buy it because it, you know, it just looked terrible in, in a plastic bottle. But that is the difference between Homegrown honey from the producer, any mass imported stuff. And you know that the battle is between there. We got to differentiate ourselves from from that honey in the supermarket. But we don't want to get in a fight amongst ourselves in the process as well because all us beekeepers we're on the same you know we're on the same team. I know there's competition and and some people think well. you know, there's not enough room for everybody. You know, there's— we put— was it— what is it, like, we produce 14% of the UK demand? I mean, if we were to cut imports down by 20%, all the honey would be sold again. And, you know, I suppose it's— this is kicking up— I suppose it feels worse this year because of the current, you know, honey climate. Honey is slow to sell. There's a lot of bulk honey sitting in people's sheds, and not just in the UK, but you know across the world—Australia, New Zealand, America. These guys in the same boat, France. You know they're all protesting there for for this exact reason. You know the bee farmer, the bulk bee farmer is going through a stressful time right now. You know I suppose that the last thing they want then is packers going well we only want raw honey. How would you test it? I mean, the implications could be huge, but it could not be. Nobody knows the way it's going to go. You know, can you imagine having 200 bottles sat in a container and then all the packers going, well, your honey's got to be raw, you've got to pay for this guy to come and test your honey, and he's got to approve your premises, and, you know, this is going to cost £2,000?

And this is where Murray makes a very valid point. Sorry, I know I'm referencing Murray, but I've had like the big— the biggest back and forth with Murray.

Yeah, well, I read it, you know, the two of you make really good points.

Yeah, but he makes— it's a perfectly valid point that he makes, which is if you specify what raw is to the nth degree like that, and then you have to get it batch tested and it's £300 to £500 per batch, like, that's not what I want. It's not what I'm signing up for. Like, you know, if that's on the table, then my vote firmly goes back into the ban it completely because it's not a viable thing and it causes more division. So I'm like this, I've not got a perfect answer to it at all. All my argument is, like, back to Murray, is like, I'm just trying to get the leg back up that I lost. Like, I'm at the disadvantage. I'm not saying I want to be a devil with other people. And I think that Amazon bit there kind of but proves it perfectly, doesn't it? Which is, that is what we're up against. Why is Trading Standards not enforcing or taking action against all of those people on there who are calling their honey raw?

Yeah, and I suppose the reason they get away with it is they're a lot of companies you've never heard of. They've got no online presence. They've got, uh, nobody knows who they are, so they're not getting complaints off anybody. You put your neck out there and like what you and me do in videos and Instagram posts and Twitter posts, you name it. Yeah, people are seeing it. Some people like what they see, some people don't. Some people feel that, you know, they want to complain about it. So, you know, the more you're out there, people are going to complain about you more than anybody else. If you haven't got that profile but you're on Amazon still selling thousands of bottles every month, the best thing for them to do is not to stick their neck out because they're on a good number already. But you know, I don't think these— I don't think there's like a UK-wide online body of trading standards targeting online companies. It's your local department, local counties that are going, well, I know there's a bee farmer up there, I know there's a bee farmer there. That's who they're hitting. And I bet you some of this honey is imported from abroad and then just been sold, and it's just like a white label product. it'd be a job to work out where it's come from anyway.

Oh, definitely. And I—

and this is the problem, you know.

And yeah, and you see what's going on in Europe at the moment with what they're trying to do, you know, like from apiary to jar and trace it all the way. And, and the pressure that the UK government is getting to get into that, but then also like the packers not wanting to get into that because they're bringing in honey from China and shipping it out to the EU. So they're saying, no, no, we don't, we don't want to sign up to that. That is exactly what we need. We need like a full traceability system like that. So you can— so the consumer at the end can make a decision to say, right, this honey here was from Dave down in Dorset, or this honey here was imported from China and is like a Chinese honey. Like, and then I do think people would look at those 2 jars and they would make a decision and they would say, I want to support like the UK honey. And I don't think that's clear at the moment because you, like you say, you look at it and you look at the honey and it's from a little quirky apiary with a nice little picture on the front. and it's kind of in the buy Welsh section, and then you look at the back and it's a mix of non-EU honeys, and you just think, well, that's really like pulling the wool over people's eyes big time. And obviously the companies can market it however they want, you know, they can design the jars, but I think it needs to be front and center on the front of the jar. Where's that honey from? And not, it's a mix of non-EU. What country does that honey come from? If it's China, say it's China. If it's wherever else in the world, say where the honey comes from. And if it's the UK, have it on the front and say it's from the UK.

Yeah, well, you made a really good point there, and I think that's what needs to happen if we adopt what Europe is trying to push, where you've got to have the country of origin on a jar. If that's a blend of 6 countries, you've got to list the 6 countries on the back. If that comes in, you can ban raw because it's going to be clear as day, this is homegrown honey. This is imported from China, and that's the differentiation, isn't it? It is. If that comes in, ban unpasteurized, pure, all that, you'll be able to see this is from China. Yeah, this is from the UK.

And then I get— and then I get what I want there. Yeah, I get what I want, you get what you want, which is UK honey is on a level Yeah, there's no my honey's better than yours or your honey's better than mine. It's a level, which it is. Like, honey produced in the UK under all of the methods that bee farmers use is all of exactly the same quality. It's as good as one another. And something like that would kind of be a great leveler, wouldn't it?

It would. It's like, since I've kept bees, you know, 2010, it's the blend of non-EU honey that is The the biggest heartache I've got, the biggest thing that winds me up, and I see those companies wear a B suit, stick the Union flag or the Welsh flag or the Scottish flag on on their marketing campaign. I know they're a British company, or I know they're a Welsh company, and they create jobs in this country. And don't get me wrong, that is a really good thing. We're better off having those companies in the UK instead of buying. Honey from outside of the UK, packers over there, at least they're creating jobs in the UK. But don't try and sell that as, you know, made in the UK. And, and this isn't just— oh, it's not just the honey packers that do this. Tesco does it. They, they come up with Thompson's Farm sausages. You know, Thompson's Farm doesn't exist. No. Did you, did you see the one with sugar though? It's from a farm.

The sugar's the best one. Yeah, the sugar's the best one, which is packed in the UK, uh, sugarcane honey. And you're thinking, pretty sure they don't grow honey like sugarcane in the UK. But they had a big, big United Kingdom flag on it, packed in the UK. And it's like, of course it's packed in the UK. They're not going to send over little 1-kilogram packs, are they, from wherever they're making sugar out of sugarcane?

But that is giving the impression, because you're only looking at it quickly, you know, you're not picking up a bag of sugar and spending, you know, 30 seconds reading it. You look at the flag, oh, that must be British. Boom. And that, that's why it's on the label, because people subconsciously shop, you know.

Yeah. And, and like, the UK has the power to fix all of that. Oh, they did one the other day, like, yeah, a big supermarket.

They could, they could do it even faster again, you know. They, they don't need it. know, a block movement. The way it's looking, I mean, Europe's going to sort it out with multiple countries deciding on the decision way, way faster than us. And it's just, you know, one country trying to decide it. But I mean, I think that the problem we've got is a lot of these packers, you know, they talk to the government, they've got lobbying groups, we haven't.

And money.

They've got money, yeah. And, and that's it. And I suppose they are more important to the economy than we are. Yeah, you know, it pains me to say that, you know, that's the truth. They create more jobs than us, they put more money in the economy than us, you know. And right or wrong, is morally wrong, but you know, what, what is— what could— what can you do with it? It comes down to it's just what, what can— that's all you could do. Like what, what we've done, try, try and get a, you know, an advantage on, on the guys in the supermarkets, the guys online using all these, all these terms. Now we want people to know that our honey is genuine, it's legit, it's the real thing. And we've got to compete in a field where there's a lot of stuff on there which is questionable. Is it even legit? That looks the same, it's using the same keywords.

Yeah.

It hides the country of origin. You know, it's a terrible place really when you work. If beekeepers sat down in government and, you know, pointed all this out, this is what we're up against, they'd see it clear as day. But you, you know, Rishi Sunak or, you know, Max Rickford or, uh, you know, it's not on their priority list. I mean, look at, look at all the stuff happening in the world, you know, sort of sorting honey out is It's way, way back at page 99, you know.

Yeah, 100%. So, so that was the Roar Wars. It was good though. I, I feel like it's like a counseling session. Got a lot off my chest there. Um, there's loads of questions coming in, Griff, from people asking like other stuff about bees.

Hey, do we ask them who's got the best hat?

I don't even need to. We know your hat's best. Go on then, we'll ask, we'll ask everyone on here. You can, you can vote for which Oh yeah, vote, vote who's got the best hat.

The Gwyneth Paltrow hat or the Black Mountain hat?

The only thing I would say about this hat here, because you've done, you've done it kind of like on the side, haven't you? So when I was— I have, yeah.

I can't, I can't move the— I can't move the Carhartt badge.

No, it looked— I thought I looked a bit like I'd put like a condom on my head, do you know, just like with the teat at the end.

That's just the cool way the hipsters look.

I said, I said, I walked into my wife and I said, who, I said, who, who wears, who wears their hat like this? And she said Sam, who's my brother, who is like a lot younger and a lot cooler. Apparently that's how they wear it like that.

There we go, they know something we don't.

It looks like it's 1-all at the moment, but there we go. Um, anyway, I, I like your hat. It's a very, it's a very good quality hat, Griff. Um, I, I do have another Black Mountain Honey hat to give away today though as well, and I will I'll link, I'll link this up now. It's a great segue into it. So there we go. Competition to win a Black Mountain Honey hat this week is— I've just posted the link on the comments there. So the, the link is How to Start Beekeeping. You need to post the video on social media and you need to tag me in it, and I'll pick a winner. But check this out, how organized am I here, Griff? So episode 31, we had 2, uh, 2 competitions. We had a hat and a frame holder. And I think you can just see it there. So the winners are from episode 31, Damian Parsons won the hat and Edward Heathcote won the frame holder. So if you drop me an email, blackmountainhoney@gmail.com, I'll send you your free gifts. Uh, but yeah, really easy to enter that one. You just gotta post the link on social media, tag me in it, and I'll pick a winner next week. Um, so we— you like to answer a few questions? Hang on for a little bit, Griff, is that all right?

Yeah, yeah, carry on, let's go.

Okay, cool. I'm going to jump down to some— there was a question on here before. Oh, here we go. So a question from Peter, he's a channel member, says, hi Lawrence, but we'll target it at Griff. With all this lousy weather, are you having to give additional feed to your colonies?

Yeah, I mean, I've had to feed not a huge amount of colonies this winter, but it's a job that I've had to keep on top of. The bees that I took over up Cardigan Way, they didn't fill up on the balsam Or they didn't fill up as heavy at the end of summer as I would have liked to. So they've been having a fair bit of fun then. My home bees, the bees that I've been looking after for years, they're okay. They're not getting much feed. I do keep on top of the nucs. I like the nucs to have more feed than what they need, just because, you know, I'm protecting the asset, put it like that. No, I don't want them to starve. I sleep much better at night knowing that they've got more feed than what they need.

And what are you feeding them? What are you feeding them this time of year, your nucs?

Fondant, just dropping fondant in the feeder. And, you know, if they don't eat it, fine, but if they are eating it, I'll make sure I keep that topped up.

You keep yours in Paynes? Are yours in Paynes boxes?

Paynes, BS, and Maisemore. Mainly Paynes, very closely followed by BS and Maisemore.

So with the Paynes, you put the fondant in the feeder, is that what you're saying?

In the feeder, I just cut the fondant. If you feed like a 1 kilo fondant bag, it just fits down there, drop 2 in there, and just cut the top off. Or if you're putting baker's fondant in, you just cut thin slices, you know, tap it thin, and just drop it in.

I've done it like that, and like with the panes ones, there's not really any other way to do it other than kind of making an eke and cutting a hole in the crown board. Yeah, I've done it a couple of times where it goes a bit sticky.

Yeah, but you've got to sometimes sprinkle grass on it as well so the bees don't go down and drown once that gets the moisture.

I thought what you said before about, you know, if you get like a pouch of it like that, one of the, the kind of proprietary pouches, and cutting it in half so only a little bit of it's open, that's, that's a nice idea. I hadn't thought of doing it like that, and it stops the stickiness and the mess, doesn't it?

It does, and you can get the bag out easy then after.

Yeah, we're, we're feeding— so Richard, on some of the ones kind of where he lives, he's already started feeding syrup, and he's, he's had some of them where they like, they've gone dangerously light and he's given them a full Payne's feeder of 2:1, or like, it's like an invert, and they've cleared it out.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it has been really mild. No, syrup is always the best feed, you know, as long as they, as long as they can take it. Syrup is better than fondant all day long. But once—

You, you sell loads of fondants, don't you? So go on, plug some of your fondants in terms of like what What would be the best one that you would choose that you would sell?

So I wouldn't say which one's best. We sell a really good quality one made in Italy. We're the sole agent for that, called Lapid. That's in a nice hard plastic tray, so it's really easy to feed proper size hives with that. You just cut the top off, invert it, it's never going to collapse on itself. So that's really good. And I think they use high quality beet sugar on that feed as well, so it's top quality. Uh, and I suppose the, the budget range of beef feed we sell then is baker's fondant. We sell an awful lot, uh, amount of baker's fondant. It's, it's by far the cheapest. A lot more work involved, you know, you gotta either cut it up in the bags or, you know, use the blue packaging wisely that it surrounds. There's a bit more work cutting it, it's a bit hard, you know, it gets sticky. It's not like cutting a loaf of bread. The cutting fondant is hard, especially if you've cut it out on site. But, you know, you will save a fair bit of money using baker's fondant. But yeah, if anybody wants feed, we sell a huge range of feed and We're with the cheapest, if not in the UK.

It's great that you sell the Baker's Fondant as well because I really do like the Baker's Fondant. It's difficult to get it, and I, I have seen your prices and they are very competitive prices as well, especially once you factor in delivery, which is generally—

Yeah, well, we do a discount on bulk as well. If anybody wants like half a pound or something, we can do a discount on that on, on any of the brands.

Excellent. I just, I just got to chuck that up because, because JK Photography is, is incredibly kind every single time. A £20 Super Sticker, thank you, Jay. Really, really appreciate that.

Wow.

Um, right, I'll jump back up to the top then because there were some other good questions on here in terms of like, how do you prep? Well, there's loads of comments that have come in today, right? Let me get back up to the top. How do you prep for kind of swarming season? So let me just get the question up. Um, oh, I can't find it now. Basically, I'll find it. What do you do for— what do you do to stop your bees swarming, and at what point in the year do you do it?

Well, the first thing I do is give them enough space. So instead of going around and just putting one super on, throw 2 on, throw 2 on early in spring, give them space. And when you go around again and some of these hives, they are full of bees, maybe, maybe take some frames of bees out, make a split, you know, drop a queen in or something. Because if, if you don't do that at that stage, they're gonna go There's nothing worse really than bees that are too strong too early in the year because they're going to peak way before the flow starts. So you would try and do that. Now, I'm not one of these guys that does 7-day inspections or anything, you know. David Wainwright has influenced me hugely in the way I manage my bees.

But yeah, how many days do you do? 10 days? 14?

I might go 2 weeks, I might go 3 weeks, depend— depending on, on, on, uh, what they're looking like. You know, you gotta look, you gotta look at the hive and think, right, what's, what's gonna happen here in the next few weeks? And if you go, well, this— they're very likely they're gonna swarm, then you'll maybe do something about it. You know, you can clip the queen's wing, so if the queen tries to go, she's not there next time you come around, but it's full of queen cells. Well, it doesn't matter what age the queen cell is, cut them all out, leave one. You would have had to do that if you made an artificial swarm anyway.

Yeah.

And the problem with— if by doing too many artificial swarms is you end up with loads of nucs with old queens in there, and then the first thing they're going to do in spring is pull a quick one and swarm on you again. So I spent all my beekeeping time Making making nukes, nice queens, young queens. I make a lot of nukes, and I'm moving them across. So I'm not trying to fix problem hives or something swarmed to death, and it's not going to do it. Don't spend no time on it. You know, put some put something decent there. You know, and that's that's the way that's the way I've changed my plan. And you know, you can keep a lot more bees like that as well. And I'm not saying it's the it's the right way. It's the best way. It's just a way. of doing it. It suits me.

Yeah, I think I agree with all of that. And all I would add is, like, the advice that I'll give to people is just take out— everyone knows I love a Demerara, but if you don't want to go down the Demerara route, take out an early season split, take out the queen and make up a little nuc. And like you say, you don't— you can't continually do that, but if you've only got a few colonies, I'd say that's the best way of doing it. But the response that I generally get from people is, I want to kind of maximize the amount of honey that I get. And I say, well, let's expand further on that scenario then, which is if you push that colony as much as you can and don't take a split and they swarm, you're not really going to get hardly any honey, if any honey at all. Whereas if you get them through that swarmy period, get them past the solstice and have a massive colony still there, that's when you make your honey, isn't it? It's that late summer when you've got the bees there and then the nectar flow lands. Um, swarmy bees in chimneys don't make any honey for you, they just kind of sort themselves out. But that would be, yeah, what I would add on to that. Next question I've got in terms of like upgrading nucs into full hives. So Folly's Bee says, I have a nuc that has bees across all frames and has an egg-laying queen at the moment. When is the best time to move them to a full hive?

Well, it's the second that the spring actually comes in, really. You don't want to be doing it now when it's going back to freezing cold and it's raining and it's cold. You know, there's there's no need to do it now. It's basically once it starts becoming warm, you're getting you know good week here and there, good couple of days after each other. The sun is out, the bees are out, the bees are flying. It's it's that kind of time you want to you want to do it. It's it's hard to say when because every year is different. You know, sometimes you could do it in March. Sometimes you've got to wait till end of April. You know, sometimes if it's really bad, you've got to wait till start of May. It's purely on the weather, but, you know, I suppose the trick is when you see other beekeepers online going through their bees and, you know, looking and seeing their brood pattern, chances are maybe you should be doing it as well.

Yeah, the risk of not transferring them early is that they swarm, and I would say you kind of look out the window and you think there's no way the bees are swarming yet. Like, there's no drone brood in any colony, so it'd be such a foolish colony to go out and swarm. Like, they're definitely not going to do that. I would say I've never in my life had a colony swarm in March, but I've probably seen like one or two across the whole UK with people saying that in March. And then when you get into April, like, you can get the odd colony swarming. You'll get more colonies swarming, especially towards like the back end of April. But definitely, like, it— I'd be sitting on my hands for the whole of March, just not doing anything, just thinking they're not going to swarm, they're not going to swarm, not doing any damage as long as they've got food. Just get them through until April. Next question from Marcus Walker says, Laurence, Griff, this year I have 2 supers with wire-free frames so I can cut out the comb. This is his first year doing this. Do I treat the wire-free supers any different? Any tips for doing comb? So we don't do much cut comb, so I'll hand this one over to you, Griff.

Yeah, so I mean, I don't treat the frames different. When I do cut comb, I tend to do them in manly frames, or if you haven't got manly frames, put the castellators in so that they've got a bigger gap Now, what some people do, if you're really keen, you have the frames on SN4 cell spacing, keep them tight when they're on the foundation stage. Then once the bees draw them out, then move them on to castellations. Now, I don't do that; that takes too much time. But the bees will draw those frames out much, much better because sometimes when you put them on castellations and you don't get a good flow straight away, they can put burr comb in between the frames. But you want your frames to be thick, because if your frames are not thick and you're going to cut the cut comb, they're not going to weigh 8 ounces. So then you're going to put a little bit of honey on top to bring the weight up. And I know people don't really like people doing that because, you know, it's got to be cut comb. But people do do that, and it is okay. People are buying honey, the cut comb is there. But ideally, if your frames are thick, like a Manley or, you know, uh, on the cast litters, and that is drawn perfectly and full, when you cut that and put it in the container, weigh it, that's going to be up to 8. So, or if you do what I do, I've changed my labels from 8 oz cut comb, I've moved it to 6. Now I still try and put 8 oz in there, but if it's 7.5, it doesn't matter because you're saying 6. So that's, that's a safe way of making sure you've got all your cut comb is legit, because if your label says 8 oz, you better make sure that it's 8 oz.

So that is true, Trading Standards are well on that, aren't they? If you're like 1 or 2% under consistently, or even just kind of like as an anomaly, they'll pick it up. But if you're 10, 15% over, they don't really care too much, do they?

And yeah, the thing is, nobody's ever gonna complain if you're gonna give them more than what they paid for. But if you give them less than what they pay for, people don't like that.

No, it's true. I'm not going to add anything on there because— okay, go on. So go on, Griff.

Most of my cut combs, when I move on, I paint them a different colour so you don't spin them out by accident as well, because your cut comb is worth basically double what your runny honey is worth.

Next question, this is a great one because Griff does not sit on the fence on this. I remember at the last— not the last beekeeping show, but the one before when somebody raised their hand in the audience and said, oh, uh, talking about, oh, we don't treat our bees, and Griff ripped them to shreds. And I was thinking, oh wow, I sat on the fence. Griff did not sit on the fence. But here we go, another question on treating and monitoring for varroa. So Liam G says, hi guys, a friend of mine said I should be alcohol washing my bees to check for varroa. I'm not keen. Would you recommend it, and should I be treating the girls again now or soon? What do you think?

So I mean, I don't bother, I just treat regardless. I mean, the end of summer comes, I know there's varroa there, I don't need to waste time and get the alcohol shaker out and check. Now, if you are a queen breeder and you are looking for a trait in honeybees to be varroa resistant or be more varroa resistant than the ordinary bee, then that is a good thing to do because that's the kind of data you want to pick up on. If you're just a beekeeper, bee farmer, you're producing honey, you're not selecting queens for breeding for varroa resistance, I mean, you're wasting time in doing it because I can guarantee you there's varroa there, and you definitely don't want that varroa being in your hives in the winter. Now, the bees that I took over Uh, last year, unfortunately, uh, the guy was losing his health and he didn't treat his bees for varroa that winter. Well, when I went around the bees in the spring, the varroa levels there was insane, levels that I have not seen probably since the early days of me keeping bees. And that shows if you let— because the varroa levels would be high at the end, at the end of summer, you know, that's, that's their life cycle. If you let them go in the winter on a high level, your bees are gonna be— they probably won't die in the first year, but they're gonna come into spring looking terrible. And if, you know, within this game to look after bees and make money and produce honey, if, if you don't take that serious, then, you know, you're gonna pay the price. And what will eventually happen is, because I had lots of people moaning me before, my bees are varroa resistant, what's gonna happen is you wait 2 or 3 years All your bees are going to be dead.

This is the problem with varroa resistance and treatment-free, which is people, they'll buy a nuc or get some bees and they don't treat that year, and then they get them through to the next year and they say, well, I didn't treat and my bees are great, like I've got bees and there's honey there, so I'm a treatment-free beekeeper now. And then they go through another year and they don't treat and they get the bees through and they think this is right, like treatment-free is the way forward. And it's the 3rd or 4th year, isn't it, that gets them? That's when your bees die. It's not in year 1, it's not in year 2.

Yeah, well, I was talking to a good friend of mine. I won't mention his name because I haven't had his permission to say this story, but he had an apiary. This guy's got lots of bees, and he had a few apiaries, I think about 50, 60 hives in this area, and he'd just done oxalic trickle for 2 years, and he thought, well, these bees are pretty much, you know, treatment-free. Um, you know, we're not going to treat this year. But what he noticed was every year his bees were getting nastier and nastier and nastier. And then on that 3rd year, or it was the 4th year, something like, he had 80% losses one winter.

Wow.

Catastrophic losses. And what he put it down to was the, the Varroa load in the bees was just too high. The level of viruses and everything goes up with the level of varroa. The bees were were not comfortable because they had all this varroa on them, which made them nastier. Before you know it, you have this massive loss. When when people say, I think this year has been a bad year for for some people losing bees, but most most these bees, especially the guys that get massive losses, not always because there's other things, there's there's other reasons why losses can happen is. But if, you know, if a beginner loses high levels of bees, you know, the high possibility is, you know, you didn't treat the bees good enough. And, you know, that's not— well, like, you made a great point there. It doesn't happen in the first year. It may not happen in the second year. But then once you have a bit of, like we say, a bit of hoyle, you know, a bit of pleasure in beekeeping, and you think things are going right, bang, lose half your bees or, you know, all your bees, and, you know, you've got to start all over again.

You know, you've seen, you've seen what it's like to open up a colony and have them infested with varroa. I've seen it, I've seen it as well. There's no way I'd— there's no way I'd let my bees have that kind of inflicted upon them. Like, it is horrific. And I think the example that you used before, you wouldn't do that to your dog, would you? You wouldn't do it to your sheep, you wouldn't do it to your cows. And if you did, you'd have DEFRA running all over you, wouldn't you, saying that is completely like—

Oh, they'd shut your farm down because You can see a cow suffering, losing weight, losing hair. You can't see that with the bee. No. You know, most, most people can't even see the varroa mites on them. You know, you gotta have good eyes, you know, maybe young, young eyes, or, you know, glasses, or, or microscopes, whatever. But the varroa is there. They, they will kill your bees. And before they kill your bees, they will devastate your honey crop first. and then you lose your bees. So, you know, if you're gonna— if you want to keep bees to make money and produce a crop, you definitely don't want varroa on the bees.

So you don't do alcohol wash then? And I'm the same, I definitely don't do alcohol wash. So what's your treatment regime then? And would you ever do spring treatment?

I have been over-reliant on Apivar, like most bee farmers, because that works amazing. Now this year I am going to take a year off Apivar, not for the nucs. The nucs will keep getting Apivar because they're new queens, a new foundation, everything's new. But the other hives, they're probably going to have to get something else, whether I go to try Apistan again or will I go to Apiguard. The problem with Apiguard is the honey's got to come off earlier than what I want to. But the truth is, for you know bulk honey producing or anybody producing honey by the ton, Apivar is really the only good option out there. Now if you're a hobbyist, there's loads of good options there. Apiguard is really good. You know you could you can vape. I you know I find vaping a lot of work as well. You know what if it was one vape and it did the job easy, I'd do it a lot more. But it's not. You got to go back. You know. every week for 3 weeks and whatever. I mean, my bees are stretched over 3 counties, it's not so easy to do, you know. But if, if your bees are at the back of the garden, there's loads of good things you can do. And I, and I get people not wanting to use Apivar, it's not an organic treatment. Well, Apiguard is, it's a natural thymol-based, works really well, especially if you do it in good weather. You can do that with a vape or a trickle in the winter. That works well. You know, it's— I don't like telling people what to do. You know, I tell people what I do. You know, people have got to look at these products and make their own mind, talk to different people. Just because I do something doesn't mean it's the right way, the wrong way, or the way you should be doing it. It's just a way. I know historically beekeeping's been full of people saying this is the only way to do it. where it's not. You know, there's loads of ways of doing it, and then, you know, the more beekeepers you meet, the more bee farmers you meet, that really broadens your horizons. And, you know, seeing, well, actually, you know, I might try this, that guy's doing that, I might give that a go, and it might work really good for you, it might work terrible, but at least you've tried it.

We love that here, Griff. Try new things, don't kind of like put anything down before you've given it a go. I would say like my regime is, yep, I use Apivar, use Apivar earlier than most people, kind of go in like mid-August is generally when I go in, and then I'll do a single blast of apimyoxal like late November, which for me is roughly when we get like a broodless period, but I just use one blast of that. And I would say as long as you've done a decent treatment the year before, there should be no reason to treat in the spring. And it's only when, as the brood increases in the colony, the number of varroa increase like threefold, basically get like 3 or 4 mites per capped brood, and then when the number of the bees die off kind of towards the back end of the year when the brood contracts, the varroa remain. And that's the time, you know, it's the August, September when you go in there and you're like, wow, they are everywhere. And the equivalent— I read this the other day— basically, if, if like, if the human was a bee, the varroa would be the size of a rabbit. Can you imagine just having a rabbit sitting on your neck kind of like gnawing away at you? It'd be very nice. So that's, that's the treatment that I would go for there. Uh, Griff is offline, so I will carry on. We'll go freestyle. He's probably having some connection problems. Uh, next question from Peter says, if I catch a swarm in a bait hive up a tree in my apiary area, can I move it to a hive without taking it to an apiary first? I don't have one. So you know me, like, I've changed completely, done a, a full 180 on this, and my answer would be no, under no circumstances. If you go out and catch a swarm, should you take it into your apiary? However, If I'm reading that question right, if you've got like a colony of bees in your apiary, so like you know that a swarm has come from your beehive, then I would say you can safely just put it into a beehive and then you don't even need to put it back anywhere. They'll reorientate back exactly where they are, kind of on the spot. But I just, I would recommend to everyone have a quarantine apiary. And even if you're not going to have a quarantine apiary, having a number of apiaries really does make help making splits. a lot easier throughout the season. So while Griff is coming back online, I'll answer a couple of these. Harry, I've seen that you've done a few of these. So he's saying, if you bought 10 queens, how would they be sent? We send them in like a little ventilated box, so they don't come in the card, they come in like a ventilated box. And then the next question from Harry was, if you wanted to make nucs, uh, in mid-April with mated queens, how would you go about this successfully? So I'd go back— we've lost Griff completely, he's gone. Hopefully we'll be back. I would go back to the suggestion, which is having a separate apiary there makes this so much easier. So I would do mid-April. You can do this really, really easily. Nice small nucs, one frame of brood, one frame of stores, good shake of bees. If you're gonna go— if you're gonna like shake more bees in than you think, take that to a new site and then you can just open up the disc, let the bees reorientate, and because you've taken it to a new site, you can— to the nuc will stay in that nuc. Make sure you put enough bees in there though. So it's one frame of capped brood, Best frame of cat brood that you've got, one frame of stores, loads of bees. Take it to a new site. Leave it for eight days. After eight days, take down all of the emergency queen cells. Once you've taken down the queen cells, add the queens in. Twenty-four hours later, pop the tabs and then just leave them. Griff Griff is trying to log back in, but it's fine because we'll just do some Q and A while he's not here anyway. That's cool. I think we did quite well with the rural Welsh. broadband up until that point, so I'm quite happy with that. But that's the way I would go, and at that point of the year, Harry, you've not got to worry about wasps, you've not got to worry about robbing. I would feed at that point as well. I'd feed them with 1:1 sugar syrup, and again, that's another benefit of taking it to a new site. If you try and do that all in the same apiary, all that happens is they just start robbing each other and they start going into whatever hives they want to go into, and you just end up with, you end up with like one nuc with like 6 frames of bees in it and one nuc but just it's empty, but you've lost the frame of brood and they've robbed the frame of stores. So it really is important to go and do that on like a separate site. I ran double brood boxes last season and we'll do the same this year. When, from your experience, should I add the second? Also, when should you put any supers on? Um, so I, I'm a real big fan of double brood boxes, but I, I do them slightly differently, which is I don't— unless I'm specifically looking to split that colony up and make nucs I don't like— if I overwintered on a single brood box, um, like Griff's lost connection. I don't think he's coming back. It's fine, it's fine. He's probably, probably had enough anyway. Too many questions, didn't want to sit on the fence anymore. He's— I'm only joking. He's saying that he's trying to reboot and he's going to come back on in a sec. Um, so, so what I do is if I overwinter on a single brood box, I will take that into the season as a single brood box, and I'll kind of build them up, and then I won't put another brood box on first. I'll go straight with the queen excluder and then put my supers on, and then I'll try and kind of like get a spring crop. So take it through all the way through April, and then maybe at the point, maybe middle of May, that's probably when I would go to try and put another brood box on there, just at the point, maybe a couple of weeks before I'm thinking about taking the honey supers off. And then the huge benefit of doing that is that when you say you, say you put them on right Start again from the beginning. Single brood box coming out of winter, and then 1st of April, let's say, queen excluder and 2 supers on. And then I'll just keep on putting the supers on until, say, towards the back end of May, and hopefully all my honey supers are nice and full. And then maybe a week before you're looking to take off your spring crop, so back end of May, I'll under— I'll put a brood box underneath. So we've got 2 brood boxes at this point. And then I'll give it another week or so, and then I'll take my honey crop off. Now the huge benefit of doing that way is what it means that you can do is when you take your honey crop off, you can put your feeders back on and you can feed into the brood box. So you're not having to feed through any supers, not risking the bees starving through the June gap. But what you're also doing by feeding at that food, so then if you get them through past the middle of June, past the summer solstice, and they've not swarmed, then you've just got like bumper, bumper honey crops going into the late summer season. It works really, really well, just give that one a go. Jurassic Bee says, what are the biggest challenges or opportunities that you think bee farmers and beekeepers will face over the next 5 years? Here you go, Griff's back.

I'm back, sorry, sorry, the internet totally dropped on me, I had to turn the box on and off again.

That's fine, we seamlessly just answered loads of questions in the meantime, so you've come back for a perfect question here from Jurassic Bees, which is, what are the biggest challenges or opportunities that you think bee farmers and beekeepers will face over the next 5 years? I'll put that straight to Griff.

Well, the biggest opportunity is if the country of origin label rule comes in, then that's going to open up a much bigger market for The homegrown beekeepers are selling the honey, because when you go to supermarket, it's going to say China, or it's going to say Brazil, or it's going to say India on the jar. People people are going to realize where where the honey comes in. Now I know we're going through a hard patch at the minute selling honey, and it's not shifting as quick. But this this isn't new. This happens with any kind of food commodity. Happens with milk. Milk is down now. Two or three years ago, it was it was up. We're just going through it for the first time as beekeepers. This is the first time I've experienced it, but you know, it goes to show that you've got to find your own market to sell honey into as well. You can't rely on other people to sell your honey for you, because if they have trouble, then you've got problems directly off the back of it. So you know, there's going to be huge opportunities there to sell British honey. It's just there's a tough patch now and things will get easier. We just hope that the rule comes in of, you know, country of origin and people lose the blend status. Opportunity over the next 5 years, I mean, well, the population's increasing in the UK all the time. People are saying that in the news, that I think we're going to go 70 million by next year and in 5 years' time we're going to be 75 million. Well, you know, that's five million extra people that may want to buy British honey as well. So you know, the more people that are here, the easier it should be to sell products. So you know, never be disheartened when the industry is a little bit hard. You know, there's there's light there at the end of the tunnel. People you know, people make loads of money selling bottled water, and that's free out of the tap. So you know, if they if they can do it, I mean, we we can do it with honey.

It's true. And then go on then, what do you think biggest challenges?

The biggest challenge, well, the one that's going to be in the next 2 years is going to be Asian hornet. Um, I don't, I don't think small hive beetle will ever get here, and if they did, they'd probably all die in the, in the wet winter, uh, especially the wet clay of Wales.

Um, Asian hornet, no, I'm, I'm really worried about Asian hornets.

Asian hornet is, is, is, is the, the biggest challenge really. And it's going to affect the smaller beekeeper more than it's going to affect the big beekeeper. If you've got one hive in a garden and there's a nest by you, those Asian hornets can eat all your bees. But if you've got, you know, 15 hives there, there may be enough bees to feed the Asian hornets and still have honey coming in. But, you know, I don't know. I hope they don't come in. It's looking likely that they are. The government is a bit quiet on it at the minute. They're not allowed to say anything. Um, which makes me think things are bad. Um, you know, if things were good, they'd say. Uh, normally when there's a little bit of secrecy, you know, things not that good. Um, but yeah, you guys over in England, uh, especially down on the Far East, you guys are gonna have it first. And, um, you know, maybe a few years before me and Lawrence gets it in Wales. Um, you know, where it would affect me is nuke guards. you know, 6-frame bees, you know, they're gonna do some damage pretty quick. I know my friend, you know, well, he had a really, really hard time 2 years ago. I mean, you know, I don't want to be going through that. So I am worried about Asian hornet, not terribly for next year. I mean, this year we're going to see what the extent of the damage is, but certainly I'm aware of it.

But I think that the two of them there are so closely intertwined. So where you have challenges, you have opportunities. And where you have people's nuc yards being wiped out by Asian hornets, the demand for nucs will go up. The price of nucs will go up in a similar way to if people's bee farming operations are obliterated and they can't pollinate the crops or produce as much honey, pollination contracts will go up considerably and the price of honey will go up as well. So I think these things always kind of reach like an equilibrium, don't they, in that there'll be challenges and then it's the way that we adapt, but it'll bring the opportunities along with it.

Yeah, well, that's true because I spent the day at— I don't know if you've heard of Runder Hills. They're one of the biggest water bottlers in Wales, the old Runder Hills. And, you know, Brexit affected— well, Brexit didn't really affect him because, you know, he produces water in Wales. But what is going to affect him is this new rule on recycling bottles, and you've got to pay— I think the producer's got to pay 10 pence tax on the bottle, and then if that bottle gets recycled, you get the 10 pence back. Well, he sells a bottle of water for 10 pence, you know, but he sells millions and millions and millions of them. That's how they make money. That's when you go to the supermarket and you buy a bottle of water for £1.10, the, the guy made that bottle got 10 pence. So, and he said, you know, well, I'm looking at losing 100% of the turnover on this recycling tax. But then he said, whenever things are hard in the marketplace, there's problems, that's when the biggest opportunities are, because a lot of people go, you know what, forget this, I'm out.

Yeah.

And then if you can sit it out through the hard times, that's when you become successful. Easy years come after the hardest years, so never give up when things are hard because the opportunity is literally just around the corner.

Yeah, you've got to double down, and that's certainly something you've done. The next question here, which is doubling down: Griff, did you have much uptake on the job you were advertising? So tell us about the job you were advertising.

Yes, we were advertising for a beekeeping apprentice. You know, I've got way too many bees now for what I can do myself, so we needed more help. And glad to say we've got a guy, Andy, starting with us middle of this month, so I'm sure we'll be putting that on YouTube and across our social media platforms. And yeah, he'll be a big help.

Excellent, it's good to hear. I just missed a question from Lee there, I'll jump back to that. So saying, can I ask if you put a Super at the bottom to overwinter, when is the best time to move it? So if you kind of nadired it and you've got it at the bottom, not something I ever like to do, but what do you think?

Yeah, well, I don't leave any bees with supers unless the bees are rammed at the end of summer and they just— there's just too many bees to fit in the brood box. But what I would do then is, is put the top, what, the top empty super on top of the bees and the queen excluder above that. No, I never put the super under the brood box. I know people, people do do that. It's not something that I do, but again, that's the kind of job you'd want to do on your first inspection in spring. You know, you want to take that box off, put it to the side, maybe on top of a roof that's upside down on the floor, shake all the bees out that into the brood box to make sure that there's— the queen isn't up there, put the queen excluder down and put that super back on top. I mean, I'm not a big fan of brood and a half or anything. But, you know, you can do brood and half. Like I keep saying, just because I do it doesn't mean it's right or wrong. It's just a way of doing it.

It's an interesting one though, because the reason that I don't like doing it, I don't like ever getting brood in the supers, is because of the way that the wax moth get inside the frames that have had the brood in them. Tell us about your horrific wax moth box that got taken out. That was—

Yeah, well, again, you know, too much workload for just me. um, took, took on another honey farm this year, so I had lots of kit to come back, lots of old brood frames that, you know, a bit too dark for my liking, I didn't want to use. So I bagged everything up and, uh, stored them like that. Well, unbeknownst to me, the wasps got in there, you know, made a couple of small holes, and I thought I fixed that problem, you know, sealed them up again, but obviously not. And then the wax moth came in. So when I got around to Melt them out one day, the whole bag was full of wax moth and there was no wax left. And, uh, it is a disgusting creature, but at the same time, we're lucky of wax moth because if a hive dies in the winter, a foul brood or whatever, the wax moth can do a good job of, you know, cleaning up the hive, I suppose. You know, that's nature's way of trying to fix disease.

Um, I'll ask you, I'll ask you a few more questions, Griff. I'm aware that you've got another— you've got another market to do tomorrow, so I don't want to keep you too late. But I really like that.

That's going to go there by itself tomorrow. So yeah, I actually dodged today as well.

So yeah. Oh, brilliant. Oh yes, I never get to do any of that. It's, uh, I don't— I don't do any markets anymore, you know. Don't go to them, full stop, because it's— you— it's a— it's a hard day out, isn't it, markets?

It is, it's a long day, it's a hard day, but you know, I suppose with us, you're growing a brand or whatever and you want to shift honey, and it's a good way to sell honey, you know.

It really is, like we get huge uptake when we do go, but like for me, like I'm still at work, I kind of work Monday to Friday.

Yeah, if you've got a full-time job, it doesn't work because you just lose the weekends doing it.

Yeah, you need some family time, don't you? I love this question here though, Follies Bees, Yeah, so both of you, if you only— if you knew one thing now when you started, which, which thing would that be? I'll jump in first. The, the thing that I wish I knew when I started was like clipping queen's wings was a good thing, because you hear loads of things about it saying, oh no, definitely don't do it, and you don't really understand the benefit. But since I've clipped my queen's wings, like, I can't remember the last time I've lost more than like 1% of my colonies in swarms. They just don't go. I basically retrieve them all. more, so don't lose any bees, which means you get loads more honey. What would yours be, Griff?

Yeah, that's a really good question. I mean, I was fortunate enough right from the start, I had a mentor right at the start, and, you know, I suppose I had an unfair advantage there, you know, where most people start off, they don't know anybody in beekeeping. I suppose going off that, one of the best things you can do is get a mentor. you know, is not necessarily a one-to-one mentor, but just, just someone that you, you get advice off. That, that it's a lot easier to learn off someone else's mistakes instead of you doing them the hard way. And I know both of us have done that in, in different parts of beekeeping. And, you know, it's one of those things you constantly learn. I suppose if I had my time back again, what I would tell myself is don't waste time trying to fix problem hives. Because they die on you and you get, you know, upset that they've died and you've lost this hive. Make splits, whether you've got 2 hives or 5 hives or 1. You should be making nucs every year as replacement stocks. Now, if I had done that at the start of my beekeeping career, I would have had— I would have reached where I am now a lot faster than what it took me. And, you know, that, that's one thing, if I had my time back again, I'd I have a lot of poly nucs, and I buy queens in, and I just make really good nucs. Do that at the start, and do it whether you want to increase or not, because you're going to lose bees in the winter. And when you've got, you know, a store of nucs to take over, sell the excess if you don't need them. That's, that's what I would say. And if I wish— if I were to start over again, that's That's the advice I would give.

It's really good advice. Um, your hat won by a mile there. Like everyone said, Griff's hat. So the thing is though, yeah, but I'm just going to completely trump you off now here because that hat there, it cost £25. That's how much it cost for me to get them here, £25. I think people further down are complaining like that my hat's like £10 more expensive as well. But get this, I'm not selling any more hats. I'm not buying any more. So I've got about 20 of these, and by the time I've given them all away, that's it. So if you get one of these hats, like I said, it's limited edition. They're never going to be made again.

Is this going to be 50 quid next year? Is it?

Well, you're not gonna be able to buy them. Yeah, so unless someone's like—

I might sell this for 50 quid on eBay next year.

I think it's definitely more likely to be a depreciating asset. But, uh, I'm— yeah, I'm not, I'm not in the hat market. I'm not in there anything that's not zero-rated market.

Because our accounting system just doesn't work. Yeah, well, that when I sell hats, it's plus VAT, and unfortunately, you know, you you you got you got to add it on.

Yeah, the ones the ones that I sold, I put the VAT on, but um but they're expensive. You know, they're like three. They're good hats, aren't they, Griff? Put this one on like the three MD on them.

It's like a sports material. It's like elasticated. There's a there's a there's a good stretch to it. Yeah, yeah, it's not, not as good as my Carhartt hat though, but, uh, you know, it's good.

I thought, you know what, this will be like 60/40. I can take 60/40 in favor of Griff, but it was, it was just Griff, Griff, Griff, Griff.

I was like, right, that's it, I'm not selling anyone anymore. Genuine. It's the genuine Carhartt. See, where's my badge?

There it is. It was so funny because it was so funny. I felt like saying to Griff, you're definitely, you're sponsored by Carhartt. what's going on here. And yeah, well, you are, aren't you?

I'll reveal, I'll reveal something now. I'm not sponsored. I've been wearing Carhartt for probably 4 years, and Carhartt didn't even know who I was. I genuinely wear these clothes because they don't shrink in the wash. They are— and Harrah-proof, she can't wreck them in the washing, so they, they stay their shape. Their t-shirts is super thick, they're warm, they can take a battering. They are literally the best work clothes I've ever worn. I like the marketing. They market to hardworking outdoor people, you know, like us, like farmers, beekeepers. That's their market audience. And they saw that I was wearing a lot of their clothes all the time, and I am now a brand ambassador. I don't get paid, but I do get some clothes for free. So, you know, I don't sell Carhartt, nothing. I'd be— I would be wearing this clothes if I wasn't a brand ambassador, because I, I've been wearing it. You go back through my YouTube, probably 4 years ago I've been wearing these clothes. And, uh, yeah, if Lawrence, you try, you try Carhartt. Bob Binney even wears Carhartt as well, you know. All the beekeepers in America wear Carhartt, you know. It is literally the best clothes I've ever— and I was a ranger for over 10 years, and they gave us, you know, cheapy made-in-China clothes that, you know, you had a hole in your crotch for half the year and hole in the armpit. I mean, it's just a relief to get, you know, buying clothes for myself now, you know, not through work. They, they're by far the best clothes I've worn.

I, I'm definitely a massive fan of paying like a decent amount of money for a decent thing, like whether that's kind of technology or clothes. Like, I don't mind paying the money as long as it's like good and it doesn't break And clothing's one of those, but I've never, I've never really worn them before. What it's hiding at the moment is an absolutely shocking haircut. Look at that. But it is, it's a very nice, it's like a very warm beanie. It's like good, good thick quality, isn't it?

Yeah, well, you know, it's like any beekeeper really. We sell a good product and we like to support a good product.

Yeah, it's nice that we're both wearing each other's, each other's hats though, isn't it? Like we're kind of in it together a little bit. Right, let me chuck another question up. So from Harry says, what are your plans for the season as a bee farmer? Honey, nucs, queens, etc. Like, what's your plan for this year?

Well, we're gonna continue to grow. I mean, I'd like to open up a few more sites again. I'd like to be around the 300 honey-producing hive number if I can be. I mean, we'd be floating around 230, 250, that kind of number. I say to people, you know, I've got 250 honey production highs, probably less now because of winter losses. But you know, that, that's the kind of figure we've been aiming to do. I mean, obviously, we ideally have around 200 nucs off the back end of that as well. And that's, that's basically my limit. You know, things go wrong all the time with that much number. But you know, the more bees you got, the more honey you got, whether things go right or wrong. It's just a numbers game. You know, it's a numbers game whether you're keeping cows or sheep. It's just a fact. The more stuff you've got, the more stuff you've got to sell. So hopefully we're going to be keeping the bees a lot better this year than what happened last year. You know, bit more on the ball. But yeah, not necessarily going to make more nucs to sell. I think I'm very wary of having a product like nucs to sell. If they don't sell, you're in trouble in the spring. You know, I definitely don't want an extra 200 hives to, to find hives for them, put them in, and supers to put them on. So, um, I'm very aware of, of that market. I mean, it still is good at the minute, you know, they are selling, but, you know, things can happen, and, uh, things happen when you least expect them as well. So, I mean, you know, there's lots of people entering the nuc market, so I'm very wary of that. Um, We're gonna continue buying queens in. I've got no plans on, on making my own queens. This, this definitely something I'm still gonna, uh, export, uh, for the business, or, you know, um, not, not do myself. So I'm gonna outsource that to, to other people to do everything.

And that's— you, you've realized that, haven't you? And like, I've realized that you just can't— it's nice, you want to do everything, but you just can't do it all if you're like a one-man band or a Two man band.

No, I mean, honey is is my number one goal when it comes to bee farming. I mean, I want a really good honey crop. Nukes come second on the on the honey front, and you know, that's basically what beekeeping. Obviously, my branch, my my business model, and we've got a beekeeping supply shop on the side. That pretty much runs without me. I mean, I'll have the nest set. uh, basically runs that. I get roped in from time to time, but, you know, once the bee season comes, I mean, I'm hardly here, you know, I'm on the bees.

But see, I would have thought for you that would have been the biggest growth area, do you know?

Like, it is compared to what it was last year.

Like, it's, it's go— it's going strength to strength, isn't it?

It is. That, that is growing faster than what the honey is. Um, and I, I suppose, you know, that's— that is, is an easier side of the business to scale. You know, you find manufacturers good with good products, you import it, promote it, and you sell it, and people like what they've bought, and then they hopefully they buy more or they recommend you to someone else.

Well, you back it up with good customer service, which I know that is—

Oh, 100%. If anything goes wrong, I've got an extractor coming back now which, which was sold and it wasn't quite right. Full money back, send it back, no messing. Um, you know, I'll take a hit on anything to keep the customer happy.

Reputation is everything, and I know you—

It's taken me, uh, well, you know, since 2010 keeping bees, you know, was that 13 years to build the reputation that I've got? And you can lose that in a week.

Yeah, easily.

Easy. So I mean, if it's gonna cost me money to put things right, that's what we do. And I'm sure you're the same, Lawrence, with Queens and Honey or whatever. If anything goes wrong, you know, we refunded a customer in Ireland about 1,500 quid because the candles arrived broken. DPD smashed the whole thing up. Sent all the money back, send the candles back. No, no messing. Now, sometimes— I saw that one.

That would— yeah, yeah.

And some people would not want to do that, but you got— it's something you got to do. know, I want to sell candles there next year, you know.

Yeah.

Breakages happen, things happen, and it happens to every single business out there. You could sell the best quality product, from time to time it breaks or it doesn't perform the way it's supposed to. People buy off people. And that's— this is why Amazon has got so many customers, because if you buy on Amazon and something goes wrong, they just refund you without even asking for proof.

No, before they even collect it. We, we had, um, we stopped sending— I know you don't sell nucs in correx, so I can say this here— we've stopped sending nucs in correx because of what happened last year. We had 12 nucs die on one consignment. Royal Mail just must have left them in the sun somewhere and they got toasted. And I felt so bad because you think like, that's, that's a lot of bees that have died there through someone's negligence. And obviously the customers opened it up and like just— And one of them had 8 nucs And it was all dead. So you like, what do you do? You replace them, don't you? Yeah, I mean, yeah, take the hit, and it's a massive hit and a very expensive hit, but it's not— there's no negotiation in there. There's no quibble. There's no, well, whose fault is that? It's like, nope, I take full responsibility for that. We'll send you out a new batch of 12 next week. And I spoke to some of the people at the beekeeping show who were kind of like impacted by that, and And they were like, it's great. Yeah, really, the customer service is everything. But you flip it on its head, like you say, if I just said to them, nope, not refunding you, they write you a review and you lose your reputation in a week and it's gone. And then no one buys.

100%. 100%.

I'll do a couple more questions, Griff. This is it. I like this question. What's the difference between a beekeeper and a bee farmer?

Well, before or if you had over 40 hives, you were a bee farmer. Now, based for me, and you know, this is my view, a bee farmer is someone who's got a business, or, you know, he's a sole trader, and they are keeping bees to make money, for profit, like any other business. If you're a farmer, you rear cows to sell to make money. Whether that's a full-time occupation or you do it part-time, you're still a farmer in in the in that aspect. And it's the same with with bee farming. Whether you know you Lawrence, you've got a full-time job. You're not a full-time bee farmer, but you're making a lot of money out of keeping bees. So you are a bee farmer. You sell a lot of nucs. Now, you don't have to sell honey to be a bee farmer. You can just sell queens, you can just sell nucs. It's the same in farming. You've got farmers out there that sell lambs for meat, you've got farmers out there that sell rams for breeding, you've got farmers out there that sell ewes for breeding. The 3 of them are farmers, it's just they've got a different business model of how they produce an income. Now that's what I class. And you know, I'm not talking, you know, cash in hand type of money. I mean, you know, real business. You've got an accountant doing your books, you're paying your tax, you know, you've got to be legit. You can't be a bee farmer and, you know, not declare the income. Then you're not really a bee farmer, you know. But if you're making money out of bees, and it can't be a few thousand pounds, I mean, you know, that's a hobby that, that makes a bit of money. I mean, you know, you've got to make some decent money, otherwise you're just a hobby bee farmer, like a hobby farmer. I mean, I'm not a proper farmer farmer. I mean, I'm a hobby farmer, you'd say. You know, I've got cows and sheep, but I could never live off that income. I do that as a hobby, which I enjoy, but the hobby pays for itself. So I'd never tell people I'm a farmer. I'm a bee farmer. The majority of my income comes from bees. So I don't know what, what you would say, uh, Laurence, but you know, that's my take on it.

Yeah, I, I think, I think you're spot on, commercial involvement. But I think the line, with, with a couple of exceptions, I would say if you're VAT registered, that's the line. Because there'd be no, no bee farmer in his right mind would not be VAT registered because it's—

But some, some I know are not.

I mean, yeah, but that's the thing, I know some that aren't as well, and I'm always like, Why are you not VAT registered?

Yeah, I mean, you're much— I know people have got to take the advice off an accountant, and this is not financial advice, but in any kind of farming business, if you're VAT registered, everything you buy in is plus VAT, so you get the VAT back, and everything you sell is zero-rated, so you don't add the VAT. It's 20% off your costs. You've got the accountants to pay and all the regulations and everything, so there's an extra cost to doing that. If you turn over enough money, it's worth it. If you turn over over £70,000, you've got no choice to go VAT. But, um, yeah, I, I miss— I would say you don't have to be VAT registered, but I would advise you talk to an accountant if you are making a lot of money out of beekeeping and you're not VAT registered.

Um, I'm gonna do, I'm gonna do one more comment and then one final question, Griff, because I'm aware you need to go to bed. So, yeah, Claire is my favorite person in the world, the most diplomatic person. Black Mountain honey hat, best for summer. Griff's one's best for winter. I could get on board with that.

Yeah, wait, wait, wait there. I gotta show you something. Is it behind the desk?

He's gonna, he's gonna crack out the Gwynny Griffith, uh, cap. Vented, and it's vented as well, isn't it? I can't, I just can't win it.

Here we go. Yeah, but wait, Claire, but wait till you see this.

Oh, here we go. Wait till you see this, Claire. I'm just gonna give up. I'm gonna take this hat. I'm gonna stick my— no, it's all good. You know what, if I had to vote, I'd vote for the— I'd vote for the Gwyneth Griffiths hat as well. Here we go.

Um, uh, people love hats maybe more than me.

It's a good— like, it's sponsored by Carhartt, this theme, right? We know you don't like to sit on the fence. Do you think British-bred queens are much better than imported ones?

Now that's a good question. Do I think they're better? Yeah, so I wouldn't necessarily say they're better. I like buying British-bred queens because I like supporting British bee farmers. No, I don't.

So let's, let's chuck, let's chuck the caveat in though. Yeah, what, where the British bred queens that you buy, what, where are the mothers from?

Yeah, probably, uh, imported Denmark.

Yeah, probably Denmark.

That's why I didn't want to say British bred are better. Uh, you've got a huge gene pool of really good breeders in Europe, so I mean If you were to really look at it technically, where are the best breeders? I mean, Danish Buckfast would probably be up there in the top 3 of anybody's list.

Definitely.

Um, but that's not to say you can't get really good queens in the UK. They're gonna cost a bit more, but honey in the UK costs a bit more. I mean, that, that's why I like, I like selling nucs and I like selling them with a British-bred queen. Um, I've been beekeeping a long time, I know lots of people that breed queens, so, you know, I support their businesses, uh, you know, by buying their queens. But I do buy imported queens as well. Uh, you know, when I start selling nucs, I mean, there'll be a— I'll be buying imported queens to, you know, fill the spaces up. So I'm not against the importation of queens at all, I just, I like buying British-bred queens as well. I think it's important that, you know, as UK-based beekeepers, we do support the guys that rear queens in the UK as well.

It's interesting that we both supply all of our nucs with British-bred queens, with every single one of our nucs, whether it's kind of overwintered or in the season, like they're British-bred queens, aren't they? So let me spin the question slightly different way then, not British-bred queens, but Like AMM queens, so like local mongrels or natives or near natives or British black bees or dark bees, whatever you want to call them. What's your view? I know you don't like to sit on the fence, so go on, you probably do have a view, and I know you stock one of these. So British black versus Buckfast.

Yeah, I may upset the boys in Bibba, but I've got loads of bees, right, that have never brought queens into their sights. And they're in the deepest, darkest parts of Wales. The bees are, you know, as black as this black mountain honey hat. And I sent bees off to get analysis before, and the best one— the sites that I've not brought nucs into, nothing— this, this was like 3, 4 years ago— the best one came back at something like 83% pure. And I realized then pure ones don't exist in the UK.

No.

You know, I'm in a rural part of Wales where commercial beak— you know, where I'm basically the only commercial guy in the area, and the, the best case was 80%. Some of them were down to like 60% pure, that they just made it with whatever's in the area. So I mean, that's as close as you're going to get. I mean, they're still Welsh Blacks, the majority, or even at 60%, they're more Welsh Black than what, what, what anything else. So, you know, they, they are the, the Welsh Blacks. But the caveat is you've got to put in locally adaptive. You can't control the, the lines. And I mean, I know it's a big debate. I don't want to upset the Bibba boys because they are doing a really good job in in the work they're doing, you know, and, uh, the breeding and what they're doing. Their message is true, it's a good one. Um, I don't know what the answer is. I mean, I don't think that there are any pure ones in Wales or England. North of Scotland might, might be the case. They may have ones there, 90-something-plus percent. Ireland, they may have it as well. Um, But you know, when I sent those bees off, and I said I sent it was for a company I wanted to buy honey from yet, but they they wanted honey from from black bees only. So I sent about seventy samples from about seventy different hives from from these sites to them, and the the best ones literally were eighty percent, and the majority was anything from sixty to seventy percent pure. And, you know, I thought— I just thought then, you know, there is no 100% pure. They look pure, but, you know, I can't remember what disease it was— Isle of Wight, Isle of Man disease, whatever that was. They brought all the bees in from Europe. What the scientist told me was once that line is in the bee, it will be there forever.

You can't go from a 90% pure bee to 100% 100% pure bee, and you definitely can't go from an 80% pure bee to 100% pure bee. Like, that's— you, you can, you can move upwards, you can become more pure, but you can never reach purity again. The thing with me is that I, like, I'll always try different things. Like, I tried an AMM queen a couple of years ago, and they weren't very good, um, and they had terrible chalk brood. And then the queen turned into a drone-laying queen after about 8 months, so it probably wasn't a very fair test. But then I, like, in where we are, the Beekeeping Association, really keen on black bees. Probably did my first 3 years with like Welsh blacks, and they just really stung me a lot, and I never got any honey from them. And I was really, really annoyed and thought, I'm going to try some Buckfast, and it just transformed the bees. Nice and calm, loads of honey, no more chalk brood. I just thought, what's not to like here? But apparently the color is what's not to like. And I do think it does come down a lot to color. that debate in that it's either dark or it's orange, and orange is bad and dark is good. But I've always said this, like, I'm more than happy to, to take on and try any other ones. And, you know, if people sent me some near-native AMMs and I tried them out and I could get like a good constant supply of the queens, then I'd use them, be absolutely happy to use them. But I've just, I've not experienced it personally through the bees that I've had.

Yeah, I mean, I mean Going back to the question of where the biggest opportunity is in beekeeping, well, if you set up an apiary in the north of Scotland and you had, you know, as pure, 80% plus pure, you know, black bees, and you were good at queen rearing, you would sell more queens than any British breeder of queens because the market is huge out there that want native bees. But people can't supply them because, you know, there's nobody there commercially that do it. Northumberland Honey do a nice dark queen, but, you know, they don't say it's, uh, AMM. But, you know, they sell a lot of the dark queens because, you know, people, hobbyists, they, they, they, they want those kinds of bees. And, you know, I'm not saying one is better than the other, it's just, you know, if you were to look at the majority of bee farmers out there, they tend to keep Buckfasts. And I suppose a lot of the hobbyists, they want like more of a native line, you know. My West Black Bees, you know, what I call West Black Bees, they don't produce as much honey as the Buckfast, but they winter very well. But the downside in, you know, you will get chalkbrood in almost all of them, you know. It's just the downside. There's pros and cons whichever way you go.

There certainly is, Griff. I'm gonna, I'm gonna draw it to a close there, but look at some of the comments we've got here. So, amazing show tonight, would be great to get more with both of you. And then, thanks guys, can these joint, joint chats happen more? So Griff, you're always welcome.

Well, I, I, this is like my 3rd or 4th time with, uh, on Black Mountain Honey. Well, you've changed the name, it used to be just No Nonsense, it's We Talk Bees now, is it?

Let's Talk Bees.

Yeah, is this now on a podcast as well?

It is now on a podcast as well. Like, Griff's plugging it.

I thought you were gearing up for that. That's a good idea.

Yeah, I just thought— do you know what it was? It was a guy called Angus, I think it was Angus, who said just turn this into a podcast. You basically press a button and then I can listen to it in the car. And he probably had to ask me like 3 or 4 times before I thought, okay, I'll press the button. And then I pressed it and that was it. That's all I did. And now it is a podcast. So I gave it a new name, and that's it. But you are, you are always welcome. Like people, you know, people really love your channel, love what you do, love your channel.

Visitor to the channel anyway. Say again? I am a regular visitor to the channel.

What to this channel? Yeah. Oh yeah. Well, are you like full time? Yeah. Yeah. You're always welcome on. But yeah, people would like it as a regular thing, and people ask for Richard to come on as well. But you know what we need to do, joint need to do, is we need to get Chris Manson on here because he's having none of it.

Like you said, Murray would be a good one as well because Murray would be brilliant. I've learned laws just off his Twitter, to be honest with you. He is very, very knowledgeable. But yeah, Chris Manson, you got more chance getting his dad Tony to come on.

But I love it, just, just chatting to people on here, answering some questions. It's really good fun. Like Anybody who wants to come on here and have a chat, I'm not— there's no prejudice. There's no, oh, you don't keep the right bees, or you don't treat for varroa, or you do. Absolutely anybody who wants to come on can come on and have a chat.

Yeah, it'd be worth getting someone from Bibbud on as well. Just, just, uh, you know, give them a platform, see, see what they've got to say.

And I'll be more— they would be more than welcome to come on and tell people about like the work that they do and why they think that's important. And I do, I think it's, I think it's a good job that they do, and I'd like to see them moving more, you know, into like artificial insemination and kind of trying to breed like a good close to near native bee that can be reproduced on like a commercial level so bee farmers could use it. I think that would be brilliant. But we will call it a day there, Griff. We've nearly gone on for 2 hours, but barring that small interlude in the middle. But thank you for your time, I really appreciate it. Thank you for your hat. Thank you for your final plug here. Thank you for the beekeeping calendar that you sent me. That is going up there. It's absolutely brilliant. basically every single month of the year with a lovely bee picture and then like basically all the things that you're supposed to do. So like whether it's like spring you should be doing stuff, or in the summer. Love that, that's absolutely brilliant. And then the final thing that I need to plug is Paul Horton's book Healthy Bees and Healthy Hives. That is a brilliant book. I've been reading, I'm about a quarter of the way through that. That is an absolute fountain of knowledge in that book there. I'm very glad that they signed my copy as well. But thank you, Griff, I really appreciate it. And like I said, you're