Black Mountain Honey: Let's Talk Bees with Laurence Edwards - Episode 63

Hello and welcome to another episode of Let's Talk Bees. I'm going to jump straight into it. I'm going to answer as many questions as I possibly can in the next hour. Bear in mind that I have filmed 36 videos for HiveQ. Ah, did not get that well. There we go, HiveQ. You can see it, that's how tired I am. I have filmed 36 videos of HiveQ already today, so my voice will go at some point, but I'll give it my very best shot to get through as many as I possibly can. So let's start it off. Sam Brister, channel member, says, can you use an untested breeder queen to graft from if you aren't selling and you just want some okay bees, for example gentle, and to produce an average amount of honey? Absolutely you can, yeah. If you buy a pure Buckfast queen and you just want them for you and you're going to graft out of it, that is going to give you the very best chance of getting something decent down at the F1 level. You can select from your own bees as well if you're just quite happy for, um, gradual improvement in your stock. So don't think you need to go out and buy an expensive breeder queen just to get, um, some offspring there. You can self-select, and depending on where you are and how isolated you are and what your neighbors do as well, you might have some success doing that. So I would give that a go as well. But definitely you could do what you said there. You can use an untested breeding queen to graft from her. Even the daughters that aren't that good that come off her, in terms of the ones that they mate with, some of them might be very, very good. And you might strike upon something exceptional as well, so give it a go. Richard Mallion, channel member, says, hi Lawrence, due to the position of the hives, I cannot inspect from behind. Would it be okay if I left the floor entrance alone but rotated the boxes 90 degrees so I can inspect from the side? Thanks. So that is the beauty of the national system, that it gives you 2 different ways to orientate the frames. So when the frames are running— I always get this wrong— when the frames are running perpendicular to the entrance So they intersect at 90 degrees, that is the cold way. And then if you turn it around 90 degrees and the frames run parallel to the entrance, then that is the warm way. I honestly think the bees do not care whichever way you have it round. And I just find— and I find that it's so funny, I'm so in the, the, the process of Hive Q still, which is if I fluff my lines, I have to stop and then refresh and then start again. And then that's not how it works with live streaming, you just have to get on with it. Um, So with this one here, you can just switch it around to suit the beekeeper and it works absolutely fine. So if I'm inspecting from behind, I like to have my bees the warm way, so frames parallel to the entrance, which means I could just go in like that, take them out, and I haven't got twist. And that's exactly what your question is talking about there. So yes, you can just rotate it 90 degrees and make the box, the National Square Box, work for you in whichever orientation is best. The bees really don't mind too much. Michael Baker, channel member, says, hi, Black Mountain honey buttfast queen introduced 2 weeks ago. Queen present and eggs seen, but also 2 charged cells on the face base of the comb. Is it normal for the bees to supersede, and what's the best plan? So you do see this quite a bit, especially when you're trying to requeen older— if there's more older bees in the colony, they're more likely to do it. But it's really down to the genetics of the bees. Anything mongrel, anything remotely dark, potentially can try and supersede a Buckfast queen. So all I say to people is, instead of going in and inspecting 7-day intervals when you're requeening these colonies, try and do it twice every 7 days, so once every 3 and a half days, or once every 3 or 4 days. And before those supersedure cells can be capped over, you need to take them down. If you keep on going in and taking them down before they're capped over, they will continue to build them, but as soon as the brood starts to emerge from the new queen, then they stop doing it literally instantly. So you just need to get it through for a few weeks while that first round of brood is laid, and then they'll stop doing it. It's one of the most annoying things. I've had it on colonies, a few colonies, where they're intent on superseding and they just do not give up until you get to that point where the brood starts to emerge, and then they turn into some of the very best queens I've ever had. Nothing wrong with the queens, um, it's just a case of the genetics of the receiving colony sometimes isn't compatible with the Buckfast, and they just don't want to accept them at all. Uh, Good evening. Good evening to you too, Steve. He also says hit the like button. Thank you, Steve. Uh, Channel member says, hi Lawrence, should we take off the super that has a couple of frames with some uncapped honey in and give them an empty brood and feed them? We recently did a split and the new queen is in a cage. So this is the advice that I give to a lot of people if you want an easy life at this point in the year, but also you're thinking about doing a split later on. When you take off your honey supers and you enter into the June gap, you potentially have a little bit of a window there where the bees aren't really going to do that much. They get grumpy as well because the flow's been switched off. So if you feed them at that point, um, it's good for the colony because they can continue to grow and expand. Um, but it also keeps them busy and keeps them out of trouble. Now, if you've got supers on, you obviously can't do that because you're not going to feed through the supers and contaminate your supers. But if you remove all of the supers and you're on a single brood, and then you add in a double brood at this point, feed through the June gap, get them to a point where they're filling that double brood, and then split them into 2, and then stop feeding and put supers on, that's a really nice system to go from one beehive into 2 and use the June gap as a little bit of a period to turbocharge your bees when normally colonies do go backwards in the June gap. Margaret says, evening from sunny but hot northern Spain. Hope everyone is well. Hope you are well too, Margaret. John Sylvester says, mash the likes up and subscribe, people. Cheers, John. You can really— I'm so sorry, everyone. I think I'm gonna have to change the date of either my filming or of the streams. I've only got so many words, I think, to say in a day, and you can hear it's properly going now. Uh, Mark Richards says, what's best to do with supers full of last year's ivy honey? So if the ivy honey is not uh, there's no kind of like tainting or treatment or chemical treatments in there, and it is just wax and ivy honey. What I would do is I would— oh, if it's completely set, you're probably gonna have to just melt down the frames. If it's not set, which I doubt it won't be— I think it will be set by now— um, I'll give you the answer for both. If it's not set, you can take it and put it in between brood frames and get the bees to move it. You have to do it quickly, or you have to do it within a cage somehow, because otherwise the queen will lay into it. But by putting it in between brood, you'll be amazed what they will actually move out and move back up to the supers. But you'll probably just get crystallization back in your supers again. What I would do with it, if I had a box of kind of set ivy honey now, I would put mine through the Happy Melter, which is just a big melter. I'd melt off the honey, use it as baker's honey. I'd reclaim all of the wax, clean up the frames, and I would start again. That would be my idea. Hey, my bees are putting a lot of honey in the brood box. What can I do about it? So when bees are putting honey in the brood box, it generally indicates one of a few different things. So the first one is there isn't enough space in the supers for the bees to put honey. So that's generally an easy one to fix, you just give them more space above. The other one, and I see this a lot, is people say, well, the supers are empty, like there's no bees— there's bees in them, but there's just no honey, and then they're just putting it all in the brood nest. And then I say, is there a queen in there? And they say, I'm not sure, I've not seen the queen, not really seen any eggs. As soon as the queen is gone and she hasn't got a brood nest, they will backfill with honey. Every single time. The only reason all of those frames do not have honey in them is because they contain an egg or pollen or a larva or a capped drone bee or whatever. They contain something. If they didn't contain anything, they would be full of something pretty quickly, and generally that is full of nectar. So when you have a problem like that where my bees are putting a lot of honey in the brood box, what can I do about it? I would assess, have you got a queen-right colony? Is the queen laying well? Have you got an expanding or at least maintaining brood nest? Or has something happened? The bees have swarmed. All of that brood has emerged. It's left a big void directly where the bees will come into the beehive, and they just filled it with nectar. I suspect that is the case. I think if you fix the queen right issue there, make sure that you've got a healthy laying queen with an expanding or at least maintaining brood nest, and give them space above, it will fix the problem for you. Steve's Honeybee says Black Mountain honey nucs are expanding so quickly it's hard to keep up with them. Oh, tell me about it. That is, that is exactly what we've been trying to do in April and May this year. Hats off to Richard because he is a machine, an absolute machine. Eat more honey. Excellent advice. Margaret says, has a suspected queenless colony, added cut section comb with eggs. One week later, no queen cells but 2 new cups on different frames with 1 egg each and 2 cells with single eggs. Another week later, many, many cells with single eggs and many cells with 4 to 5 eggs each. Didn't see the queen. Thoughts? Probably laying workers, I would say. Almost certainly going to be laying workers in there. Um, just, just the multiple eggs— where are they putting the multiple eggs? Are they at the bottom or are they kind of on the wall on the side? If they're not the full depth and there's multiple eggs, it is laying workers, I would say. Uh, Collectors Rich Honeybees also says, stack silver, gold, and honey better than fiat money. Uh, I couldn't agree more. Uh, Honeybee Keeper says, hey Lawrence. Channel member says, how do I close up an underfloor entrance for transport? Definitely going to draw that because this is one of the best things about the underfloor entrance. So let me get a pen. Have I got a pen? Well, that's a pen. Go back and go snap. So I'm going to give you the cross-section of an underfloor entrance here. So this is what an underfloor entrance looks like. Whoa, does not look like that. Uh, so where are we going here? So I am just drawing, I'm just drawing the underfloor entrance just so I can show you exactly how it works. So that's kind of how it, how it generally works there. Let me take the snap off. So the bees will come in there, fly through, and then go up into that entrance there. And it's that dimension which is 8 millimeters. So it is so easy to block up the underfloor entrance. And I, I've got loads of different, uh, floors with loads of different entrances on, and every single time this is the one that I want. So what you want to go and get is get some old foam. So you can get it from anywhere, anyone that's throwing away like a sofa, um, anything that has foam in. But you're looking for these big foam pillows, or, um, you know, you know the ones I'm talking about, the ones like on the sofa behind there. So if you just strip them down, you've got a big massive piece of foam inside, and you cut those foam— you cut that foam up into strips, and then all you do is you just get that foam and you just jam it in there like that. And as long as you've jammed it all the way across, kind of like from left to right, You can see how easy it is to seal that there because this foam, if I just jump off this one here, this foam here, you'll compress it down like that, but then you take it out of compression, it just goes boing. So it fills all of these voids up. So as soon as you put it in there, it just goes, fills everything up, and the bees can't get out. Brilliant. And then the added benefit is that if you soak it in water, this in water first, then when you're transporting your bees, you've just built in some amazing air conditioning as well, and you give them access to have a drink, which they could use if they need to cool themselves down. So it's a really, really good way. I love my, I love my underfloor entrances and I love how they, uh, how easy they are to move. Right, next question. Lynette says, good evening, seems like forever since the last live stream. Have a drink. Oh yeah, have a drink, definitely. I know it does seem like forever and I think back and I think about what we've done in the last 2 weeks is, is phenomenal. Um, I don't know if anyone else is a little bit exhausted by how intense the beekeeping season is so far, but I suspect that it's not gonna hold off at all and just continue. But I do think it's going to finish quite early, uh, which I'm looking forward to. So this, this seems like a shameless plug, it really is, but if you're thinking about getting queens this year and you're thinking about making up splits, do it sooner rather than later. We have a finite number of queens and we've already like about 20-25% up on where we were last year, but also way up on where we were against our orders. And Melitta Bees will just run out, they'll say we're now out of queens. Um, so once that happens, we're just gonna— we'll compress the season down. So I think kind of probably middle of August, back end of August, is going to be our last week of sending queens this year, um, and we will just have an early end to the year, which I'm very excited about, I have to say. Good evening from the Netherlands. Hello to you too, Roy. On Facebook says, hi, since dyeing my hair from brown to red, Thai bees won't leave me alone. I now need to suit up as constantly being stung. How weird is that? Maybe it is just the bees thinking, you know, you've got hair like mine now and they think you're a bear or something like that. Or it could be like a fragrance thing. It may it's done something and the hair smells different, and then the bees are reacting that way. But yeah, you have to get your bee suit on. The VSH Buckfast I got from you 6 weeks ago is doing really well, 6 full sides of brood and growing fast. Excellent to hear, very popular, the VSH Buckfast, and I have got a lot of them, really big orange queens as well, so very easy to find. Uh, we did that one there. Hi Lawrence, hope you're well. I managed to get my first ever harvest a couple of days ago, really pleased. Gone to double brood on my first colony and building up my other 2 nicely Single for now. Excellent, glad to hear that. I still—I do love your logo every time I look at it. I think that's an awesome logo. DeWet Steen from South Africa says, "Have you heard about Finbos honey?" I have not heard about Finbos honey, but I'm going to Google it after this and I will take a look. Kid Lane Honey says, "Received our two queens this morning as well. Thanks from Darren and Sam." My pleasure. Glad they arrived safely. Kieran says, "When are we going to see the Hive Q videos?" Well. The Hive Q videos are never going to be released on YouTube ever, unfortunately. It is being hosted on my own website, and we will release— we will launch Hive Q, uh, the first program being a 14-day beekeeper program taking you from a beginner beekeeper to a competent beekeeper in no less than 14 days. But it could be loads more than 14 days as well. You can tell it's been a very long day, but we will launch that in November, and we will have some very interesting launch offers available for that, but it will be a paid service. There is a queen and enough space, not too much, not swarmed, just a bit weak from the winter. Still from my question about honey in the brood chamber. So I think you answered your own question there, just a bit weak from the winter. If the colony is not big enough, they need to store their honey somewhere, and if the colony is only filling up the brood box, they're just going to fill that up first. So even if you've got space above, until the colony can make use of that space, it's not going to expand and actually go into it and fill it. I would say if they're weak, I'd look at the weakness and try and fix that first, um, and then that whole problem about them putting honey in the brood chamber will fix itself. What is a good number to run as a business, please? Oh, that is a very, very difficult question to answer. I don't think there's a straightforward answer to that because you could be running it as a side hustle, a hobby business, or a full-time business, or it could be one person running the business, or you could have 20 people working for you. I'm not one for just saying, right, let's be it, let's be a bee farmer and let's have 400 beehives and let's try and put honey in buckets or barrels. I think that's quite a hard job, where some people might look at that and say, that's exactly what I want to do. I don't want to have to deal with anyone. I just want to go out and manage the bees and put honey in buckets and sell buckets at the end of the year. So you need to work out like what's, what's best for you first. And then I think once you work that out, it will kind of give you an idea as to the amount of bees that you should keep. Martin Everson says, hey man, I've just been watching you and Just Alex for a few months now. Now I'm going to become a beekeeper, picking up on Monday. Thank you for all that you do and share. I'd love to visit and buy off you. Well, thank you, it's very kind of you to say so. Um, Just Alex is a legend. I mean, sending a couple of bits down for his latest YouTube video, one that has not been even filmed yet, I don't think. So that will be coming up on his next one. But I love watching all of his content, absolutely brilliant. Uh, people are always welcome to come and buy stuff off me, it's absolutely no issue whatsoever. You can order stuff on the website blackmountainhoney.co.uk, and we do offer collection in the spring as well. Uh, where are we going next? One, Holloworks Stores says, evening all from sunny Devon. Good evening to you too. Would you say the biggest contribution to the success of Black Mountain Honey is from having your YouTube channel? If not, what do you think is the biggest factor? Like, I think I'd have like nothing. There'd be nothing without the YouTube channel, which is a, which is a really strange one now because like Facebook has Massively overtaken YouTube. So we've got like nearly 70,000 subscribers on Facebook— on YouTube, sorry, 70,000 on YouTube. But Facebook's just gone up to like 107,000. Um, and Facebook, strangely enough, is pretty good for monetization as well. It didn't always used to be like that. Used to be YouTube was the place that you'd only ever earn any money, and you didn't earn anything on Facebook. But now Facebook is pretty good with the monetization over there as well. But Having an audience like you have on YouTube and Facebook is just invaluable for someone like me who's looking to, you know, sell queens and sell nucs and sell anything that I can sell really, any services that I can sell to beekeepers. Not like just plugging people's stuff for the sake of it, but it gives you, it just gives you a wider audience of people that you can potentially provide a service to. And without that, I'd still be working my other job, which I am still working. I still do 2 jobs, but I wouldn't have quit, or I would have quit, which one, where am I going with this? I think in the, in the next couple of years I'll definitely focus 100% on the beekeeping business. Let's just put it like that. But without YouTube, it would just be— yeah, it would be nothing. Sam Brister, channel member, says, where is the best place to buy a breeder queen from, and where is the cheapest place to get a breeder queen from? So I'm never answering those questions ever again, and you can understand why. I could get myself in a lot of trouble by answering questions like that. But the biggest risk for me, and the reason that we don't sell any sort of breeder queens at Black Mountain Honey is the risk of failure. So what happens if something goes wrong? If you pay £500 for a queen, where does the liability lie? Because we're not the ones who breed queens, so if we're buying them from a third party and then something goes wrong with those breeder queens— and artificially inseminated queens, stuff goes wrong with them all the time. They're so much more prone to stuff going wrong with them than a naturally mated queen. So if you're getting an artificially inseminated queen and then someone's earned a little bit of a margin on it, but then something goes wrong and you have to trace it back all the way up to the breeder, It is a nightmare. Also, if you send someone a £500 queen and it dies in the post, like, who picks up the slack there? I know who it would be. It would be me. So I'd have immediately lost hundreds of pounds on a queen, and then you've probably got to replace it for someone because they're saying, that's my breeder queen, I need another breeder queen. So you have to get another one, and it's just not worth the hassle and the aggro of going and doing it. And unfortunately, in the UK, it's very, very difficult to get hold of them anyway because all of the good ones are imported. I've been trying to get one from a guy in the UK who said the last couple of seasons he's definitely going to get me one, and he let me down for the 3rd year in a row today. So I've kind of realized I'm probably not going to get one via that route either. But I had an incredibly successful meeting this morning to secure my number one choice of queens going forward. So, uh, again, I can't say anything about that. It's all a bit top secret when it comes to breeder queens, and it's all a bit About building your own connections. It sounds really, really bad, but you have to protect what is yours. And I wouldn't want to give you any recommendations for anything that I've not tried and tested myself. So where I get them from now, limited supply, so I can't recommend them because they can't even supply me with enough that I need. And then any other places either that I've tried and failed with because they've not been very good, I wouldn't recommend. Or anybody that I've not tried, I wouldn't recommend either. Because I don't want to recommend without trying. So it is a challenge to get hold of good quality tested breeder queens. Don't be fooled by people selling you breeder queens that are 2025. Oh yeah, I've got a few 2025 breeder queens. And it's like, well, hang on, it's going to be a breeder queen if it's literally mated for like 2 or 3 months? Surely it needs to have been mated for a few years, and then you need to test the offspring, not just test that colony, to test the offspring of the breeder queen to confirm that you're getting consistency in the results, and then you can deem that first generation, the pure one, a breeder queen. They don't even call them breeder queens, just a pure queen. Whereas if you're selling a 2025 breeder queen for £150 or €150 or something, I suspect it's not going to be much better than just a standard F1 that you could get from elsewhere, and you're probably best off just saving your money doing it that way around. So not, not the best answer for you, Sam, but hopefully you can appreciate the background to that. Arek says, are you selling unmated queens? So no, we only sell, uh, mated queens. We don't sell any virgins whatsoever. Uh, good evening from Romania from— is it Mihai? Or— I don't— I hate pronouncing people's names wrong, but good evening to you too from Romania. Hope all is well. Half Tracks and Honeybees says hello from North Carolina. I can pronounce that one. Hello to you too, Keith. Uh, Carol says, hiya Lawrence, I found small black things in my brood cells. They are not capped, they look like baby slugs. Any idea what they could be? So potentially old decaying larva. So if you open up a frame and you take out a frame of larva and eggs and stuff, they should all be white, pearly white, nice pools of raw jelly. If you detach that away from the bees somehow, so lift it up 3 boxes where there's no bees and just leave it there, all of that nice pearly white larva just starts to decay, completely down decay, and it does become black, and it would kind of look like a black slug, a baby black slug. The only other thing I can think of is baby black slugs. Has anybody has anybody thought about the fact that it might be baby black slugs there? And I don't think I said that. I think I said baby back slugs, like that's some sort of dish, like ribs. I don't know. I stopped talking now. Steve's Honeybee says, "Have watched the have watched the life of honeybees on Channel Five." What did you think of it? So I have not watched it yet. I'm afraid in the summer I do not finish until way after it's time for me to go to bed. So I just Go straight to bed. Don't watch anything. Is next next question. Blimey, Lawrence, you look whacked out. I do. I feel whacked out. I'm absolutely knackered. I really am. It is a huge amount of talking. Right. Wayne Jolly says, "I've requeened my hive over the four-day period and not sure why they won't accept her any ideas." So you've requeened her twice over the four-day period and not sure why they won't accept any ideas. I'm not sure why you should be doing it twice over a four-day period. Maybe that's what it is. You're trying to rush the requeening a little bit, which is. resulting in them killing or balling them. Give me a bit more information as to exactly how you're trying to requeen there. That 14-day course sounds great. I really do hope that it will be a very successful course. It's looking good. Hi Lawrence, any chance you could introduce the option for selling clipped queens at additional cost? It would be a big help to newbie beekeepers. So I have thought about that previously. I would love to charge a little bit extra to clip the queens. We have found though that clipping a queen prior to transit, or prior to introduction more importantly, Massively increases the chances of the colony trying to supersede or the introduction just failing altogether. You're much better off just clipping the queen's wing after she started laying, and then you don't have any supersedure issues. So we won't be introducing it, I'm afraid, because it does introduce quite a lot of complications for colonies post-introduction. Simon says, @Honeybee— oh, he did that one. Okay, sorry, someone, someone having a chat. David J. Bisco, channel member, says, hi Lawrence, we're currently in London going to Marco Pierre restaurant. Luckily the swelling on my face has gone down in time. Hit the Like button. Oh, David sent me a picture of a shocking sting. That was a serious sting to the face, and the whole of his face like swelled up. You couldn't see anything through your eyes. Um, but glad to hear that you are in better condition now. Hi Lawrence, great stream as always. I tried endearing a box full of honey and they didn't clear it after a week. Any suggestions for more success next time? So if you're taking a box of honey and you're endearing it to get them to move it, you need to make sure that it's all fully bruised. And I suspect that you did bruise it and they still didn't move it. If there is a really good flow on, they will sometimes not do that. So what I always resort back to, if they don't remove it, if you put it at the bottom, you've got to start putting it in between brood, checkerboarding it, really taking the surface of that wax off, putting it in between, putting it in between 2 frames of brood, and then they just move it straight up. It's literally do it overnight, but you do have to do it slightly more piecemeal doing it that way. Channel member says good evening. Good evening to you, Andrew. Channel member says your YouTube videos convinced me I could be a beekeeper and I'm loving it. Oh, that is like strapline for the channel. Absolutely love that, Carl. Um, you definitely can do it and you are doing it, and I'm glad it's going so well. That's brilliant. Channel member says, good evening, Lawrence, hope you're well and not too wrecked. I think, I think it's clear I am wrecked, um, and I do need to go to bed, but I don't mind. I don't mind getting through the streams. We'll get there. 25 minutes in, we've got 35 minutes to go. Robert says I'm looking tired as well. It is, um, I have the worst poker face in the world. And like, even if I want to try and hide the way I'm feeling, I'm not very good at doing it. But when I'm tired, that is— that's game over. I've got no way of hiding my tiredness at all. Another question about nadiring. As a guess, when you nadir, what percentage of the honey in the bottom box ends up stored in the supers upstairs? That's a really good question. Definitely, all I can tell you is it is not 100% of the honey. You've got to factor in the energy to move it is going to knock off, I would say, 10-15%, something like that. A lot of energy in moving honey around the colony. Then you're probably going to come across some that maybe has like crystallization in it, and the bees will just go and chuck that out. Anything that's not perfectly either set or is crystallized, they might discard outside the front if the crystals are too big. So I reckon you're probably going to lose 20 or 25% of that, but that is massive guess, no proof whatsoever. Andrew Rogers, channel member, says, what's the latest you'd recommend performing a demeray? So I've— I'm gonna do some more demerays after the June gap because I've still not filmed the one that I wanted to film, and it's easier for me to film it during the summer flow than it is in the spring flow. Not to do with the bees, just because my life is impossible in April and May. But now that all of the nucs have gone out, literally every single nuc barring a few stragglers who have asked me to send them this upcoming week, that is all of our nucs gone out. I can dedicate a little bit more time to it. But I, I would say you can definitely still do a Demaray. Don't overcomplicate it though. If you're on a double brood at the moment and think, well, I'll add another one in, but 3 brood boxes, it can be really counterproductive later on in the year. Even a demerit is slightly counterproductive later on in the year. Once I get through past the solstice, I just condense the brood down if it needs it, put the queen excluder on, and I just add space above it. I never even inspect at that point in the year and hope that if we've got good weather, the bees will just continue feeding, filling up all of those supers, and I'll lose a few swarms, but I won't lose many swarms at all. definitely below 5% as long as you give them space above at that point in the year. Please, please speak a bit slower. I, I'm— I was speaking slowly. Oh, you do not want to see what it's like when I go fast, but okay, I'll speak a little bit slower. Uh, evening to John. Uh, Simon says breeder queen Murray. Um, so yeah, I, I can't— I've never had breeder queens from Murray, so I can't comment either way. Hi Lawrence, I got my queens today, all arrived absolutely fine. Just wondering why they weren't in the usual queen cages and in JZ Beezy cages. Just want to do the slow release in a couple of hives, so I've had to— where's the Dale Hancocks— masking tape a few and gaffer tape another as the hive is very angry. I want to leave it in there for a bit longer, making it accessible to the bees. Have I done the right thing? Uh, I normally would just come back and pop the tab 5 days later, but obviously can't do that with these cages. So yeah, so there should have been a sticker on the back of that. I have adjusted some of the cages. I've had to get some extra ones in, so the ones that come in the JZ Beezy cages obviously don't come in the normal cages and don't have the tab on them. So if you want to do a slow release, yet you just put this is what, this is what the instructions were on the back. Just put a bit of tape over the top to stop the introduction. The bees can't go through the tape, and then as soon as you want the introduction to carry on, you pop the tab or take the tape off, and the bees will go through it. As long as they're hopefully queenless, they work in exactly the same way, but they're, they're equally good. The queens, very, very good. You'll be happy with the queens in there. Hello Lawrence, listening in from South Carolina. Hello to you, Spencer. Lawrence, I have a horrible hive. I will likely requeen with a Black Mountain Honey Buckfast. excited to start, excited to start the Buckfast. This is probably one of my favorite parts of beekeeping, is seeing people who are just at their wit's end with their bees and they're thinking, oh my God, these bees are just horrible and vicious and I'm getting stung, and you know what, I'm just, I'm just going to get rid of them. I've had enough. I don't want to keep bees anymore, thank you very much. And then they requeen as like a desperate last attempt to maybe salvage something. And then it's always the next year, I get a call the next year and they say, you know what, like, I had this colony of bees and they were vicious, they were horrible, I was going to get rid of them, and I attempted a last-minute requeen and they are just transformed. beautiful calm bees, made loads of splits, got loads of honey, really enjoy my beekeeping again and I didn't enjoy it before, so thank you. I get that call probably 5 or 6 times a season, I would say, and it's a really nice call to get because it genuinely means that you've made a difference to someone. And it is nice, and I know from personal experience having horrible bees is not nice and having calm gentle bees is very, very nice indeed. Channel member says hello. Hi, other day neighbor said I had a swarm, I checked the hive, lots of bees, no Queen, no eggs and larvae, but no queen cells or any sign of them. What do you think? Oh, I would say that they swarmed before, so I'd say that that was a previous swarm and then there's going to be a subsequent one. When did you do your inspections? Are you doing like firm 7-day inspections? If you are, that is quite baffling. Um, but I can only suspect that it happened previously and hasn't been noticed, and then there's another swarm in the air. Bees attract bees. As soon as you get bees in your garden, you get loads of swarms coming in and out. Um, I think, yeah, maybe some crossed wires in the communication, maybe. Good evening, thanks for my queen, arrived today. Thank you very much, Vanessa. Uh, Andrew Rogers, channel member, says, and what's the latest date you'd recommend moving a nuc to overwinter if you were to allow them to requeen themselves? Um, so again, it does depend on the, like, kind of configuration and the makeup of the nuc. I could allow them to requeen themselves on one frame of brood and one frame of stores. and maybe they've not got enough time to build up if I do that in August. Or I can requeen them with a mated queen very, very late on, which means you can control it a little bit better. But if you're, if you're definitely going to do it allowing them to requeen themselves, you need to make sure that you leave them enough time to fill up the box prior to that mating. And I, I would recommend leaving in like a buffer of 3 or 4 weeks on there as well, just in case the mating doesn't go well and you want to backfill with a mated queen. Hi Lawrence, could a nuc created on the 9th of May have swarmed already? Is it full and looks ready to go in a hive. I just caught the swarm in the garden. So definitely, I could go and take a nuc out of a colony today and just put it into a nuc. So 6 frames out of a colony into a nuc, chuck loads of extra bees in to simulate what might happen if loads of brood had emerged from the nuc, and they would start swarming instantly. Literally instantly. They would say, right, it is now time to prepare swarm cells. So within 24 hours, you start to see the beginnings of swarm cells. and then by the time they capped them over, they would go. So you can trigger swarming in literally any age colony. It's, uh, if you congest them in at this time of the year, they will try and swarm. Uh, Simon confirms dead larva turn black very, very quickly. That's almost certainly what's happened there. Uh, Bethany says thank you for your content from Red Lodge, Montana. Thank you to you too, Bethany. Uh, Scout About channel member says, are there, are there any more channel exclusive members coming out? Last year they seemed weekly. Um, so they are surprisingly, they are on average weekly, uh, so far this year. I think I just did a few all at once and then there's been slightly longer gaps. Um, they— I, I do try and get them out at least once per week. Um, sometimes there's a couple per week and then sometimes there's a slightly longer gap. HiveQ has taken a lot more time this year, so I do apologize. It will get better for the subscriptions. I've got very big plans on the horizon, so stick with me with— for those. Uh, you can hear the words kind of coming out my mouth don't actually make huge amount of sense anymore. So let's get to the bottom of these comments here. Halfway through, 30 minutes gone, right? Hi, at what point do I carry out a demaray? The queen has nearly laid up all the frames but they are not capped yet. So my rule for a demaray, the rule that I use, is that you need to have the brood box full to the brim with bees and then you need 2 full supers of honeybees. So a brood box, let me draw it, it's easier to draw. Oh, I've got to go back through all this now to do drawing. Wow. That's not going to work. Right, let me share my screen. So this is the minimum requirements I would say for a Demerara split, which is you want to have a brood box like that full of bees, and then you want to have a super on top also full of bees, and then you want to have another super on top also full of bees. If your beehive looks like that or anything more than that, any more boxes, you can do a Demerara, and it doesn't matter what the honey's like. It can be completely all open and all nectar, as long as those boxes are full of bees. That gives you enough room and enough bees in there to connect that top and that bottom part of that hive together. Hi Lawrence, how do you extract honey from the top brood box after a dumb row split when those frames have been exposed to Apivar the previous winter? So we'll jump back to this exact same picture here. So the way that you do it is you take this box at the top, which is your Apivar-tainted box, and you take it from there and you place it down underneath here, and then you get a And then you take that off, and then you get a queen excluder and place that through the middle here and make sure that the queen is up there. And then you uncap all of the honey that's in there and do that at the right time of the year, and they move it up. And then all you do is you place additional boxes at the top like that. And then once they've moved the honey, uh, once they've moved the honey from down here and placed it up here, it is no longer contaminated. The honey was never contaminated, it was just the wax in this box that's actually contaminated with the amitraz. Once the honey's moved out of it, it's perfectly safe to extract. Right, so here we go. Hello, thank you for my, uh, for the advice on mending my poly hive. I broke the screws and the glue looked perfect. Um, good advice for anyone if you have broken poly— big screws and Gorilla Glue. Brilliant, brings it back together and it is rock solid. I thought my bees were swarming today, but they were just doing an orientation flight while on a hot day. I became a beekeeper finally after I first started watching your videos. Last year. I love it, people starting beekeeping from watching the videos. That is what it is all about. Um, there's nothing quite like sitting watching orientation flights as well. Really do enjoy that. First orientation flights of the year, absolutely brilliant. Wayne Jolly says, I put the queen in cage, left for 2 days, then removed the tabs, then released her, but they won't accept her. This hive has no tags, no eggs at all, all just stores. They are hopelessly queenless. Any ideas? I've done this same process twice over now in 2 weeks. So I would say you need to test it. If it's cons— if you're consistently having failed introductions, you need to test the colony. The way you test the colony is you take a frame of eggs, place that in. If they draw queen cells, you've got hopefully a queenless hive. I suspect they won't draw queen cells, which means there is a virgin in there which we need to find and kill before introducing any more queens. Good evening, Lawrence. Would you be, would you be doing another deal on your single queens? I'm going to purchase 2 more from you but have to prepare 2 hives as I think the ones you have now may sell out fast. Um, so we will, we will do more. Yeah, it's definitely easier for me to do them now, now that we're through April and May. there'll be more deals coming up, don't worry about that. Channel member, says, just finished taking off all my spring honey. He is very excited. I think a lot of people are very happy with this year's spring crop. Says, you said this isn't your full-time job, what do you do outside of bees and how do you make time amongst having a family, etc.? Are you taking a spring crop? So yes, I'm taking a spring crop. I have no time ever for anything, but also I am on paternity leave at the moment, so I'm not working currently at the moment, but normally I am a Project manager. We do nuclear decommissioning. Matt Page, channel member, says, "Thank you for all your help last couple of days. Hopefully sorts my queen's hive out over the next couple of weeks. Fingers crossed it all goes well, Matt." Michael Baker, channel member, says, "Thanks, Lawrence, regarding supercedure. I want to clip my queens but have leather gloves. What nitrile gloves do you use? P.S. T-stop. Excellent shout for the T-stop." Not which ones. I use the ProTech HD long cuff glove. They are very, very good. And if you're wondering how I spell Protect, that is P-R-O-T-E-C-T, I think. Protect. Pretty sure that is it. They're really, really good gloves. Blue Lab says, any thoughts of importing Japanese queens to help combat Asian hornets? At least they might fight back and don't just get wiped out by them. A very good idea. I suspect that is highly illegal, uh, but it's a nice idea. Lizzie's Bee says, hi Lawrence, have some, uh, had some bees since April, yet to see the unmarked queen. Not really a problem to see eggs and brood in all stages. However, I'm worried if we get to a stage where I need to split. Any tips? Or 1 out of 2, should I do a shaker box? So if you're going to make a split, I would just use, use the advantage of making the split to show you where the queen is. If you've got 2 boxes, 2 brood boxes full of bees, if you just split them into 2 hives, 2 separate colonies, one will just continue as normal and you'll go in and you'll see eggs, so you know the queen's there, and the other one will create emergency cells. So you just made it really, really easy to find the queen, or you've at least doubled your chances, I would say, of finding her, because instead of looking for 2 boxes, you now only got to look through 1 box. So that is what I would do if you need— if you know you're going to split, that's what you want to do. I would just split, and then it would make it a lot easier to find the queen, I think. Um, apart from if you— if you are— if you're going to go down the other route, yeah, shaker box would be the other way of doing it. Good evening, Lawrence. Good to see you live. Love all of your videos. Thank you very much, Jean. I've got a laying worker. How is the best way to find her and introduce a queen? So the only recommendation that I give to people now for laying workers is as follows, and this will apply to you because you've got multiple hives. Cut your losses, shake out all of the bees in the air a few meters away from the hives, take away all of the beehive, all of the frames, and go and put them somewhere completely out of the way, back into storage. All of the bees, all of the laying workers, everyone will just beg their way into the other hives and the problem goes away. And I know people think about that as, I ended the day with one less colony today. And I, I think about that and think I ended the day with the same amount of bees I started the day with, like minus a few that are dead and minus a few that have been born. It's a mindset thing, and once you get over that mindset thing with laying workers, it becomes really, really easy just to say, right, it's a laying worker, shake them all out, take the box away, just carry on as normal. If you need to replace it, you just make a split from one of your, one of your healthy colonies and carry on as normal. That is what I would do, and that is definitely my fixed advice now for laying workers. Thanks for the delivery too, mate. All arrived safely, although the postie was a bit unsure. We do get some, do get some good posties as well. Also says, how am I doing? I'm doing very well, thank you. Um, I, I will sleep well tonight. Says, hello, any recommendation for a natural mite treatment? Um, so I would say the closest thing to natural that I can recommend is oxalic acid, or any legal form of oxalic acid where you live. So Apibioxal if you're in the UK. It is perfectly natural, perfectly organic, and highly effective against mites. That is what I would recommend. Said, took my first 7 fully capped frames For honey, couldn't wait any longer, going to sell for the first time this year. Thanks for all of your advice. The amount of honey produced from our nucs this year is just going to be brilliant, and I love watching and following people on social media, watching their first harvest, because it's bumper harvest. They bought a nuc thinking, maybe I'll get some honey in my first year. The advice that we give to people is, will you get honey in your first year? I'd be a little bit sad to say no, you won't. I generally say to people, You know what, if you manage them well, yeah, you'll get honey in your first year, maybe 1 or 2 supers, potentially 3 or 4 supers, you know, if you manage them really well. If you manage them badly and they swarm, chances are you're not going to get much honey. I think a lot of people have far exceeded that estimate already this year, and I don't think the summer is going to be a fantastic crop, and I do recommend everyone to take a spring crop now that it's there. Just take it and supplement the bees' feed if you need to. Laurence, when you place your honey supers on, how long do you wait to look into the supers? Thank you for your time. appreciate it. Um, so I just do weekly inspections, so put the supers on if they need them, and then the next week I'll take a look inside. So always just on the weekly inspections. Channel member, says, we're looking at that hive earlier and saw loads of what I assume were drones trying to get into my hive, and there were a pile of dead bees grouping up, landing in a bit of my underfloor entrance. Thoughts? Um, sounds like the beginnings of robbing, that is. But also drones going out. You'll get drones kind of going out, mass exodus at certain times of the day, and then coming back in again. and it can be really disorientating for the beekeeper looking at it and thinking, what's going on there? And it's just all the drones going in and all the drones coming back out again, um, and they're just kind of getting ready to go out and mate, or going out and mating and then not coming back after that. They only— it's a one-way for them when they go out to mate. They kind of go out to mate and never return. Yeah, no instructions on any of the cages or postal envelope, but happy with the queens. Look amazing as always. Look forward to seeing what they do for me. That was my error. Um, I forgot to put that on the back of those ones there, so sorry. Uh, Vera Giles, channel member, says, hooray, I haven't managed to catch a live from you since last year. Thank you for sending a response to my video of the new nuc from you installed on the bean field in North Lynx. My pleasure, Vera. I love getting, uh, videos through on WhatsApp from people. Says, smash the like button, really like your education on bees. Thank you very much, Jean. Says, also request requeening a very, very angry hive with one of them, and I got stung in the face pretty bad today, and I've had a bit of a nasty reaction, so spent a couple of hours in hospital this afternoon. Oh no. Where's the rest of this? Having antihistamine injections, but they said I'll be fine, so no more beekeeping tomorrow. Oh no, that's terrible. I hope, hope everything's okay. There's nothing worse than a bad beekeeping reaction. Walcroft25 said, it's hard finding honey that doesn't have other things added to it to bulk it up. Most shops like Co-op and Asda don't sell good honey, most from China. I could not agree more. Never buy honey from the supermarket, get it from your local beekeeper, and preferably one that looks like Dale. If you get one, if you get one from Looks Like Dale, you've all seen the meme, you know it's good honey. Uh, Thomas L says, evening Lawrence, Black Mountain honey VSH queen finally laying after hiding in the cage for about 10 days after tabs opened. You were right, a couple of eggs in queen cups taken down. Thanks again for the advice. Excellent, I'm glad we got that one fixed. Um, it's so fun. Some of those VSH queens are some of the biggest queens I've ever seen. They definitely can fit through the, the postal cages. I've seen them go through it multiple times, but sometimes they just say No, no, no, not going through there, no chance. And they just don't come out. Uh, Terry says, hi Lawrence, the queens arrived today, looking great. Thanks for getting them to me so fast, you're a lifesaver. My pleasure, Terry. Hope the introductions go well. Hi, the bees' behavior turned last week like a click, trying to get in the face and really grumpy. Could this be because of the flow stop? I experienced it today for the first time. Anybody who buys HiveQ and is watching a video on how to feed fondant I think it is. I think it's a video on how to feed Fondo, and at the beginning of the video we're filming, so he clicks film record, and out of nowhere this bee just goes bosh, like on the tip of the nose there. And anybody who knows, if you've been stung there previously, that is one of the most sensitive places to get stung. It's like all cartilage, and it brought tears to my eyes, and it was all caught on camera. Brilliant. But it is very much the flow. The flow's gone like that, and everything was calm and perfect and brilliant, and then it stopped, and then the bees go, no, no, no, no, no, and they become a little bit grumpy. Luckily, once the June gap ends, they become all right again, but there, there is a noticeable change in the temperament of the bees at the moment. William Sharples, channel member, says, hi, I'm planning on building my own 14 by 12 long hive. How many frames would you recommend? Also, any design tips? Oh, I don't, I don't Like to ever dampen anyone's enthusiasm, I did not have the best of time with my long hive, any of the configurations of long hives that I have. Certainly wouldn't be good at giving you any woodworking tips because I'm shocking at that. Make it bigger than it needs to be, give yourself extra space, give yourself extra entrances and a way of sectioning it up, because I find for me the long hive comes into its own when you're using it for queen rearing or where you're using it for overwintering multiple nucs. they can all kind of benefit from being close to each other as opposed to trying to manage it for honey production. Very, very difficult to manage it for honey production. So as many frames as possible, as many dividers as possible, as many entrances as possible. I think that would be good. Hi Lawrence, are you doing this full-time yet or are you just doing 120-hour weeks during the season? Um, not just during the season, 120-hour weeks either. Uh, no, it's not full-time yet. I am still on paternity leave though. What does the crown number 1 purple icon mean by the name in the chat? I don't know what that— I don't know what that means. I don't think I can see that on my side. Anybody else on the other side can possibly help you with that one. A man with wicked bees killed off the queen and went back 6 or 7 days later to remove the queen cells. There was a lot of dead bees in front of the hive. Any ideas what may have happened? Um, it depends how many— it depends how many dead bees are there. Maybe there was some robbing, maybe there was a fight, maybe, um, he didn't leave the entrance fully open, so a lot of bees have clustered up and died. There could be a lot of reasons for that. Maybe it's just a natural amount of dead bees that you'll see on like a concrete floor. There are a lot of different reasons why you might get buildup like that. What do you think of splits with only one frame of bees with one capped brood and one mated queen? So depending on the time of year, very much supportive of it and think it's a good idea. In April and May, brilliant idea. Um, feed the bees as much as you can. The later you go in the year, the more difficult that becomes because of the, the robbing and the wasp pressure, and then you need to make much bigger splits in order to see them get through. I saw a field mouse gnawing through the bottom of an NL ventilated floor. I managed to video it. I need to have a rethink about these floors. I now realize they aren't as robust as I first thought. Yeah, slightly frustrating if they're getting through in like summer. Not good. I just got my first 3 nucs last week. How long can I wait to split them and make more colonies? So like, this isn't the advice, don't take this advice, but you can split them now. Like, if that is a full-size nuc and there's 3 or 4 frames of brood, preferably 4 frames of brood, a couple of frames of stores, 6 frames of bees, and 1 mated queen, you can split them now, no problem. Definitely split them into different apiaries though, so split them in half exactly and then split one off into a new apiary. Don't do it in the same apiary, you will mess them both up and you'll really set the bees back if you do it in the same apiary. But really, if you want my advice, just build them up a bit. It really makes it so much easier. The bees can fend for themselves, it's not going to slow them down. If you're thinking I've got 3 nucs and I want to go from 3 to 6 to 12 to 24, mate. Like, because a lot of people do think that way. So you want to go from 3 to 24, that is realistic throughout the course of the season. The much easier way of doing that is just to take your 3 nucs there, build them up onto 3 double brood colonies, and then just split them out into 24 nucs in a single go and add the queens in. Um, you— it's not— it's no quicker going from 3 to 6 to 12 to 24. Some people think there is, it definitely isn't. Um, but if you if you try and do one like quadruple brood box hive and then split it all out, you're just going to end up with way too many frames of honey. So you need to get that balance right between ensuring that the brood boxes that you're managing for those colonies remain just full of brood for you to split versus them kind of backfilling it with honey. But it does work, and that is what I would recommend. I have to move my bees a mile away, any tips? So if you're moving all of your bees, every single one from an apiary a mile away, you do need to think about moving them somewhere else over 3 miles away for kind of like 3 or 4 weeks before that and then moving them on. Or if you're moving just some colonies out of that apiary and you're going to leave some bees in that apiary, you can just pick them up and move them a mile away. Any drifting bees will just get collected by the bees that are there. Honey was 40% this year and uncapped when I extracted a full 12-ounce jar, actually holds a pound. Because it was so dense. How would you label and price this jar? Whoa, we've never ever had to deal with a problem like that before, have we? It's— I, I'm, I'm not the right person to, to get that question out of, to be honest, because all I would do is I would just fill the jar up to the top, make sure there's no air gap in it, make sure it looks nice, and just sell it for the same price that I always sell it for. There's no way that I'd be adjusting any of the labeling or like saying that there's more honey in it or that it weighs more. We just work on averages. And as long as we're giving the customer, like, what they asked for with a level, a level of kind of tolerance accounted for, but we're always above it, then we're happy with that. So I wouldn't do anything. And oh, it would be really, really difficult to get that accurate unless you were going through and measuring, like, the specific gravity of each one and working out the density. Could probably work out how much it weighs quite accurately, but I honestly don't think people care. We eat a lot of gherkins and I always reuse the gherkin jars, so don't think this is just some random jar. But if you've got a jar like this and I said to you, this jar is £10— I shouldn't use that, I shouldn't say— right, the value of this jar is £9.99. So it's a £9.99 jar of honey and it weighs 300 grams. But it's a £9.99 jar of honey, it's gonna be full to the top. If I said to you, the honey in this jar is still full, It's £9.99 still, but it's now 350 grams. I think the majority—I certainly would have been like, just full in it, like a full jar, one full jar of honey. Thank you. I don't really care about how much it weighs, so I don't think the fact that it's denser is anything more than. I don't even think it's an issue. I don't think it's really an issue for anyone. All it's going to end up with is a jar that weighs quite a bit more than you say it's going to weigh, and I think trading standards will be very. out of order to persecute you on that basis when you can just say, look, it's just natural fluctuation in the density of the product. We've given them more, we've given them more in volume, or what we said we're going to give them in volume. I don't think there should be any issues. You said on there we charge £10 per pound, so I expect— like, I'd be really frustrated, I think, if I bought honey off someone and there was less volume because it weighed more. But I'm guessing that is kind of what would happen, isn't it? If I'm buying a £35 bucket off someone I'm buying a £35 bucket off someone, so the volume is going to reduce if it's denser. I've never even thought about that. Do you know what? I don't think about it at all when it comes to that. I just think about getting honey, putting it in the buckets, putting it in the jars, and I never really think about how cost-effective it is. Wow, food for thought. Um, Helen P says, will you be doing an updating video on queen rearing? So I'm doing multiple updated videos on queen rearing this year, so you'll get plenty of those. Jean says, who's your mentor teaching you about bees? I would say the best mentor I have ever had is Richard, which is brilliant. Richard's been through it all for decades and has seen pretty much everything there is to see in beekeeping, and he is very happy to share that information as well. Good evening, how's the weather been in Wales this week? Pretty gloomy down south, a lot of my hives have become honey-bound. Is there a way to stop them from doing this? Plenty of space in the supers. So when you don't get these flows, so when the flow is active, the bees are very ready to move stuff around. And when the flow isn't active and it's rainy outside, they just become a little bit lazy and move stuff around to suit them. And then they're just like, yeah, that'll, that'll do until the queen needs to lay, or that will do until more nectar comes in. So I find that when you move back out of the June gap and back into the flow, as long as you've got a good healthy queen that's willing to lay, and as long as you put the space upstairs, they will reconfigure themselves and fix it themselves. I always see the colonies where they don't fix it themselves, there's generally something wrong with the colony, and it's generally a queen issue, I would say. Should I be waiting until the bees have supers fully capped? It's reading 17% on the refractometer. If it's reading 17%, I would say it's probably good to go. As, uh, the UK Honey Marketing Board said up there, it's very, very low moisture content this year, but I'd wait for them to start capping it over, and then as soon as you start seeing them capping it over, as long as it's all consistent across the frame, it be good to go. John says, evening all, watch the live later and add any links to videos if required for any questions asked on the No Nonsense Beekeeping Facebook page. Thank you very much, John, pleasure as always. Bujar says, uh, what do you think about splits with minimum resources? A frame of food, a frame of capped brood and bees, a mated queen, and 3 empty drawn frames. So we did that before, very, very happy with them, and I use them a lot. Johnny B says, are there any rules or regulations to be aware of for selling nucs? Thinking of taking 2 to 3 through the winter as a hedge against losses, and then we'll sell the if not needed. So nothing formal, um, there are kind of like voluntary regulations by the BBKA or the National Bee Unit on what, what a nuc should look like, um, so it kind of says you should have 3 to 4 frames of brood, you have a couple of frames of stores, you have a healthy queen, the queen should be marked. It says kind of all of those things there, so as long as you comply or conform with all of those, you should be good. For the past few weeks I've been stung rotten, got stung on my lips, Botox lips, nearly gave up after 5 years of beekeeping to But tomorrow is another day. Oh no, that's rubbish. That's not good to hear. Has the has the flows taken kind of a dramatic turn for the worse down there, and they finished a bit early? William Sharples, channel member, says, "Will the plastic entrances on a bellow hive stop mice in the winter, or should I get proper metal mouse guards?" Um, I've never had mice go into any of mine. I have to say, I've not I've not really thought about that. Um, I think if a mouse had got into any of them, I would have uh. Definitely not use them. But make sure— what I like to do in the winter is turn it over to the solid side and just use the solid one just to adjust the size of the entrance without the little prongs. And I find— so that's how I have it set up in winter, and then I'd be surprised if a mouse got through that. Sin says greetings from Nebraska. Is it Darjin? Sin Darjin? Someone's going to get me to say something like that, and it's going to be like Bill Ardy or something, isn't it? Or I won't say some of the ruder ones, but But you know, you know what I mean. Alan Partridge sketch. Lynette says, sent you a WhatsApp regarding that crown thing. Looks like a YouTube live stream thing. Okay, we can have a look at that. I think it's probably a new, a new feature from YouTube then, but Lynette has got it in hand, so I'll take a look at that afterwards. Carly says, my brood box is full of honey and hardly any brood. Um, I had a swarm 4 weeks ago, so possible I have a young queen that I can't spot, but also could be queenless. Do I bite the bullet and get a new queen? So I suspect what happens What has happened is you have a virgin in there, she took a couple of weeks to get mated and come back into lay, she's now building up, she started to lay eggs, but all of that honey is backfilled. You need to give space up above, and hopefully over the course of the next few weeks, as that brood nest expands again, they'll move that honey out. Anything that is capped in the brood nest, you want to uncap it, bruise it with the hive tool, and then that helps them to move it up. UK Honey Marketing Board is going to be 20% extra free. That is brilliant, 20% extra free. Absolutely spot on. I'm not good with Irish names. I'm going to say call you EB. EB says caught my first swarm last week and looking like I might have another one today. Should I look at requeening the swarms? I love to see what I catch in the swarms. If I go out and catch a swarm, I want to see what that colony is like. If it's vicious, I'll requeen it. If it's good, I will keep it. But I always give them a chance, see what they're about. Right, we did that one there. Zabit says why is why is beast Why is my bees getting weaker and be strong hive is getting weaker? It's very difficult to answer that without kind of looking and seeing what is exactly going on with your hives. Sorry, it could be a million and one different things going on. A pound of oranges with thin peel is the same price as a pound of oranges with thick skins. Very, very true. That's kind of how I see it. I don't think I'd be altering anything. How long does the June gap last for? When do you know it's over? So sometimes it never happens, and the spring and summer flow overlaps. Sometimes it's a day, sometimes it's a weekend, sometimes it's a week, and kind of anywhere in between. You will know when it's over because at the moment you've got these little piddly bees flying around again, and you go, go away, bees, like that. That's the June gap. And then after the June gap, it doesn't happen anywhere near as much. The bees have intent, they have purpose, and you see it from the entrances. You say, right, okay, the June gap. Is now over. I think up here we just about got through it, you know. It does look like the weather's picking up. And I'll tell you what, today we're filming and it was a bit drizzly and rainy this morning, and then all of a sudden stopped raining and it started warming up, and then the sun came out. And then about half an hour later, got the bees behind me and all you could hear was— and kind of looked behind, I was like, well, that is a like serious, serious flow, and it sounds like an air conditioner going on. And it would have just been the bees coming in, going out, getting the nectar, fanning it all down. It sounds like an air conditioning machine. Uh, Steve's Honeybee says, how do I join your WhatsApp group? So unfortunately, I have had to reduce the channel membership options because my life became completely unmanageable. So no longer have any, um, options to connect on WhatsApp or any, uh, premium WhatsApp group options either. I've had to close them all down. Really, really sorry. So the highest tier now is the exclusive mentoring option where you get access to all of the exclusive videos and then I will answer any questions in the comments. Entrance block in or out during warm weather with the bees queuing or lots of flying waiting to land and enter the hive? It's a difficult one because up until now, just no entrance blocks at all, full entrance open, and just leave the bees to it. Now that you've got a kind of like factory robbing again as well, it's a case of, um, what do you do? I'd prefer to have something that I can adapt, kind of open and close like that. I use foam bungs The underfloor entrances though really do regulate the flow through the beehive, and I find with the colonies that I have on my underfloor entrances, I just don't have to think about entrance blocks ever being in or out or small or wide. The bees just manage themselves in those floors. Hi Lawrence, hope you're well. I'm very good, thank you. Hope you are too. Lawrence, what is the best way to find out the floral source in my area? I'm in California. So in the UK, we have a wonderful scheme where you can send your honey off if they sign you up and they will do the processing for you and tell you all of the different pollens in your honey. I'm not sure if you have a similar scheme in California, whether it's a free thing or a paid thing, but potentially something to research there because it does exist and I don't think it's particularly expensive. PK, I missed the beginning of PK's one, but he said the second one is, and give new frames of foundation to give the queen space to lay eggs. That sounds like a good answer, but I don't know what the beginning question is. I'm just looking through all of the things, I can't find it. There we go. The UK Honey Marketing Board says, briefly, how do you get DASH accreditation? So DASH is run by the Bee Farmers Association and the National Bee Unit as a combined thing, and you need to apply through the Bee Farmers Association. I just heard my wife drop a glass downstairs, if anyone kind of caught that there, definite smash and then a definite— Titan Games says, I had to reduce 2 splits back to nucs and feed all hives fondant due to no supplies. Sorry, due to supplies, due to no supplies due to not taking syrup was Beek's recommendation. Any advice? I've got to reread that again. I had to reduce splits, 2 splits, back to nucs and feed all hives fondant due to no supplies due to not taking syrup. I'm not sure I understand it. I'm really tired. Um, I'm guessing what you're saying is that the bees didn't take down the syrup, so you had to revert back. Any recommendations? So if you're, if you're setting your bees up to feed and the bees are not taking down the syrup, you need to drop some syrup down the feeder hole in order that the bees can find where that syrup is. You need to feed them and then show them where the syrup is, and do not leave them until you're confident that they know where it is, and then it should fix all the issues. Thank you for your answers, really appreciate it. My pleasure, Carol. This is the first bit. He says, I have 4 to 5 frames of pollen in my brood boxes. How many of them should I remove and replace with one new one to give the queen space to lay eggs? I would say remove all of them and leave 2. 2 should be ample. Helen P says, can you mention the honey scheme in the UK? I'd be interested in this. I'm not sure what it's called. I think it's just called like a honey monitoring scheme. Um, it is very oversubscribed and they only take on people if you're in a specific area. I think it may be called like the National Honey Monitoring Scheme. If you Google that, it should give you, should give you a link to it. Final question. Sophie Cameron says, found multiple queen cells, some capped, queen still in, and I removed, knocked down all the queen cells. Plan on adding mated queen and hopefully see queenless. Do you think this is a good plan? Um, so yeah, so he said queen's still in and removed. Yeah, so that's fine. So you've taken the queen out, probably made a split, knocked down all the queen cells, planning on adding a mated queen. That's it, spot on. Um, it's really easy when you follow the advice like that with, with swarming. And I know people sometimes think, oh, you know, it's got to pay for the extra queen, but when you look back and you're going through the colony trying to find the failed virgin to save every single bee in that colony, you kind of think, I'm glad I spent the money on a mated queen and get the colony back on track, right? I have not reached the end, right? There's 2 more here. Love your videos, I got into beekeeping because of them. I got my nuc today, saw your comment earlier about splitting. When would be the cutoff time to split in the season here in Canada, by the way? So I can't talk specifically for Canada, but here in the UK we can definitely split colonies all the way through kind of July into August, so long as you're leaving them sufficient bees to build up at that back end of the season. I would say maybe slightly earlier in Canada, I think you have a bit of a kind of more condensed season. So maybe anytime back end of June, early July, but I would definitely test that out with some local beekeeping knowledge as well. Where have all these comments come from? Sam Southern says, thank you, Granddad was a beekeeper, caught 2 swarms last week, one for my father-in-law and then one for myself as my first colony. They were in a 6-frame nuc for a week, then had to move to brood— sorry, then had to move to a brood in national as they had totally filled it. Hoping to split if they do super well this year. I think you'll be splitting them before you know it. Does anyone else here worry about local farmers and neighborhood gardens using glyphosate weed killer? I certainly do. I hate glyphosate. Um, it is going to be one of those— it's going to be like the next asbestos, I think. Glyphosate, horrible, horrible stuff. I followed the guidance on your website for introducing a new queen into a hive split made due to charged swarm cells. Um, we'll come back to the next bit from Colin on that. Good night, Lawrence. Thanks for answering all my questions. See you next time. Thank you very much, Jean. Titan Games says, sorry, I had frame feeders in and they did not take to it. The hive had no supplies due to a harsh dearth period. I had to reduce most to nuc and feed fondant due to emergency as a feed. Frame feeders can be notoriously difficult to get the bees to work out how to use them. A top feeder in that instance, um, will potentially fix that issue because you can drizzle the feed, the syrup, through the holes into the bees to show them where it is. Uh, UK Honey Marketing Board says, what's your gut feeling on how the summer will go? Wet and wild hot and dry. I think, um, a mix up at like— I think from now until the end of the year, I think we'll get lots of rain, I think we'll get lots of sun, but I do think that season will be compressed. I think we'll get a decent honey crop, but I think it'll be all over kind of by mid-July up in North Wales, and however that translates to down south, which is generally like 2 or 3 weeks early, so it could be over come the end of June. And then it's all about keeping your bees alive until the next year. That is it. We've reached the end of the video, the end of the stream. I am one minute over, so one hour and one minute in. Um, I'm sorry if I've been a bit off tonight, and I'm sorry if I've been a bit tired. I need to move the live stream, or I need to move the filming day. Do you know when you get like a, a cycle count or a walking count? I'd love to know my word count for today. It's got to be well into the hundreds of thousands, and I definitely do like to over-exaggerate as well, but I am very, very tired. So I'm gonna go. I hope you all have a brilliant weekend. Get out there, do some beekeeping, have some fun, and I'll see you next time.