Black Mountain Honey: Let's Talk Bees With Laurence Edwards - Episode 10

Hello everyone, I'm hoping you can hear me. I'm realizing it's probably a little bit late to this. I've only just realized it is actually like 10 o'clock and that most people in the UK, most beekeepers in the UK, are probably in bed by now. So I'll keep it short, I'll keep it as quiet as I possibly can because my wife is next door, um, but I'm going to answer some questions. I said I'd do more of these, I've done 3 in 3 weeks now, so I hope you're enjoying them. As always, you can ask comments in the live chat. I will get to the live chat. There's a couple of comments in there already, and I will answer the questions that are already sent through, through the Ask a Question on my website. As always, I've got a nice cup of tea, and I'm going to do my best to get through every single live chat that I do. I I never ever finish my tea and it always goes cold, so I'm going to do my very best. Keen eyes there will notice I've still got my tea bag in. I'm really bad for drinking tea with tea bags in, so let's fix that at the beginning, get rid of the tea bag. Oh, hi Peter. Peter, you're there. How you doing? How long am I going to be on for? Probably about an hour, no longer than an hour. Um, because it is a bit late. Uh, and yeah, oh, got Debbie Pitcher. Hello from Llangollen. Um, I hope I pronounced that correctly. I live in North Wales, but as you can tell, I am not from Wales. Uh, the reason for such a late stream, Joe's just touched on it there, I was watching Arsenal lose to Man City. So yay, go Arsenal! We lost. Um, favorite Arsenal player? Martin Ødegaard. Right, I'm going to get on to asking some of these questions. We're not talking about football. Right, so first one is from John Holland. It's quite a long question, but it's a good question. So he says, hi Lawrence, I've been keeping bees for nearly 60 years, latterly on 14 by 12, as now I found that lifting heavy supers is tricky. Fair enough. I'm thinking of getting a long hive from Hyde Hives and watched your reviews. What I really need to know, please, is how this type of hive operates in practice, i.e., do the bees produce a surplus of honey which I could harvest? I love 14 by 12 frames as I get superb brood patterns, but this size frame won't fit in my extractor. I guess the solution is to cut the comb out. Maybe you have a good suggestion. And then he's got another question relating to swarming. So I really like my Hyde Hives long hive, but it's not the easiest one in the world to use. Like, it is a bit tricky. So I've got one that is in 14 by 12s, and I've got one that is the 8 nuc version that's on the national deeps, and both of them are quite difficult. It's not— it's a very different management style compared to kind of nationals or vertical beehives in any format where you have your brood box at the bottom and then you can separate it off the queen excluder. Like, first thing I learned within the first few weeks of using my longhives is that the queen excluders didn't make any difference, and if anything, the queen excluders actually made it really quite difficult and just added a lot more frustration into the beekeeping. So you can't kind of say, right, the brood's going to be on one side and I'm going to put a queen excluder in and I'm going to get my honey over there. The bees don't respond to that very well in a horizontal format. Gotta drink my tea. So I've kind of let my bees just go a little bit wild in the long hives, and I'm not really running them to get a massive surplus of honey. And if anybody was asking me, saying, would you run a long hive kind of for honey production or commercially, it's definitely a no because it's very difficult to manage it, uh, and it's difficult to segregate the brood from the honey, and it's hard to get the bees to not swarm. So that was the second part of your question there— are the bees more inclined to swarm? I'd say no, they're not more inclined to swarm, but you'll massively reduce the options that you've got when they do show signs that they are going to swarm. So you know me, I love a preemptive demerare, but I love kind of like an artificial split as well, or an artificial swarm. Very difficult to do that in a long hive. You love the 14 by 12 frames. What they do do— so this is something that if you're, if you're dead set on a long hive, this will work. They, I think they produce like a box or some sort of mesh that goes in that means that you can have like half the hive on 14 by 12 and and then you put this little divider thing in, and then you can run the rest of it on national deeps. They definitely showed me that at some point, and I know that exists. So you could have the back half of the hive on 14 by 12, keep your brood in there, and then have the rest of it on national deeps if they're going to fit in your honey extractor. But I can see why it's appealing, because it's kind of like the right height, and it's— you don't want to be lifting heavy supers. but it doesn't come without its issues and can be a little bit tricky as well. But good luck with it, it is cool and they do look nice in the garden. But yeah, I hope that answers your question. Right, let's catch up on some of the questions on the chat first. I've got about 6 questions today, but I will chop and change a little bit. So Peter, who's a channel member, says, would appreciate your views on mite treatment for those of us with just a few colonies. Is it advisable to change treatments occasionally? So it depends what treatments you're using. So if you're using kind of like Apistan, then yeah, the bees have shown resistance to Apistan. People are saying that they're showing resistance to Amitraz as well, which is active ingredient in Apivar. But if you're using something like thymol, then I don't think thymol's overly effective on varroa mites anyway. But it's going to be more difficult for the bees to build up kind of resistance to something like that, and even more so when it comes to like oxalic acid. So because it's kind of like a mechanical way that is getting those mites, very difficult for them to build up a resistance versus like a chemical treatment. So I would say if you've just got a few colonies, I wouldn't— don't religiously just change things around for the sake of it. If something's working for you, stick with it. That's not to say that your bees won't start to build resistance to it, or the varroa on your bees will start to build resistance to it. But if you're doing something like— sorry, if you're doing something like oxalic acid, then it's going to be very difficult for the bees to build resistance to that. And if you're timing it at the right time of the year and getting in there when there is no brood, which is a complete stab in the dark when that actually is, Um, we like to go now kind of almost like end of November, early December, but it is a bit of a stab in the dark. Or you're into doing multiple treatments at this time of the year, split 5 days apart. Um, but yeah, don't change it just for the sake of it. Um, at this point, if you enjoy the streams, you can hit the thumbs up and say that you like it. Much appreciated. Mug up from across the pond, wishing everyone the best. Always nice to have US viewers on board. Matt Burrows retracted his message. Love to have known what that was for. Um, flicking through all the Arsenal questions. Oh, Keith says hope I had a good birthday. Thank you very much, I did. 37 years old now. Um, Tarot— is it Tarot? Says hi up from Devon, hope all is well. Very good, thank you. Uh, right, Ryan Jackson says do you run support colonies for production hives and queen rearing? Um, so I, I don't know, everyone has different methods for kind of doing this. I just run all production hives and then I'll have like queen rearing apiaries and I'll carve off some of the production hives to support my queen rearing operations. But I don't want— I don't kind of like it. Mike Palmer does it really nicely, like has like the sustainable apiary and everything kind of feeds into each other. My apiaries aren't really that big So I don't specifically run support colonies for the production hives, but I steal from my production colonies quite a lot. Is a long hive the same as a top bar hive? So no, they look similar. So a top bar is very much just a bar, a wooden bar with like wild wax comb, generally like a kind of— I don't know what the shape is, like a trapezoidal shape, I don't know, maybe picking it up now, like that, that kind of shape. Whereas a long hive just has normal frames in it, so you can get Langstroth ones, you can get National ones. It's just they're both horizontal forms of hives as opposed to a vertical form of hive. I'm gonna have a go on a top bar because it's been a nightmare, absolute nightmare, after having a go on like my lay-on hive this year, which is— it's not even a top bar, But from the top it looks like a top bar. I'm really not, not too keen on my lay-on hive. I'm gonna do a video tomorrow. I actually have, I actually have 14 videos that I'm gonna film tomorrow if anyone wants to know what they are. I'm gonna do 14 in a day, so I'll get my phone out and I'll tell you what they are. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna do some naughty things as well. I'm gonna crack open some colonies. Just my argument's gonna be, you know what, I'm gonna open some colonies so you don't have to. so you can have a look inside of mine. But I'm gonna, I'm gonna have a look at an F0 breeder queen. I'm going to do an update on my Flow Hive. I'm going to do an update, or just on one of my apiaries, go and have a look around. I'm going to do an update on my AMM colony, see if we can find any bees. I'm going to do a Buckfast versus AMM overwintering comparison. I'm going to do an update on my small cell Varroa hive. I'm going to redo a couple of videos. One of the videos I looked at previously was like 20 top tips for out apiaries, and it was hilarious. It was so English, so I'm going to do that one again. I'm going to do all my top tips for finding out apiaries. I might set up a checkerboard colony, I'm not sure about that one yet. I'm going to do an update on the colonies in my 8-nuc long hive. I'm going to tell you why my lay-on hive is just a nightmare. I'm going to do my ideal beehive setup, we've spoken about that in live streams. I'm going to talk to you about getting prepared for the beekeeping season. I'm going to talk to you about going to the beekeeping show. I'm going to open a colony, see if we can find some brood. I'm going to do some fondant feeding, and then I'm going to do some, just some checking of some other colonies in another apiary. I'm going to do all of those videos tomorrow. It'd be fun. So hopefully there was something in there that tickled your fancy a little bit. Right, I'll carry on with some of the questions then. Bjorn says good evening from Norway. Hi Bjorn. I know you love a Demerit, so do I. What do you tend to do with your top frames? The problem is I tend to use Apiguard in August, September. So this is always the problem with the Demeray. We find now that Demeray, we'll end up kind of recycling the brood frames that have honey in for making splits at that time of the year. So if you saw my series on trying to make as many splits as I possibly could from one single colony, it was a nightmare. It was so difficult because I was doing it kind of iteratively throughout the year, and it was just like it was sapping all my time and a little bit of my soul. Whereas at the end of the year, when I've got all of these demerars that are left over with top boxes that are full of honey, um, with— they've got frames that have been treated with Apivar, so I can't harvest the honey, but I can make up splits. I've got loads of brood at that time of the year, so I make up my splits. So although you're kind of giving up the frames of honey, you're making up really good strong nucs at that point. And if you do it early on, you can have, you can have like kind of lots of brood up there as well. So if you keep it rolling through, it tends to work quite well. How are you getting on with Apiguard, Ben? I really don't like Apiguard. I just kind of didn't do a huge amount. And unless you've got the temperature absolutely spot on, like it's too hot and it was no good, too cold and it was no good, Yeah, not massive fan. I preferred the Thymovar. That was my preferred version of the thymol treatment. I found the bees kind of didn't clear it out so quick. And you'd, like, with the Apiguard, you put it in and then you come back like 3 days later and it'd just be gone and you couldn't smell any thymol at all. Whereas the Thymovar made it very difficult for the bees to get the gel out. You'd come back like 2 weeks later, 10 days later, it'd be really strong smelling still. I know that's like anecdotal, but it did seem to be a bit more effective. Hi from warm Cotswolds tonight. I'm in a pub enjoying ale. Very nice. So you're just like watching me in a pub, and that's, that's amazing. And Baldwin Chartered Surveyors— there you go, a bit of advertising. Hi, I love your work. Thank you so much. I've learned a huge amount over the years. Where in London are you from? Ever live in Crystal Palace? So no, I was, I was from Eltham. Originally in London. I was born in Greenwich. I'm kind of often down that way for work, not Crystal Palace. I do, I do go to London still for work. Hello from New Zealand, I enjoy watching your channel. Thank you very much, Khan. My granddad was from New Zealand. I have like 6 Abello 12-frame hives in top hive space. I know you have Abello hives as well. Does your queen excluder get stuck on the bottom of the first super? It's so annoying. I've had a couple of people say that to me. No, I, I've never had an issue with it, and I think it depends kind of how you get your hive tool in there, because I always kind of like lever through with the hive tool and do it that way. But also some people do it differently in terms of the, uh, what queen excluder they use. So I know Bello sell 2 different types of queen excluder for that hive, one where it sits in the rebate and one where it's sits on the rebate, and it's the standard national 460 by 460 is the one that I use. And I don't know, I don't have any issue with it sticking to the, the top of the super. And to be honest, if it did, I, I don't know if I'd be that annoyed if it stuck to it because I just kind of lift the first super off and it would just take the queen excluder off with it. Um, so yeah, not sure. Uh, oh, I've jumped through a lot of questions there, sorry about that. Uh, right, Joe Murphy says, are the 8-nuc long hives great for commercially producing nucs, or would you stick with individual nucs? So I think they're really good. Like, if you'd have asked me that question like 3 or 4 years ago, I would have said no, no way. Um, like poly nucs, definitely pick up cheap poly nucs in the sale and they're like half the price, whereas now it's probably like similar. I think we spoke about this last time. I think Rich, guy called Rich Ollie, got one of the long hives, the 8-nuc long hives, in the sale for like £550. So it's kind of like you're paying like £65 a slot or something like that. Probably poor maths, but they're really good and they're, they're the easiest in the world for making nucs because you can just start off with one colony, build that colony up just over all of the boxes, and then just put the dividers in, share the brood out, take the queen out, add queen cells in, and just open up all the slots. and literally come back and you've got 8 nucs. It is the easiest thing in the world. Um, so yeah, so I, I, it's one of the things, like, I get given some stuff to review, um, and some of it's good and some of it's not so good, and that's one of the ones that I would definitely like. I, I've really considered going and buying more and thinking I'll just do a few of these because it makes my life so easy. So I really do like them. Um, but as always, I would go with cheapest. Uh, James Morgan says hello from Mississippi. Hello, James. Hi, Brooklyn's Honeybees, hope you're doing well. Uh, Angler says hey up from Rotherham. I'm loving all these like different ways of saying hello, it's great. Been watching your channel and it's great, very informative. Just beginning our beekeeping journey, would you recommend getting local bees over, say, from another county? Thanks. So you hear a lot of this, and I don't want to attract like a huge amount of hate And I'm not going to try and do a hard sell on our nucs because we're basically sold out on them anyway. My view is that it does not matter where you get your bees from. Definitely doesn't matter in terms of counties. It just doesn't in the UK, especially like in England and in Wales. I hear people like saying they want to keep black bees and then they go and import AMMs from Ireland and you think, well, play on. you're importing bees. They're like, yeah, but that's the, that's the native black bee. And it's like, well, it's— if it's the native black bee, then surely you should be able to get it in the UK, not Ireland. So I know that's going to rub some people up the wrong way. It's just my view. Like, my experience is I kind of started off like that and thought, oh, that's what I've been told, is, you know, they're locally adapted to their area within like 10 or 15 miles, and if you move them away, they're not going to do very well. That's how I started beekeeping, and that's what I thought at the beginning. And tried the bees and got the local bees and went, spoke to the local beekeeping association, and they gave me the virgins. And I got them locally mated by locally drone— by local drones, and they were horrible. Like, they were pathetic, stingy little colonies, no bees in there, really vicious. Lucky if you got a super. Like, really, if you got a super full at the end of the year, you would have done really, really well. And then I started getting some, some Buckfast bees in from Italy and Greece, and everyone said, oh, you'll be feeding them until you run out of sugar, and then they'll— oh, then they won't be prepared for a Welsh winter. And it probably like quadrupled the amount of honey I got over, say, like a 7-year average. And I lose like no, no bees compared to at the beginning when I used to lose loads and loads of colonies. But that is just my personal opinion, and that is why beekeeping I think is so great. What I would say for local bees though is that, you know, if you're going to go and get your bees from someone who you know locally and you can ask questions and you can go and see the bees first, then that's fantastic and it's kind of worth its weight in gold. I like to think I do that virtually for people, so we do the live chats and people can ask questions as well. But yeah, in terms of the bees I don't think there's much of a difference, but good luck, and I hope you start off well with your beekeeping. It's a very good hobby. Next question, Joe Murphy says, do you find a hive full of 14 by 12 doesn't require fondant over winter, or is this still the case? Was considering going 14 by 12 so feeding is less of an issue and I can leave them to it. So that is the exact reason why I switched to 14 by 12, because I just thought When I was on, when I was on single brood, I was struggling a bit with swarming. Colonies are too big for my single brood boxes. When I was on double brood, I was losing too much honey in that double brood at certain points of the season. It was bliss, like it was really good system. I didn't know what I had until it was gone and I went to 14 by 12 thinking, well, it gives me that perfect benefit of like the size of the box is where I want it to be. The amount of honey that I can kind of leave them or lose at the end of the season is not that much, but it's enough to see them through. So I find it very rare that I have to feed my colonies that are in 14 by 12 with fondant. Very rare. But it's weird that they're strange because it's kind of like you're hefting them, you're thinking, I've got loads of weight, got loads of weight, got loads of weight. And then like you come to a point and it's just gone. The weight's gone because the colony's a big because it's a big box and my bees like to overwinter in big clusters. So you kind of get to the point where it's like it's back end of March is the point where if they're going to starve, they're going to starve. However, I don't recommend 14 by 12 anymore. It's just a pain. I really, really wish I hadn't gone to 14 by 12 and stuck with nationals. Yeah, right, next question. Do you use Abelo nucs? I've recently purchased them and I'm very impressed. I do. I've got a few Abello nucs. They are really, really good. The things that are— things I like about them are it's like they're solid. They're, um, what's the word, when there's like little bits, all the little bits, as opposed to it being like a single molded unit. What I don't like though, there's one thing that I really don't like about the Abello nucs, and I wish there was a way around it, but I don't think there is, is that it's got a small feeder, very small feeder. And I just wish that there was a way that they could have like a molded big feeder, like a— like if they did a polyash forth feeder, it'd be great because it is a pain when you're trying to feed them up for winter and you've got to go back to each of them like 6 times because each feeder only takes like, I don't know, a couple of litres of syrup. So I wish they had a bigger feeder. I love the floor, that's my favourite bit of it. It's like a solid plastic floor. I'm gonna do a little hack, I've got a little hack on board for, for the Abello floors. So if you can— if anyone's seen the Abello floors, they come with these— they come with lots of bits and bobs that you can lose, but they've got these 6 discs in the floor. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to cut a hole in one of them and then kind of turn it into an underfloor entrance. But I'm going to turn it so one way it's solid and then the other way it's an underfloor entrance, and I'm going to have it as a backup. So if they're ever getting attacked by wasps, close the front entrance up and I'll just open this bottom underfloor entrance up underneath, and then the wasps will have no idea what's going on and the bees will work it out pretty quickly. So I'm going to do that on a video. I think that'll work nicely. But yeah, I do— I like the Ebola nucs, they're very good. He's going to tell his wife that he's busy tomorrow, lots of your videos to watch, top man. So yeah, so I'm filming all of those videos tomorrow, 14 videos I'm going to film tomorrow. is probably going to be issued out to the channel over like 2 or 3 months. I've got a fair bit of editing to do then. Right, I'm just going through. Well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna jump back onto some— no, I'll carry on with the chat questions actually, and we'll get through all of those, and then I'll jump back to my list. Ben Wong says he does Apiguard, then oxalic acid in December. Okay, that's good that you're following it up with oxalic. That should help. Danny says, hello from Redditch. Have you thought using Broodminder during winter? I've heard of Broodminder. I honestly say I don't know what it is, um, so put a link in there or something, or you'll have to explain Broodminder. I've not seen that. I don't have the information. Uh, Peter Sabba says hi. Hi, Peter. Joe Murphy says, how effective is drone flooding for queen rearing? Doesn't make much of a difference in how many drone flooding colonies are needed to make a difference. So it depends where you live is, is the answer there. If you live in the middle of nowhere, if you live in a desert, then if you've got like 6 colonies and you're sticking a couple of frames of drone foundation in all of them, then you're going to be pretty much accountable for all of the queen mating that's going on. If you're in London, in like central London— or not central London, in the suburbs of London where there's a lot of beehives it's probably not going to make that much of a difference. But the way that I see it is that why not make as much of a difference as you possibly can? I think, I think it does make a difference, and I think a lot of people who do it seriously, they kind of try and do like satellite apiaries as well. So they're not so much flooding the apiary where they're getting the matings with drones, they're flooding that apiary and they're flooding satellite apiaries around it as well, and and they could be as much as kind of like half a mile, a mile away. They might do it in like a little bit of an arc. So there's loads of different strategies on this. My view is though, every single time you kill a bad queen and you introduce a new good queen, you're iteratively improving your stock. And you do see that people kind of over the course of maybe 5, 10 years can transform rubbish bees into pretty decent bees. Not completely organically. I would say that they're bringing in some lines, bringing in some good genetics, and taking it from there. But it does, it does make a difference. And the thing is, it doesn't cost you anything. Like, the bees are going to create loads of drone foundation anyway, so the bees are going to create loads of drone brood anyway. If you stick a couple of frames of drone foundation in, they just put the drone brood on the drone foundation and then leave the rest of the frames and kind Kind of ends up with a much neater hive. So that's yeah, that's what I do. Yado Yado says hello. See you in Telford on the 25th of Feb. You will indeed. I'll be there all day because they have put us on for our Q&A at the very end of the day. There's going to be about seven people left over. It's just going to be me, Richard, and Griff sitting on the stage having a cup of tea with no one, no one asking any questions. I'm going to be there the night before as well. So Rich says, yeah, £530 in the December sale for the, for that, what's it, the 8-nuc long hive. Very good. Hi Laurence, how can I force my bees to build in the next super? Sorry, I deleted the last message before I sent it. So I remember when I started always trying to kind of like get my bees to move up to the next super and trying to kind of build it and kind of, come on, Go upstairs, there's empty foundation up there that you need to work on. And they just do it when they're ready for it. That's the best advice I can give, which is you can't rush them. You can't say, come on, move up there. They just do it when the colony is big enough, when there's enough bees to cover the frames, when there's enough bees to keep the frames warm enough, when there's enough young bees to create enough wax to draw out the foundation. And that all links back to the queen, and it links back to the status of that colony and how that queen and the colony is developing through the season. So you don't necessarily want to kind of say, well, how can I force my bees to build into the next super? Because you've got no control over that. What you do have control over is how quickly and how aggressively that brood nest is expanding. So early on in the year, if you want to speed things up, Sugar syrup definitely helps. 1:1 sugar syrup, it really does help. And people, I think, are a little bit scared, kind of thinking, oh, I can't do sugar syrup because then I'll have sugar syrup up in my supers. But I don't think that's a massive problem if you're doing it early on in the year and you've got exclusively foundation and your bees on, like, say, the first super. Pop a feeder on and just give the bees like a litre of 1:1 sugar syrup. By the time they've taken that sugar syrup down, they're going to take it down, they're going to store it in the brood nest firstly. The queen's going to say, wow, there's loads of excess nectar coming in here, better turbocharge my lighting. And then the bees are going to say, right, we can— we need to feed all of this brood. So it increases the heat of the colony, gives the bees something to eat, which means that they can start producing wax, which means that they're going to draw out the wax. And before you know it, that whole super going to be completely drawn out. And then at that point, I'd probably take the feeder off, but there's nothing wrong with you doing it again. But what I would say, you can get caught out here if you do the same again and put another super on and then you start feeding. What you'll find after they've taken that feed down is that the top super, they've started to draw it out. The bottom super, they start to store it in. So you definitely don't want to be feeding them till they're storing the sugar syrup. But that, that would be my recommendation to get them going, just in the first super. Feed through that first super and they're not going to store it in there, they're just going to turn it into drawn comb. And then once you've got that, once you've got the first super on, you're flying. It soon becomes 3 or 4. Right, next question. Do you find the damp can kill bees over winter? It rained non-stop here for 15 days or so, warm and cold, and I lost some wooden colonies that were under trees. All the ones in poly survived though. So, so everyone knows bees, bees don't like the damp. Um, this is the reason that I go, I go with my setup and I make sure that I've got superior top insulation above the cluster because it's wet, isn't it? It's, it's— the UK is wet. It's been pretty miserable. And inside, it's crazy. Like, I looked in some colonies the other day, you look inside and it's just like you can feel the heat coming out and it's like a real dry heat. This is out of poly hives. So all I would say is, yeah, damp can definitely kill them. And for all colonies, just make sure you've got some sort of insulation sitting on top. And that can be, you know, I love a polyashworth feeder. Doesn't have to be that, it could just be like a sheet of Sellotex. And then you will find that that does give you the kind of a little bit of help from the dampness in that it's not forming directly above the cluster, it's just forming on the side walls. But you're going to get lots of condensation. And I wouldn't do anything like— I see a lot of people wrapping their hives, and I'm not speaking for anywhere else except the UK, but I think in the UK you don't need to wrap your hives. Like, the wood, like cedar wood, is fine. It's not getting through there. And a little bit of moisture inside the hive isn't the worst thing in the world. Like, bees will go out to forage water in the winter to break down their stores. You see them out all the time foraging water, so if you get a little bit of water in the hive, it's not the end of the world. What you don't want is a cold cluster with condensation dripping on it. So no, I don't see it as a big issue. I don't see my wooden colonies kind of performing any worse than the poly colonies, but I do have that top insulation on all of them. I've noticed I'm getting condensation in my nucs, all have extra insulation on top. Any tips? Bees are thriving well. So no, like you will get a little bit of condensation, especially in the nucs where you've got that— I'm assuming it's kind of like you've got like a BS Honeybees or a Maysmore or a Payne's with like a plastic sheet. You will get condensation on a plastic sheet. You've got insulation on top, maybe you need a bit more insulation on top, but apart from that, I wouldn't worry too much as long as the bees are thriving well. That's kind of pretty much all you can do for them. Have they got ventilated floors? If they're on like mesh floors as well, that could help. But it's probably you going in and checking on them. That's where the moisture is coming in. But I wouldn't worry about it. It's perfectly normal. Any thoughts on wintering on singles, adding a second brood box in April, May, then once the top brood box is drawn out, move it up above a super with an excluder and do the standard demerit process? Yeah, you can do it that way. It's not quite as effective, I found, doing it like that. I originally thought that, like, overwinter on doubles, and that's what you said there, isn't it? Once the top brood is drawn out, move it up above the super with an excluder. Yeah. So I find it doesn't work quite the same doing it like that, because all you're doing, you're effectively taking a brood nest and splitting it in half and then putting some supers in the middle. And for some reason, the bees don't take to that quite as well. They don't— it's not like they think they've swarmed. So I seem to remember doing that before and thinking, oh, this is great, this is going to work really well, and then, and then they swarmed. Whereas if you do it the other way around and you're just taking a single frame down below with a mixture of like drawn comb and foundation, I found the bees— like, the bees in the lower box— I know, obviously I don't know what the bees are thinking, but it appears that they think that they've swarmed. very, very unlikely to get a swarm in the next kind of 2 to 3 weeks after doing that. But is it— the method that you said there could, could work. Like, I've only tried that a couple of times, but I quite like, I quite like my process as it is. And you can do, you can do that demo, you can do it so many different ways and switch it around. So if you, if you've got a double brood, what I would suggest is I always find, especially here on double brood The bees start off in the winter, like when they're going into winter, you've got like a brood. The brood is all at the bottom and all of the honey is all at the top, which is standard kind of winter configuration. I always found come April, like all of the bees would be in the top, all of the brood would be in the top, and the bottom box would just be like completely surplus to requirements, like it just wouldn't be there. So I would just take that away, put the supers on, a couple of supers at a time. and then keep that box back and then do my demo round on that box. It's just, it's a slightly different way of doing it, but the bees seem to, seem to do a little bit better doing it that way around. Trying to limit swarming and drawn out combs. Let's have a go at that, see how the bees are performing, and if you get a chance, pull out the bottom box and then try it that way around. Hi, am I going to the Telford event? I am indeed, I'll be there on the 25th. I've just flicked down through loads of comments now. I've missed everyone. Dale Hancock says, hi Lawrence, going to be my first year in beekeeping in Cornwall. Would you recommend building my colony for the first year, i.e., double brood and sacrifice some honey for a stronger colony for the second year? So if you're starting out with a single nuc in, say, April, you can do so much with a single nuc in a single year. Like, it is Crazy the amount of like buildup that you could get. So I did it this year. I started off with a single colony and I turned it into 20 nucs in like 2 months, something like that. And I finished it in like June. I could have got— I realistically think I could have got that to 80. So 1 nuc to 80 nucs in a year, that's adding in queens, that's adding in quite a lot of resource, but it was doable. So for you, so with 1 colony And the question here is, should you double brood just to get a strong colony going into the second year? I would suggest sacrificing honey in the first year is always a good idea, I think, because it gives you a lot of options. So first thing you want to avoid doing is losing your colonies to a swarm, because then it really sets you back, like it massively sets you back. And I think this is how a lot of people give up on beekeeping, is that they get their first colony of bees They don't want to do anything wrong. They're too slow to put the boxes on, the colony swarms, they get queen cells, they leave one queen cell, the queen doesn't mate, and then the colony dies the next year because you've got a poorly mated queen, and it's game over. You've not got any bees then. So what I always suggest to people in your first year, if you want to keep a few colonies of bees, just take a few splits, build them up, get them on double brood straight away, because that gives you so many more options. And once they've got to the point where they're on double brood, I would just split straight away. One split. So split those— the double brood into 2 hives. I'd add a queen in. Much easier to add a mated queen in and do that split. And then you've got 2 hives, and you can probably do that, like, say, before the June gap. And, and what's the beauty of doing it when they're in the June gap is that you can make the split and then you can feed them at the same time. You put your first super on if you want, feed them through the super. So you get to the point where you're in like June, middle of June, and you've got 2 colonies that are nearly going to be coming up through that first super. And then my target for you would be try and take a single nuc split out of each of those and then go into winter with those 4. So you'd be going into winter with 4 colonies, 2 full-size hives and 2 nucs. Now that might seem like a little bit over the top, but let's say you lose 50% of them. over winter, like let's say you lose 2 colonies over winter, which wouldn't be— it's not unheard of losing 2 colonies over winter out of 4, then you've still got your 2 colonies for next year and you can just kind of start again and build up on it again. That would be my recommendation, as opposed to putting all your eggs in one basket and saying, right, I'm going to sacrifice some honey, go just go for a double brood colony going into winter. Try and do some preemptive splits and then build from there. Say, I didn't pronounce your surname, sorry, Mish. It says it would be good if Abello made a feeder that fits the full crown board of their nuc. I agree. I've said this today, Min, it'd be very, very good. I would really like it. Says thanks for your channel. It's hard to find info on poly in the US. Thanks to you, I'm going to order poly, though we don't have much to choose from. Which do you recommend, Lyson or Paradise Bee World? So it's— that's— that is a tricky question actually. I was, I was almost about to answer it like very kind of blasé and say, well, for me there's kind of only one there, but I, I can't speak for Lyson in terms of Langstroth because I know some people have had really bad experiences looking at Langstroth hives from Lyson. So for me in the UK, my favourite one by far is, is the Abello 12-frame. And I like all of the Abello Polyhives, which are made in the Lyson factory. So I do like all of the Lyson stuff, but you just need to double-check. Like, if you send me a picture or something, I can tell you if it's like a model that I've used before, but just double-check. I think the ones that aren't very good are the ones that kind of bolt together, like the flat packs, Lenti-style ones. As long as it's like a single big mold, I would go with the Lyson. Because I do like the Lyson. I've tried the Paradise, and it's not— it's not— I don't like hate the Paradise. There are some things that I do like about the Paradise, but it's the bee space issue that gets me on it. It's on like a— it seems to be on like a weird bee space. It's either like half and half, or it's on a top bee space, but the bee space isn't consistent. And I remember when I was doing it, I had it from 2 different companies that were sending me different bits. So one was Bee Equipment, one was Modern Beekeeping. The modern beekeeping one was fine, but the bee equipment one was a bit— had a few issues with it. So I don't, I don't use mine anymore, but I do like my Abello ones. Happy Friday everybody, hope you're all doing well. I'm doing well. Cheers, Jim Jim. Looking forward to meeting up on the 25th. I think everyone's looking forward to that, aren't they? Like, it's— there's going to be a lot of beekeepers there. I'm quite, uh, I'm quite excited to chat to people. It's gonna be good fun. Uh, says, how to care for bees in Jamaica? So I'm probably gonna not answer that question because I'm not an expert. I would love to come to Jamaica and look after some bees though. That would be very fun. Maybe like combine it with like a cricket tour. I like my cricket as well. And some jerk chicken, that'd be nice. I kind of like the Jamaican vibe, is be up for that. Right, Philip J. Kennedy, who's going to be called Phil from now on, says this Broodmind is pretty cool, seems to have open source hive temp data by this website. Ah, right, yeah, so that's where I've seen it. I've said that before, I really want someone to come up with a good easy plug-and-play like smart hive monitoring system. Because all the ones I've seen been so difficult. And I said this before, I had one though that someone gave me. It's probably like a £300 monitoring thing, and I was really excited. And it was only like kind of— it wasn't even monitoring in the hive, it was just a hive scale and like a little weather thing and a GSM card that sent texts and said, oh, your hive's gone or it's been nicked. And they gave, they gave it to me for free, and they said, I'll do some, do some reviews and do some videos. And I was so excited. And then it just like, it just wasn't waterproof. It wasn't waterproof at all. And it took— it kind of had like so much like back and forth to getting it, getting a new one, trying to get it fixed. And you'd wake up in the morning, you'd be like, wow, my hive's put on 435 kilos overnight, it's fantastic. And quite, quite clearly that's not the case. And we just never got to the point where I could get it working. I was gutted, but I would love to have that kind of information. but also like that internal data, you know, like kind of humidity in the hive and the temperature of different areas. It'd be cool. So there's another, another company that approached me about doing something, and he works with a guy down the road, and it's to do with like the sound. They're quite a big company now. It's to do with like the sound of different pollinators, which I thought was really cool. So they kind of put these microphones, I guess, into a, like, into a field and then they can like hone in on the different frequencies of different animals and they count the diversity just through the noise. Not obviously good for honeybees because it's just one, but I thought it was pretty cool. Right, we're doing quite well. Again, if you enjoy the stream, thumbs up are always good. Here in Kentucky, USA, I have a small apiary, but to help with Condensation, I tilt my hive with wood blocks for winter, any moisture drips away from the bees. Do you do anything differently? So no, that's a good point. If you've got a solid floor, you should tilt it so the water comes out. Generally in the UK, I think most people— so some people have solid floors, but generally most people have like an open mesh floor, so any moisture just falls out. But as I said, as long as the moisture is condensing on the side walls and not that top wall, underneath the crown board, then it's definitely not dripping on the cluster, which I think is the worst thing for the bees. Uh, Ben Wong says, we've had major losses in our area, generally Northwest London. Have you seen many, any yet? So no, I've, like I said, I don't, I don't go out actively looking at this time of the year, but like I go to the apiaries and you can see, see bees flying in pretty much every one, uh, bringing some pollen in as well. It's been, it's been nice the last couple of days. So Ben, I mean, I'm interested to know kind of your regime of varroa treatments and disease and stuff like that. But I have heard a few people saying about major losses. I think like last year was a difficult one in the UK because it was such a good year, which means like your bees are a bit knackered going into winter, like queens are a bit knackered. And then it was quite a late summer, so they went on and on and on. but then they run out of food, but it was still quite mild. So then the bees are thinking, like, we're running out of stores here. And I said, I said this earlier in the year, I think a few people who get caught out with hives that will starve. And then it's been cold, you know, properly cold, isn't it? It's got down to— I know it's not, it's not cold by US standards, but like, it's in the UK, it's not only cold, it's damp as well. So cold and wet, and it's got down to like -10, -11. and then it's come back up and then it's gone back down again. So I do think the combination of like quite a difficult year for the bees, an extended summer, and then a lack of feed combined with those cold snaps, um, I, I was expecting quite a lot of losses this year. What are your thoughts on thymophar? I got a feeling my treatment didn't knock the varroa as far back as I wanted it to. So I've used thymophar and it was good and it seemed to work and the colonies came through well. I didn't do any testing or anything like that, but as I said before, I found it better than the Api-Guard in that when I went back after 10 days, it was, it was still like really pungent, and there was still like the matrix of mesh there that the bees were trying to strip out. But I do, I always think like double-pronged when it comes to varroa. Like, don't rely just on a single treatment in the year, whether it's in the summer or the spring or the autumn. Combine it with a good a good winter treatment as well. When do you come to the USA? Um, I would love to come to the USA. I've been to America once and I just transited through like New York, I think it was, and it was properly snowing and I was really scared because I thought we were going to crash on the plane on my way to Costa Rica. But I would, I would love to come to the USA. I was kind of jealous seeing everyone at Hive Life, um, I was kind of just sitting at home and it was a bit rubbish, but it's not, it's not cheap to get to the USA, so I don't know, we'll have to, we'll have to see. Where are the borage growing regions in the UK? Finding fields of borage really is a gold mine. Must be the best honey yielding plant. So borage for me is the nicest tasting honey, and a lot of people disagree. A lot of people don't like borage and a lot of people think it's quite bland. I love borage. It is my favorite honey by far. It's just got some— it's just got that taste about it that I really love, and it's got this texture that's very different. You ever seen— have you ever watched like, I don't know, young YouTubers? They do this thing like frozen honey. You ever seen like a frozen honey thing where they put the honey in the freezer and like squeeze it out? Borage honey is like that, just normally. It's got this crazy quality to it. It's like— it's difficult to describe. It's almost like molten glass. Um, that's not answered any of your questions at all. I like borage honey. So borage, Essex is the hot spot around that kind of way. Uh, and what's, what's strange is that finding fields of borage really is a gold mine. Yeah, like it's one of those plants that yields and yields and yields. I've never taken my bees to it, but I know lots of people that do. But, and it is a massive but, it comes with the caveat that lots of people take their hives to it. So it is the worst place in the world to go for EFB. It's really, really bad. Look at the EFB hotspots around Essex, wait, it's shocking how bad it is. And you'll get people taking like 100 colonies down there in one field, and then the next field there's another guy with 100 colonies down there. The hive density is massive and they're just being moved all around the country. So that's the biggest, that's the biggest reason, uh, region I think around Essex, that's where most people go around there. Um, but it is pretty cool. Uh, Joe Murphy says, when are the rest of the members-only videos going online? Still waiting eagerly to find out what happened to the wild colony in that tree you saved from years ago. So they go online kind of like every week. I put a new one out online. Um, but the 14 that I'm filming tomorrow, they're not going out. They will go into the members section straight away, and then they'll just kind of be like drip-fed. Because otherwise it gives me— it's too much work. So I'm trying to make it a little bit more sustainable this year. But you can see the ones that are on there if you go on the member section. It does show you the videos. You don't have to pay for it, but you can see, you can see what's on there. And the wild colony in the tree, never— I never got around to saving it because I went up there and it was dead, or it absconded, which is a bit of a bit gutting because I was really excited about that. But it's interesting, some of my videos are doing quite well on YouTube at the moment, getting lots of views. And it's the ones that, like, the abandoned apiaries and ones in wild trees are the ones that people like. So I'm gonna have to find some more videos to do like that. So if you know of any abandoned apiaries, give me a shout. People always say that, like, I wish, I wish someone would call me up with an abandoned apiary. Must be so cool. And I think, yeah, it's cool. I love it. It's, it's the best thing in the world. They're like, oh, I've got like 4 colonies of bees, like someone's left them on my land. And I always, I always like really careful when people say— I say, well, do you know who they are? And they say, yep. And I say, well, would they not come and take them? They said, nope, absolutely not. They don't want to come and take them. I said, like, how long have they been untended? And they're like, been there like 6 years. Like, they are falling apart. And, you know, like, I get them to like send it to me on a text just so it's not me going and like interfering with other people's hives. And I've never, I've never had any comeback about anything that I've gone and taken away. But it is good fun kind of seeing what state they're in. And I remember, I think, I think, I don't know if I posted this one online, it might have been before I was doing videos, but I went to one of these abandoned apiaries in the middle of nowhere and it was really difficult to get down to it. And I remember opening up the first colony and there was just nothing in it. Like, it was just— even the frames had kind of rotted away. There was nothing. It was just gone. And then the next one I opened up and this just come up like that. And I thought, oh my God, what is this that's come up? And it was a European hornet's nest. And it was only small. I definitely posted this on YouTube. I remember that. It was only small, like little cluster. It must have been like the first round of brood from a European hornet queen. But the European hornet queen was there and I was just petrified, absolutely petrified I was. And you're like, why am I petrified of a European hornet when I got my big BB wear Michelin Man ultra suit on? But I was, I was really scared. But there were no, there were no bees. Uh, Cloud Kicker says, I saw on YouTube the bottom box with colony, then queen excluder on top, and there were multiple small queen, uh, boxes connected with the purpose to support the new queens on top. What is your opinion? So yeah, I've seen, I've seen ones like that. I think I, I wouldn't use that unless it was like a standardized system. And because we're in the UK, we use national. There's no kind of like standard— like, do you like the Mini Plus? If you put like 4 Mini Plus together, it fits under one of them. I can't remember which one it fits under, but it fits under it like perfectly. They should do one like that for nationals because it would be good. I would definitely overwinter some boxes like that if you could get away with it under a super or something, or a split super. I think it's a really nice neat system. Um, but we don't have an equivalent in the UK, I don't think. Uh, says hi from MI. I'm not sure where MI is, but hi, James. says— Joe, you, you fire out the questions, I love it, keep them coming. Uh, could you do an autopsy video of your losses looking at what killed each? That would be super healthy. Yes, I'll definitely do that. I do, I do do that. Uh, and do you know what it generally is? Like, it's just generally like a poorly mated queen. I would say 9 times out of 10, my winter losses are poorly mated queens. It's never anything sinister. It's never like colony collapse disorder, or they've been licking some pesticides from the field next door. It's just the queen's not got mated, and you, you can always tell. It's just a really small cluster, a little bit drone brood dotted around. But I will do— I would definitely— I will do autopsies on everything, all the losses that I get this year, 100%. Oh yeah, be super helpful, not healthier. I think— I wonder what that was. But Ben Wong says, I have asked Abello if they can do a super for their poly nucs too. Yeah, so I think, I think they are doing a super. It's definitely on the cards. Be amazed how expensive it is to get tooling for these, these Abello or poly boxes in general. It costs like loads and loads of money. And if you think, say, it costs like £25,000 to get the tooling done, and then they're selling a Super for £30,000, they're probably making like a fiver profit per Super, and they've got to make £25,000 back before they make any money on it. It's a lot of Supers to sell. I did get a message— you people know I do social media for Abello— so I got a message from Damien saying, oh, we're gonna have a big poly sale. People are saying they're annoyed that, uh, only people going to the beekeeping show are getting the mega sales. So he said, right, we're going to do a sale to end all sales on polyhives. And the way it's going to work, it's going to be slightly different from normal. So normally it's kind of 10% off, 15% off, whatever it is. He's going to do like— and he's not told me the details of it yet— but he's going to do like a cumulative sale. So it's going to be like, buy, buy one polyhive, you might get like 5% off. Buy 5, you might get 10% off. By 20, and you might get— I don't know, I don't know how far he's going to go with it, but it sounded pretty cool. So keep an eye on that. That comes out 1st of Feb, 1st of Feb to like the 6th or 7th of Feb, I think they're doing their polyhive sale. And it's polynucs as well. So if you're, if you're going to get some, if you want to get some polyhives, I'd wait for that. Uh, Rich says, Dale started last year, 2 nucs from Lawrence, got 3 hives and 5 nucs. Oh, okay, yeah, it's just saying, yeah, good stuff. You're firing away there, Rich, good work. Thank you. Starting with 2 nucs, okay, so 2 hives, gonna need more space. Yes, that is beekeeping. You start off and then you run out of space in the first year, it's great. That's why you need to oversize everything you get. Just don't get a 6-frame extractor, get a 12-frame, and then before you buy the 12-frame, upgrade it to a 20-frame, and you'll be so happy you did. Did I pick up any bits on Simon the Beekeeper? So yeah, I did. I was pretty quick off the mark when the email came through. Like, I'm pretty good getting emails on my phone, so maybe like a minute after the email came through, I was on the website and couldn't get on. It's like it crashed. I think everyone else, everyone else was just as quick as me. So I left it for like maybe like 5 days, 4 or 5 days, and I just thought— and I had a couple of goes where I got like a little bit further through the checkout. For anyone who doesn't know, Simon the Beekeeper is just like a beekeeping company over here that's closed down. They're having like a flash sale, properly cheap. So I kept on getting through, like through the checkouts, and then it would like crash, or it would say, oh, one of the things you've got in your basket is no longer there. So I'd change it and then I'd get really angry. I don't want it, don't want any of this bloody stuff anyway. And then I kept on trying. So in the end I bought 12 bee suits. Yeah, I know. And I said before, I'm not— I've not bought them to flog them. I've bought them on the off chance that I ever get around to doing kind of like introduction to beekeeping training or classes. I don't want people coming with their bee suits, so I want to provide them with bee suits that I know they're my bee suits, they're clean. they're not bringing any disease into the apiary. Um, so yeah, 12 bee suits, it's really cheap. And if you want to know which ones I went for, I didn't go for the Defender ones because I've got a couple of those, and it's not that I didn't like them, but I really didn't like the fit of them. There's the fit, just like, just does not fit my body. I've got like a pear-shaped body, whereas I've had some of the other Simon the Beekeeper suits and they're kind of like a little bit more flexible, a little bit more baggy around the waist. So I went for the, the one down, like the Pro one, um, and I bought loads of different sizes, but generally like starting at like 2XL and then going up. I found that some in the Beekeeper sizing was so small, like, and I know it's not for me, it's for other people, but like an extra large, just no chance, barely get my leg in it. If you split your colony into 2 and stop a swarm, what did you do with the second colony if you don't want to keep them or buy a second hive? So you will need to buy a second hive to put them in temporarily, but if you don't want to keep on expanding, you can just merge them back at the end of the year. But if you don't want to split your colonies, I would just do— like, I know I'm a proper one-trick pony with my Demaray split, but that is the perfect way of splitting your colonies because you get all the benefits of the split, you get it all in the same vertical space, and all you need to buy is like one additional brood box, and you just— you can make the splits that way. And then come the end of the year, you just take the top box, put it back down to the bottom, and they just merge back down again. And you've had all your swarm control, monster colonies, loads of honey, and you've done it under one hive roof. Well, I reckon I'm about 3 quarters of the way through my tea— no, like a quarter of the way through my tea, and it's basically cold now. Uh, right. Oh, there's a lot of questions. We're doing well. I said I was going to be on for an hour. I've been on for 56 minutes and I've got through 1 out of 6 of the questions on my list and barely got through the chat. So I'm quite happy to chat for a bit longer. It's good. Uh, right. Joe says, do you think the growing popularity of beekeeping could end up being negative long term with too many bees in some areas and not enough Forage, we need to focus on improving forage and rewilding. See here, you get the bees are getting a bad press at the moment. Like honeybees, like people are saying there's too many honeybees, too many people doing it. I don't think it like definitely not in Wales. Like in Wales, there's there's plenty to go around. There really is. I think they say like in in urban areas. You're not to say urban anymore, are you? In like cities. It could be an issue, and it could just be that there's just too many bees and there's not enough plants, and everything's just like paved over, and people have got their plastic grass or concrete tarmac drives. And then it would be, it would be a bit rubbish. And I think the bees would tell you that though, you know. If you've got like your colony through the year and it was beautiful sunshine and you had like intermittent showers and you just didn't get any honey, then I think people would lose interest in beekeeping. So I do, I agree, we need to focus on improving forage and rewilding. Yeah, I would agree with that. I always say to people, you know, like they say, what can I plant to kind of help bees? And I think the standard answer is I'll plant some like wildflowers. Wildflowers are good for bees. But I always say no, like, do it, plant a tree, plant a tree. Like, Google what's a good bee tree, um, plant a tree or plant like a nice shrub and try and plant something that's a little bit different. So you see, like, they've got like— I think there's one called like the Chinese bee tree, which, which will, will like thrive in the UK. Maybe not thrive, but will like survive in the UK. But it flowers at really unusual times, kind of like back end of August, September. So if you had like one of those in London, like the bramble flow is long gone, and then you've got this gap before the ivy comes. So you kind of want to like strategically plant stuff to fill the gaps that are available. And especially like a big tree would be really good. What is the best time to check your bees in March, middle or end? New to beekeeping. So I would, I'd start checking them now, not like going in and pulling out frames, but like from kind of like first week of Feb, I'm up at the apiary pretty much every week, like having a look around. If I, I'll go up there, what tend to do is like try and go there in the middle of the day, warmest point of the day, and then if a colony is busy at the entrance and there's lots of pollen coming in, that's fine. Do not need to look in that hive. Give it a heft. If it's hefting okay, that's kind of like ticking the box, it's done, don't need to do anything. If there's pollen coming in and they're light, really easy, slab of fondant, big slab of fondant, and walk away. If there's kind of nothing like that going on, Then I always get a little bit more concerned and I will have a look inside. So if there's like no activity whatsoever, almost certainly dead, and then action is urgently required. So what I tend to do is just seal them up. Um, you can like— I turn my underfloor entrance upside down is for me the easiest way to seal things up. So lift the whole hive up, take the floor off, turn the floor upside down, and then that seals it and nothing can get in, nothing can get out. And it, it sounds a bit harsh, and you'll kind of think, oh, there's still a few bees in there, there might be 2 or 3 frames of bees in there. But if you've gone in there and you can see when the brood pattern's gone wrong and you know that colony is not going to survive, I just cut my losses and just say, right, that colony is not going to survive. I'm not merging it, I'm not doing anything with the frames, and every single bee that is in that colony, I want to seal them in. And they will die, but you, you're protecting kind of like the integrity of your apiary as opposed to trying to get a single colony through. So kind of up there, yeah, answer the question, I'm up there, I'm up there pretty regularly. Have you ever done the honey monitoring scheme? So yeah, so for people that don't know that, in the UK, if you live in certain areas— most people get onto it, but they do kind of specify certain areas now— you send off a couple of vials of honey and they do some crazy centrifuge and put pollen coefficients on it and tell you what your bees have been foraging on. And yeah, it's only like 3 years in a row. It's pretty cool. I always, I always try and like do a different apiary, but they're sometimes a bit funny about that. They sometimes like to just get like a single one. The last one I took though was cool. I wanted to test my Ling Heather because Ling Heather, to sell it as like Ling Heather, it needs to be 75% pure. And I've always thought, how do you know if it's 75% pure without— you have to go and get it tested. So they went and got it tested and it was like 78% pure. I was like, Yes, win. Um, but I was surprised. I thought it was going to be way higher than that because these are kind of like— there is other stuff around, but at that time of the year you take all the honey away and then you just give them like empty boxes of drawn comb, and then they're right on the heather and the smell is unbelievable. So I was thinking it's going to be like 80, 90%, and it was like 77, 78%. It passed the test at least, and that was good. Ben Gibbons says, what pollen is available at the moment? Uh, depends where you are. I saw the first snowdrops out around where we are, so there's probably like 2 or 3 weeks behind where you are in London. Um, but it's, yeah, it's kind of snowdrop crocus season, I guess. Uh, Alan says hi from Texas, nice advice for beekeeping. Hi, Alan. Saying about the, the high mortality rate, one of the theories around them literally working themselves to death due to the extended summer and the bumper crop we got. So, so yeah, that I, I said, I definitely think that contributes towards it, but I do think it's compounded by the other things as well because I, I find kind of it's only really the queen that gets a bit knackered like that if you've got like an old queen that's going to supersede, then you might have issues. But I think it's more— yeah, it's— did you feed them? I'll be interested to know if you fed them, because I think like that extended summer, it's like a good thing. And if you're keeping them fed, it should be a good thing. Uh, Ben also says, what are your thoughts on shook swarms? That is the one my association tend to use each year, then oxalic acid in December. I personally don't like shook swarms as I see wastage. So shook swarms is like a BBKA thing, and they're really on it with the shook swarms. And I remember, it's so weird how like your views and opinions change as you go through your beekeeping career, but I remember people saying they shook swarm their colonies every single year without fail. Beginning of the year, build the colony up, shook swarm it onto new equipment, scorched equipment, and that's the best for the bees because it builds up you get toxins building up in the wax. And it's kind of like one of these things that everyone laughs at and says, well, that's a load of rubbish, what a load of rubbish. But the BBKA generally push it as good advice. And I always thought, what a load of rubbish, what a load of rubbish, and what a huge, incredible waste. But I'm slightly warming to it a little bit more, just as I'm just reading it there for Joe talking about the EFB, just as that preventative measure for EFB. So, so I'm definitely not saying to people go shook swarm your colonies every year, and I don't think, I don't think I'd even have like the guts to go and like shook swarm a whole apiary just out of nowhere. But there is a massive benefit to shook swarming your apiaries, your entire apiary, is that if you've got kind of like subclinical EFB levels in that apiary that is, there's EFB there but it's not showing, you could probably get rid of it with a whole apiary shook swarm. If you shook swarmed all of your bees onto new equipment, new frames, wax foundation, let them kind of purge their stomachs for a few days, ideally not feed them, but then feed them if necessary after they've done that. If you've got subclinical EFB, that should get rid of it. So it gives you like a nice clean break. So I'm not up for doing it kind of proactively for no reason, but if you've got any inkling that you might have like EFB or subclinical EFB, it's worth it, it's worth a go. But yeah, my view on that has changed a little bit. Uh, Joe's saying about EFB and how lax some people can be. Yeah, it's, it's quite bad. There's a few beekeepers like that. On average, how much sugar should I expect one hive to go through in a year? Your channel has been a major reason I've fallen in love with bees. Very kind, thanks, John. So on average, that's difficult. I never really work it out, kind of think like per average. I would say like on my colonies, so I don't feed them in the spring, nothing at all. I stopped taking a spring crop because it was driving me mad, um, taking a spring crop and then the bees starving and then having to feed them in the middle of the year. So I don't feed them in the middle of the year either. I leave my spring crop on, and then when I take off my summer crop, so at the end of the year, I give them at least 14 litres of syrup, which is 2:1 at that time of the year. So it's probably close to— again, not doing the maths very well— it's probably close to like kind of 17, 18 kilograms of sugar. Call it 20 kilograms of sugar, and then round it up for like a second feed. So I'd say maybe 25 kilograms a year, and that's like top end because we do strip them right back to the brood box, take absolutely everything that's there. And again, somebody was like, I shouldn't do that, shouldn't take all the honey, but I find the bees overwinter very, very well on 2:1 sugar syrup or invert sugar syrup. So I wouldn't say more than that, 25 kilos, the final answer. Uh, Dry Cut Honey says hello everyone. Norman Johnston's hi from New Caledonia. Joe Murphy, I love it, I love the questions. Joe says, are there any strategies for dealing with Asian hornets and how long have we got until he gets established, do you think? Richard Knowles' videos on Asian hornets are scary. They are, they're pretty cool, aren't they? So I'm hoping and living in kind of like— forget what the word is now, but I don't think they're going to come to North Wales. I'm going to call that now. in that North Wales, it gets, it gets cold quite early on in the year, and it's kind of like a quite a wet, dank winter. And I don't think the queens will survive very well up here. So I'm hoping, uh, blissful ignorance maybe, that they're not going to get up this high to a point where they're going to be a real issue. Because you look at Richard's videos and you see like it's towards— it's really late in the season where they become like a big issues, his nucs and his colonies. Like, it's, it's like, is it September, October time? And for me, September, October time doesn't matter. The bees can just stay in the hive. They don't even need to come out because they're being fed. They're just, they're just kind of building up for winter. And then it gets cold up here. So in his videos in October, it might be like 25, 30 degrees. North Wales, you're kind of lucky if it's double figures. So I don't think in North Wales is going to be too much of an issue. I think on like the Channel Islands, yeah, it's definitely going to get that. That is just a matter of time. And I think this year is probably going to be a big year because it was so warm last year. Those end-of-season colonies are going to have thrown out tons of queens. The saving grace is that it was very cold, so that cold snap would have killed off a lot of them. But it will be interesting to see how far, how far north they can get. And I'm hedging my bets, kind of. They're not going to get much past Birmingham. And like I said, I'm, I'm hoping a little bit there as well. Right, let's do some more of these questions. Oh, Ben's chucking in an advert there. 40 buckets of borage honey to sell if anyone's interested. Lincolnshire-based. Give Ben a shout. Love, love borage honey. Um, Lambrook Farm says, what do you do for AFB in the UK? He's in the US. So it's a very strict but very simple policy for AFB in the UK, which is you seal the colony up and you burn them all. Everything, like every single frame, every single, um, box, the roof, the floor, everything all in one. And then you get a new colony of bees. you start again. And that is the rule. There's no antibiotics, there's no vaccines like you have coming out of the US. There is nothing. You burn everything, you start again. I had a bit of an issue with trying to burn things this year, like where we had colonies that had EFB. It was— I found it really difficult to burn them because what they say you have to do is like you seal the colony in and then you Open the lid up, and then you pour petrol in, and then you close it back up again, and then it's like the fumes of the petrol kill the bees. It's heartbreaking. It's like the worst thing in the world because you pour it in, and the bees are going buzz, and then it just goes buzz. Dead, like fifty thousand bees dead instantly like that. But the problem that I had was that when you lift the roof off. To, um, to pour the petrol in, all the bees fly out. So like, you've got all these bees flying in the air that are kind of EFB infected, and then they just go into other hives. So we didn't, we didn't get any reinfection, which was very lucky, but I didn't like that. But then someone gave me a really good tip that if you're doing it on— if you've got an open mesh floor, then the way to do it— great tip, this is— he said, no, no, no, you don't do it like that. He said, So what you do is you strap it all up and just turn the whole thing upside down so the roof is on the floor, the open mesh floor is on the top, and he says just pour it through the open mesh floor. I thought, that's a bloody good idea. That's not how the MPU showed me to do it, but that is a very good idea. So that's how I do it now, and that's pretty much foolproof. But I thought that, yeah, I was thinking of other ways of doing it, but I didn't, I didn't need to because he gave me a really good, um, good way of doing it. Dry Cut Honey has realized that I've got really tired eyes now. What time is it over there? So it is 10 past 11 at night. That's why I've got like that fancy mood lighting on. I thought I'd kind of show you this genuine wall. Um, Will Vandermeer says, like your videos. Are you, are you South African by any chance, Will? And if you are, congratulations on your One Day International victory today. He says he likes my videos. Thank you. More queen rearing videos, please. So I'm gonna do more queen rearing videos this year, without a doubt. That is like my one of my top 3 of more videos to do, more queen rearing videos. I'm gonna do a few different slants on the one that I already do. I'm going to show you some other ones as well. Does your Buckfast queens have an ill temper after the second year? So no, I've not found that. So this question is like when they go down in next generation. So ours are F1, so bred from a pure Buckfast breeder queen— can't call it a breeder queen— pure Buckfast queen. And then we've got F1s that are open mated. So, so the, the myth— it's not necessarily a myth, but what people say is that the next generation down from that you can get aggression. Generally people who don't like Buckfast that say that though. So my, my view is an honest view, which is as you move down through the generations you'll get more variety. Might be more anger, might be calmer, completely dependent on what the local drones in your area are kind of dictating. And the further you go down that line, the further you'll move away from the genetics and the traits that have been bred within those Buckfast queens. So I've done videos on this showing you F2 Buckfast, calmest bees in the world. I've had some F2 Buckfast that are absolutely horrible. But I've also had some kind of natural local bees that just doesn't matter what F generation they are, they're just mongrel and they're just horrible anyway. So yeah, there's a lot of, uh, people trying to taint the Buckfast name because they want local black bees, but I always say, don't— you kind of got to like look at both sides of the argument and make your own mind up. Um, that's what I'll say. Uh, Debbie says good night. Oh yes, getting late, isn't it, Debbie? Okay, yeah, hopefully see you in Telford. I was gonna say, anybody in Telford, um, who is going there, do, do come and say hi. I'm quite friendly. Um, but it's weird because I watch people on YouTube and I kind of think, I know this person on YouTube, I watch them, and you kind of build that relationship. And I guess you, you watch me, so you know who I am, but I don't know who people are, so I'm not going to know their names, but like just come and say hi. I'm well up for a chat. Joe says, "Oh, best beekeeping YouTube channel by far. Thanks for the advice. Don't see other channels answering our questions at 10 p.m. at night." I know I'm a little bit, I'm a little bit bonkers, but thank you, Joe, and thank you for asking the questions. Makes it a lot easier when there's good questions going on, and I just don't have to waffle on. Jill says, "Hi from Aberdeenshire. Have you used a solar wax melter?" Guessing that says wax. So yes, I have. I made my own one and it was really good, and then I trod on it, so I was really annoyed. But it did— it was very, very effective. I think I'm going to get another one this year because I always have like loads of dregs wax I don't want to have to mess around with them like firing up a big Mellow Flow for. So I'll speak to Damien, maybe I'll pick one up when I'm down in Telford and have a little play around with that. Uh, John Pierce says, having your apiaries 5 minutes away from your house, are you able to inspect all your hives in a day? If so, what was your record time? So yeah, so that's kind of what it's always been based on. Like, we work half days— I work half days on a Friday. So I had like 120 production colonies and then like 100 nucs, and I would do that in the Friday afternoon. I'd get back late. I'd get back at like kind of like 9 or 10 o'clock at night, but in the summer that's fine. and I'd get around all of them, and that's when they were kind of a bit further away as well. So I prefer, I prefer it now a little bit more chilled. Do you burn all the frames from winter losses regardless of what you think killed them, just in case? So I do, but I know most people, most people don't burn their frames. Um, it's, it's kind of dependent on the cost of like heating it up, but like frames are fine If you just put them through like a caustic soda solution, like a heated one, and it gets everything off. They come out like brand new, and you can do them in big tanks. So most bee farmers use a method like that, but for me, I don't have a big tank to do it in, um, and there's no way I'm standing there scraping frames because it's really boring. So I burn them. It's a little bit of a waste. But it's just clean slate. If you don't know what's killed them, burn them. Definitely not using the honey for anything. Definitely not making up splits. Definitely not using the boxes again. So you do need to do something. My opinion is you need to do something with them. You could look at it from like a risk-based perspective though and say it's a failed queen. I could look at a colony and pretty confidently say that's a failed queen. But is it a failed queen with EFB infection in there as well? You just need to agree and be comfortable with your own regime. And for me, yeah, I burn them all. Jim Jim says calling for -23 next week, was 10 degrees and raining yesterday. I still hear the buzz when I put my ear to the hives. Always nice to hear the buzz, isn't it? That's, that's very cold, -23. Wow. Joe says, to see at markets and farm shops, do you need to have a hygiene inspection? Also to sell, that says they'll generally ask for it. There's like a next level up now that we're finding that we're being kind of not turned away, but like they'll approach us to say, oh, do you want to stock your honey here? And we'll be like, yeah, definitely, that sounds great. They say, oh, you need Southsea accreditation, which is like that next level up above a hygiene inspection. So it's like a proper, like, quality management system that's in place, and you get audited once a year. It's quite a lot of work to go into it, and I think that's probably something that we will aim to do next year because people are clamping down on the sales without some sort of accreditation like that. You are— you've got great questions, Joe. It's just like the Joe Murphy question show. I love it. Right, do you target rapeseed early on, or do you think it's more bother than it's worth in terms of prep with pollen patties and having to harvest quickly? So it— I like oilseed rape. It's like my second favorite honey because it just makes the best soft set in the world. But I, I'm done with pollen patties, not using pollen patties anymore. We get loads of early pollen up here, and I always find that the bees, they packed in loads of ivy pollen over the winter. You get through the year and the frames are still full of pollen, so they don't need any pollen. All they need is just like stimulative 1-to-1 feeding. So if I'm taking them to the oilseed rape, which I don't, which I don't do anymore— so I've got a couple of sites where they sometimes plant some oilseed rape close by, and you can see if it's planted so you know to do it. But all I do, if I have a static oilseed rape site, I'll use it for like a spring harvest and making splits. Really good site for spring harvest and making splits. And all I'll do is just feed 1:1 syrup kind of like middle of Feb, early Feb, just to get them going and then leave them to it. And then as soon as it starts to come into flower, it's amazing. But it doesn't flower for very long. You hear people talking about it that used to flower for like 6 or 7 weeks. It definitely doesn't flower for 6 or 7 weeks where I am, the varieties that we've got. I'm not doing very well at getting to the bottom of these questions. I'm gonna, I'm gonna insist I get to the bottom of the chat, and then I'm gonna answer the questions on my sheet before I finish. I'm gonna drink my tea as well. Uh, Mem says, have I received my order from Simon the Beekeeper yet? So no, but I did get a notification today says it's been dispatched. But I did chase it up. It was a very polite chase. It was a case of just because I lost the order confirmation, so I just didn't want them to go out of business and take my money. But they— I was very polite, and they They sent it the next day. For the stored drawn comb super of hives that have died over winter, should you burn these too, or are they safe to keep on? No chance of disease? So again, it's all down to your strategy. So for us, we say the chance of the bees contaminating the supers isn't as great as in the brood area. Now, some people might not have that kind of point of view. A lot of bee farmers that I speak to though, they do distinguish and differentiate between their supers and their brood boxes. So anything comes into contact with any brood, they will, they will put through caustic solution or burn, and then the supers they will reuse. It would be very, very difficult to track that, and this is why I've always thought is that if you're trying to kind of link up supers to the hives that they go on makes it very difficult in terms of management and just tracking where everything is. So I wouldn't do that, and we don't do that. How transmissible is EFB and AFB? Let's say you've burnt all the affected hive components. What about if you've touched stuff in your shed during inspections when it was subclinical? Could it reappear? So EFB and AFB are very different in terms of like the contagious nature of it. So AFB is so much more like if you contaminate it on stuff like that, whereas EFB, it, you know, if you put it through like a bleach solution, it's gone. If you burn it, it's gone. You get to a point where it's not— it's not— AFB is spore-forming, and that's what makes it so deadly, is that it forms these spores, puts out billions into the air, and then it only takes like a couple of spores to reinfect a colony again. So within the hive, they're both very, very transmissible. But if you're burning all the affected hive components, as in like scorching it, for AFB, it's still a massive risk and you shouldn't do it. You should just burn them, as in like chuck them on a fire. But for EFB, like scorched equipment and bleached equipment will be fine. But I wouldn't worry too much about if you've touched stuff in your shed during inspections. Like, you You need to have like good practice, and this is why you'll see on all my videos now, and I'm, you know, I was not good, not good at this, um, and it's only once you get hit with it you realize, wow, we need to take this seriously. But I've changed it up a bit this year. I'll do a video on that actually, um, just looking at my list. I should add it onto the list in terms of the changes that I'm making this year. So one of the big ones I'm doing is new— so loads of bee suits now, so different bee suit for each apiary. I'm gonna put a name on it so I know whenever I'm in that apiary, I'm gonna wear that single bee suit. And then I'm not ever transferring anything on my bee suits. But I've also got like a bucket in each apiary as well now. It's got 6 different, um, hive tools in there. So each apiary, like 5 or 6 apiaries, has got a bucket, and in each apiary there's a bucket of 6 different hive tools. And the reason for that is I'm never ever transferring disease from hive to tools across apiaries. But the reason for having so many hive tools in there is I want to kind of like pick one out and then leave it in the soda solution to kind of just like clean up while I'm, while I'm using it, and then put it back in just to kind of— so I've not just got one that I'm using, I'm just giving it like a little wash. I want them to soak in, I want all the stuff to come off, just do everything I possibly can to keep my hive tools as clean as possible. Um, Lambrook says, would I rather burn wood than poly? So you're not allowed to burn poly, so you have to send it off for like incineration, which is very expensive and a definite reason why cedar beehives are better if you're going to get a disease. Uh, Norman says, on average, how many brood box frames do you cycle out per hive, whether it's from splits or straight recycling? Do you melt and reuse brood box wax? What process do you use to melt, filter, sterilize? So on average, and it never works out like this, but on average I'll do 3 frames per brood box per year. So I'll either take them out— when you get into like selling nucs, you, you realize that you, you're selling way more than— so I'm like so far ahead in terms of recycling. That's why you'll find like for me, you'll never get like big horrible black frames that are in the nucs because they never get to that point because we make so many nucs. With like not that many bees. So everything's kind of like new, you get nice new clean equipment. But the average, what most people do, is 3 a year. And you do like 3 a year or 4 in the year if you've got like 11 frames in your hive, or however, however it works out. Depends, depends what numbers you're on. If you're on, if you're on 12s, you can do 4, 4, 4. But do it every— split it by 3 years is the common practice. And then do you melt and reuse the brood wax? So it We do, we melt it all out, all the brood wax, and then send it off for exchange for foundation. Always amazed when— so sorry there. What process do I use to melt through or sterilize? The simplest process in the world, which is I melt it and I pour it out through a— into a bucket through like a pillowcase. Done. Once, one simple pass through, and then I just trade it in. So I'm not kind of like rubbing it through or filtering it through any gauze or anything like that to get it like super fine filtered. Because I'm just trading it in, so I just want to get as much in as I possibly can. Uh, Joe Murphy says, thoughts on the movement to ban queen imports in favor of just using native AMMs? It's already a big movement in Ireland. Oh, I get myself in probably a lot of trouble commenting loads on that. Um, I really hope it doesn't happen because I don't want to have native AMM. So what we're going to in import queens from Ireland because we can't import queens from the EU. It just, it just seems like madness. It really does. Because you don't have native AMMs, we just have like mongrel hybrids. So it's like, it's like banning buying, um, like Alsatians or Labradors to save the cocker spaniel greyhound cross that's kind of got like loads of other genetics in it as well. Just to me makes just no sense whatsoever. And especially in, in England and in Wales, there is nothing that needs to be saved. There's nothing there that's like there's a pure breed of bee that is the answer to everyone's problems, that's available in good enough numbers, that produces loads of honey and is really calm. If that bee existed, I'd be well up for it. I'd say, yeah, I agree, let's ban the imports and let's focus on what's already here and what's already really good. But let's not do it speculatively on the basis that what's already here that isn't very good could be made a lot better by banning the imports, because that, that seems to be the argument and it's not one that I agree with. So I hope it doesn't, I hope it doesn't come to that. Is becoming a full-time beekeeper on the cards for you or not at all? Definitely not. Um, I quite like my job and It's, uh, it's a good job. You've got a good job. So no, I'm not going to be a full-time beekeeper. I'm just going to be a part-time bee YouTuber. I think it's the way forward. Uh, Jim Jim says, I really liked your videos on comb honey with the small frames. I can't wait to try it. I've got another little follow-up video on that. I did a second version of that final video with some, some nicer imagery on it, so stay tuned. But they are cool, even if I was a bit rubbish at doing them. I'm gonna have another go this year, I think. Says he is South African. I knew, I knew I recognized that surname. Standard South African surname. Living in Sutton Coldfield. All right, I used to live, I used to live around there in Bournville. And he'll see me at Telford in a few weeks, and a cricket bat emoji. Very nice, I'll see you there. Says if you know the hive was lost due to varroa mites, would you freeze the frames and then use them again, or burn and start from scratch? So Me, I would burn and start from scratch. Makes no difference that it was varroa mites though. Like, if it genuinely did fail from varroa mites, then you could just use the frames again. But my rule is, is if the colony fails, I'm burning the frames. Simple as that. But you don't have to burn them, you can just melt them out and then reuse the frames. Like, don't— just, just because I'm doing that, that's just— it is kind of me being a little bit lazy and not having enough time. If I was a full-time beekeeper, I wouldn't burn them. I'd have a caustic soda tank and I'd be heating them up, big batches. I'd be cleaning them down and I'd be using them again because it's not cost effective, like, to keep on buying them new. But the cost of heating up that tank is quite a lot now. Is heather honey being bad for wintering bees quite possibly the biggest beekeeping myth? Heather seems to be great for wintering bees. So I thought that, and then we had a guy came on from, I think it was like Norway, and he said that he was really, really did believe it quite a lot. And he was saying that because they're so confined over there, that all of the ones, whenever they get overwintered on their heather— and it was ling heather as well— um, they get terrible dysentery. So he was really, real, really believed that, and he gave good evidence for it as well. So there might be something in it. For me over here, I never have an issue with it, and they do really well. Like, it's always the strongest numbers and the strongest colonies coming through at the Heather Apiary. John Pearce says, did you get around to picking out a seed mix for the farmer you mentioned in the previous chats? And I guess that's a good question. So no, I followed that up a number of times with him, and he's good. Like, he's a really, really good farmer, been in like farmers' magazines and stuff all the time about like He uses like lay herbal mixtures, I think they're called, and he's all into like regenerative farming and not using loads of fertilizers and pesticides. But he didn't let me choose the mix. It was a bit like, oh yeah, I've done that, there you go, the mix is in. So I think farmers just do what they want. But he chose, he chose a good mix. But the one that I didn't— I wanted some— I always forget how it says, like safflower or safflower. Something like that. Um, but it's like a— I think it's a legume, but bees absolutely love it. So that's one of the ones I want to grow. I want to get them to grow this year. Uh, Peter Reed says, hi, great channel. Hi, Peter. I fed my hives a few weeks back fondant. Seeing through the Perspex crown board, the hives are absolutely booming. I'm concerned with swarming already. When is too early for supers? So definitely do not worry, do not worry about swarming yet. Like, you'll be amazed how packed and condensed they can be. So I, I would say if you had 1,000 colonies of bees in the UK and you did nothing to them, I'd be amazed if you lost more than 5 swarms before April. And then come April, it's going to like start getting a lot bigger than that. So I know that I always use the 1,000 hive example because if I, if I give the example of like one hive and then someone says, ah, you said this and my hive swarmed, But I think the chance of it before April is very, very low, and putting your supers on too early will knock your bees back if it gets cold. So you want to— the timing is always kind of critical, but err on the side of let the bees properly fill out the brood box before you put your first super on. I think for us, like, first super is average around here, like middle of April, something like that. Joe Murphy says he's heard that standard foundation can leach chemicals because it's from countries that have lax standards, like China. So you should go for Premier. Have you heard of this? So I have heard of this. National Bee Supplies have, um, they use that as like a good marketing strategy, and it makes sense as well. Like, they do say that they bring their wax up to a certain temperature that's high enough to eliminate kind of EFB and AFB spores, so it's like completely sterile, or as sterile as wax foundation can be. But I have heard that. It makes sense. Um, I've never experienced it myself. But I might have experienced it and not known about it. But I do think you can tell when you get good, good foundation. You can really tell it is good stuff. Do you think swarms pose a real disease threat for apiaries? I always quarantine them, but no one else I know does. Should they? Without a shadow of a doubt, definitely. If you're, if you're going catching swarms, 2 rounds of brood is what I would say they need for a quarantine. And I would get the NBU to go and inspect them as well. That would be what I would say is if you get a swarm, put it in a quarantine apiary, 2 rounds of brood, and once they're on the second round of brood, say to the NBU, I went and caught a swarm and I put it in this apiary, do you want to come do a check, see if there's anything, and get a second expert opinion? That would be my advice. Joe Murphy again, will you be watching Clarkson's Farm when it's out in Feb? I think bees feature a lot in it. I never really watch stuff like that, you know. Not, not massive one for watching like, um, real-life telly. I'm more of a How's the Universe Made kind of guy, or The Office US. Uh, saying, when will I be starting my demerays? So not until well into May, I think, for us is the demerays, because we're going to build that box up nice and strong. First super on middle of April, maybe second super on end of April, 1st of May, and then let them fill up. And then maybe middle of May we do our first, first round of demerays. Uh, Lambrook Farmer says we won't have pollen coming in until March in New Hampshire, USA. Swarms in May. That's probably similar to us in terms of like a decent level, like it is trickling in now, you know, like a couple of legs full. Right down to the bottom of the chat, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna quickly fire through the questions, um, that are on my list. So this is a great question, I love this one. It's from Artem Terrell. He says, a question for your next stream: if you were to build another honey room, 6 meters by 3 meters, for a small-scale operation up to 100 hives, what would be the 3 most cost-effective equipment investment, ideally from Abello, apart from the honey extractor? That's a great question. Do you know what, I should have, I should have written down my answer. I've got to think about it now. So he said, first of all, apart from the extractor, the— I'm going to answer with the extractor, so I'll do 4 with the extractor. So with the extractor, I would say cover all your bases with it. And I do like my extractor. So my extractor is a 24-frame radial extractor, but it's also got 6 swing cage baskets in it as well. So I'd either go for something like that that's multi-purpose, or if you want to go for the licensed ones, go for the premium, like put your money into your extractor. That would be my advice, is go for belt and braces, best extractor you can afford. And the one that I've still got my eye on, even though I don't need it, they do like a radial— no, they do like a swing cage extractor only, and it's like a 12/24, so it's 24 shallow frames or 12 deep frames. it is like the Rolls-Royce. So that, that would be the extractor that I would go for. And the reason I say that is that if you ever get any heather, it means that you can extract your heather as well. So you can do radial extraction, you can do tangential extraction through the swing cage. So make sure your extractor can do both, because the last thing you want is 2 different extractors with different honey. So if you're anywhere near heather, make sure you're getting at least a partial swing cage. And then the next ones, it's a little bit Like, I've had pretty much all of the extraction equipment that you would ever need in those rooms, and I sold quite a lot of it because you don't need it. So the next thing that I'm definitely going to suggest is a big honey tank. I would say go 200-liter because the footprint between the 100-liter versus the 200-liter is, is literally nothing. Make sure it comes with the built-in sieve. That makes your life so much easier. It's like the easiest thing in the world. And then my system on that is I'll take the honey I put it into the— uncap it, and I'll come to that in a sec. I put it in the extractor, spin it out, and then I just like let it run straight out into the bucket. It's always got loads of wax and stuff in it. Big bucket, like kind of 60-pound bucket. And then when it gets like about 2/3 up, I'll swipe that bucket away, put another bucket in, and then I'll just go and tip it straight into this big 200-liter honey settling tank. Just keep on doing that all day. And if you've got a 200-liter tank, you can afford it, get 2 200-liter tanks. Um, and then by the end of the day, you're kind of like completely set up, um, with 2 big tanks full of honey. And then what I would suggest after that, the next thing on my list— the first one is the extractor, which you said not to include. Second one is preferably 2 200-liter, uh, premium honey settling tanks with the sieves on them as well. Got a conical base, which is really nice. And then the next thing I would get is, is a bottling machine. So if you're talking up to 100 hives, so 100 hives, that is a lot of hives, that's a decent amount of honey, and the bottling machine saves you so much time. So if you're kind of thinking, oh, should I buy an uncapping machine or should I buy a bottling machine, I think your bottling machine comes first because I, I find with my uncapping machine I kind of sometimes don't want to turn it on because it takes quite a lot— a long time to clean it, and it doesn't give you a huge— it does, it's not true. If you've got— if you've got your colonies and your supers set up on like 9s, which is what I like on the Castellations, then the uncapping machine really does speed things up massively. But it would— it speeds it up a lot more if you've got 2 extractors running at the same time. So I would say, unless you want to have a 2-extractor setup, don't go for the uncapping machine before a bottling machine. And I would definitely go for the premium bottling machine if you're looking to do that with the turntable. So I also wouldn't buy a bottling machine without a turntable. So, and then next on my list would be the uncapping machine. That would be the next one on my list, a very close second after that. That would be the order for me. The problem is with that, and I know this is going to kill you, is that if you're going to get the uncapping machine, you need to get the capping screw press to go with it. I really wouldn't buy one without the other because the uncapping machine, it takes it to get it working properly. Like I said, you want the castellations on 9s, you want big chubby frames because otherwise it doesn't get all of the frames down. But but what that leaves you with is a huge amount of waste. Yeah, so it's not waste; it's just honey and wax. But you need a way of recovering that. So the other way of recovering it would be a meliflow. But I would definitely go with the wax cappings press. And if you're gonna go with the uncapping machine as well, speak to Damien and go for like the super premium one. The reason is that's one of the ones normally the premium means. I was like. better dials or like slightly better torque in the motor or thicker materials. On the uncapping machine, they've got like a chain mechanism. Chain mechanism is way better than the one that I've got, which is like a gravity feed system. But also, it's a bigger, bigger thing than that. It's got these kind of like groove bars, and this is like the worst explanation in the world, but the normal knives just cut the honey straight down like that. But if the uncapping is below the line of the wood, You've still got capped honey, but these like groove bars like that go in and just kind of get all of that as well. So every, every cell is punctured. So I've gone way over budget. Honey extractor, swing cage, 2 200-liter settling tanks with sieve, bottling machine, Lyson premium one with the turntable, and then I'd go for the premium uncapping machine, and then I would go for the wax cappings honey press as well. It'd probably set you about 20 grand, sorry about that. Next question, Linda Brooks, I'm in my first year of beekeeping with just one colony. If my bees made it to spring, what is the easiest, least nerve-wracking way to make a split? So least— the easiest way is to do a walkaway split, which is— we did this in previous videos— but take your box, build it up, double brood it. Once it's filling all of those frames with with brood over 2 boxes, you just split them, put them right next to each other, build the hives back up, and just walk away. The queen will be in one of them and she will build up that colony. The other one will have brood in all stages and they will turn that into emergency queen cells. And just leave them to it, let the virgins fight out, and hopefully you'll get a mated queen. If you don't want to do it that way, my recommended way to do it is to add a mated queen in. And then if you look on the channel, there's, there's ways to show you how to do it with a mated queen, but it's very simple. With another question, do you use your feeders as a crown board, and do you think a poly feeder would add sufficient insulation to my wooden hives over winter? So yes, again, one-trick pony, 100%. That makes a massive difference. I do that on all of my colonies, whether they're poly or wood. I have polyashworth feeder as a feeder, as a crown board, as really good insulation on top, and it makes a massive insulation difference to a wooden hive because it's putting the insulation in the right spot. Next question from Graham Thomas says, hi Lawrence, having lost 2 hives in the summer, I'm overwintering just a single colony. I'd like to build back up to the original 3 this year. What would be the best way to do this without sacrificing too much of a honey crop or reducing colony sizes too too much for splits. My initial thought is to go double brood before splitting and introduce mated queens into the splits. Exactly that, that's exactly what I would do. Um, I wouldn't do even splits though, so I would double brood them up and get them similar to the walkaway split that you're going to do, get them booming on a double brood split, a double brood colony, maybe by kind of like May, middle of May. And then I would take out of that double brood colony 2 2-frame splits So like a frame of brood, a frame of stores, 4 frames of foundation, loads of bees, chuck loads of bees in there, and then add a mated queen, and then take the 2 nucs away. And then I'd leave that colony to build up a little bit more, and then I'd do another split on that colony. So you end up, so you end up with 2 full-size colonies and 2 split nucs. And I know that's like one more than you wanted, but I would do that just to kind of be on the safe side. And then if you really do want to get back down to 3 at the end of the year, your nucs would have built up to nice 6-frame sizes by that side by that time, and then you can just merge the 2 full-size colonies and go back into winter on double brood, and you'll have some really good colonies coming out the winter. Uh, Ed Walton says, hi, what do you think the best queen breed is? Um, I don't know, I'm not People say, oh, he's going to say Buckfast because he sells Buckfast queens. But I do like Buckfast queens, but I've not tried like loads and loads of different ones. Like, I've tried a few Carnies, and I quite like Carniolan queens as well. I'm going to try some more. I've got a couple of Italians that I got last year, and I really like the Italian ones. Like, the temperament, they're the best I've ever had. They're kind of just— they do not move, but they come with their own kind of like unique set of problems. Um, but yeah, I, I don't think I probably— I have a favorite, which is the Buckfast, but I'm not going to say the Buckfast is the best because I don't think I'm in a position to say that. I've not done enough testing. Um, but I like, I like the variety. I like to try different ones and see which ones do well. Right, so that is all, that is all the questions on my list. So anybody who asked a question on the Ask a Question Link has now had it answered, so we'll get to the bottom of this list now and then we'll call it a night. So I've been on for 40 minutes longer, and what a great question to go back into here. So does your wife ever get annoyed with you in regards to your beekeeping in any ways, and what do you think her biggest annoyance is? So she's asleep the other side of this wall, and I reckon she can probably hear me, and she can probably thinking. He said he was gonna be bloody finished by 11 o'clock. I'm trying to go to sleep. So live streams, one of the annoying things. Um, she's pretty supportive apart from that. She's really good. She's, she's a very good wife. I'm not— I don't do a huge amount of the stuff in the house, so most of the stuff is out of the house. So I think if I was doing stuff like in the kitchen, she'd get, she'd get annoyed. Um, but yeah, that's her biggest annoyance, is probably the amount of time I spend doing YouTube videos. I know. And then the second annoyance is the amount of time I spend talking about YouTube. So I do— I'm really bad for checking my YouTube stats and like, oh, I've got a little peek here, and telling her, and she's just like, I just don't care. But I've not got anyone to talk to about it, so she has to listen. So definitely, yeah, her biggest annoyance is me talking about YouTube, my plans for YouTube, and the videos that I'm gonna do. And oh, I need to go and do— I need to go film some videos today, so I can't, can't tidy the house or do whatever. So like this weekend, I said to her, like, so today I've watched the football, I watched Arsenal-Man City, and then I've spent 2 hours, nearly 2 hours, doing a live stream. And then tomorrow morning I'm going out and filming 14 videos. But she's very supportive. She's great. Joe says, "Have you got any beekeeping business videos coming up?" They are a bit niche, the beekeeping business videos, and it's I don't want to sound like too horrible, but it's kind of maybe you got to keep like a few things secret. I'm only joking. I would. I'll do some more if there's any like any specific ones you want to do. They don't tend to do very well, and they're kind of the ones that you. You need to scribe them and like draft them a little bit more, as opposed to me just going and talking about some bees or doing a live stream. You actually want to sit and plan what you're going to say, so they're quite time-consuming, and then not many people watch them. That's why you don't get too many. So if you do your demarée in May and you have 2 supers on already, does that mean you will now have 4 supers on? I said for me the demarée is not adding the supers in, the demarée is just the switch of the brood boxes. So I'll do it, start off a single brood box and then add a super on, and the bees are building up into that super, and then add another super on, and the bees are on a brood box and 2 supers, the queen excluder. And then, and then my demo is taking that bottom brood box, putting it up to the top, and adding an additional brood box underneath. So I still end up with just 2 supers. If you put too many, if you put like 2 extra supers on in there, the bees wouldn't know what's going on. There's too much space. So yeah, that's how I do it. Thank you for the video on the Demerara split. 68 pounds of honey last year. When the original frames get moved back down to the brood box and full of honey from top position, is it okay to bruise the honey? So only bruise the honey if you want the bees— sorry, let me get that. Don't bruise the honey if you want— it's getting late. Don't bruise the honey if you don't want the bees to bring it back up to the supers. So if it is tainted with Apivar, don't bruise it because they will just bring it up if you put it below the brood box. In terms of oxalic acid treatment, I wouldn't worry about oxalic acid treatment. It's not like it doesn't get impregnated on the frame, so the bees will just clean that out. So if it is just OAV treatments, then yeah, you can bruise it, it's fine. Uh, Joe says, ever consider doing a podcast on Spotify? Beekeeping podcast seems to be very popular on there and think you could do a better job than the current ones. I might have a go on that. Uh, I've kind of looked at podcasts before and thought I need to, I need to find someone to do it with. I, I couldn't talk for, for that long kind of just by myself. I'd get bored. But where it's like a bit of interaction, people talking, then I could do it. But it is a big thing. Like, you look at like Erica— is it Erica Thompson? And she's, she's getting a lot of people into beekeeping, making it more mainstream. So we'd like to do a podcast. I do, I do like doing them on YouTube though. I know it's slightly different, isn't it? Uh, Pure Yorkshire Honey says, hi, is there— is that much of a difference between the Abello premium range and their standard range? So in most cases, no. And in most cases it is just like the acrylic's a bit thicker, the steel's a little bit thicker, the motor's a bit stronger. But I've upgraded most of my stuff to premium now, and I do find that premium is like a little bit more reliable. But on some things, it really— like, it's just a completely different product. So it's just best to— Damien's very honest, and I know you don't live too far from him. Just, just speak to Damien. He will tell you, like, if you say to him that, come on, Which which one's better here? He'll just say, "Oh, the standard one's fine." But like I said, with the uncapping machine, it's a completely different mechanism that they've added onto it, and it's it's a huge upgrade. But you wouldn't really know that from the Abello website. Jim Jim says, "In Canada, they legalized pot, which has made smoking the bees much more enjoyable. But I worry about them getting the munchies and eating all the honey." I'm kidding, of course. Definitely not kidding. Oh, that'd be so good. Some— I've seen people do that, like just putting loads of weed in like a smoker and just puffing their bees with it. Great fun. Uh, Joe, wow, you've saved some detailed questions till the end. Joe, if you were in government, what things would you change or do to improve UK beekeeping? Could be legislation, policies, investing in specific things like rewilding, etc. I don't know. If I was, if I was in government, I think I'd do things before changing beekeeping legislation. Um, but specifically beekeeping legislation, I don't know. I think beekeepers have got it quite easy when it comes to the government at the moment. Like, I wouldn't, I wouldn't be looking for like subsidies or anything like that because I think we're treated very fairly in terms of Like that, and the fact that everything we sell is zero rated, and everything that we buy is like full rate of that. So I don't know. I don't. Yeah, there's not. There's not a huge amount that I would do. I might have to sleep on that one, and you'll ask me next time. I'll think about that. What would I do? And ask me on the next live stream, which I know you'll definitely do. Rich is off to bed. I'll be following you shortly, Rich. Not, not in the same bed, but, um, yeah, getting late. Justin from the pub, love that you're still on. As ever, your advice is on point, mate. Cheers, Dave. Sorry, I meant to say the wax they put honey in had OAV, not OAV when honey was in them. So the honey made in wax that was ex-brewed, so if you treated— I, I'm getting a bit lost, Ian. Um, All OAV should be fine. It's not, it's not going to impregnate on the wax. Uh, Ben says thanks for the chat, big fan. Thanks, Ben. Uh, Hillbilly Beekeeping says my bees hate the Mary Jane smoke, they get ill fast, and he just put some leaves in the box and they drug it out. Very lucky bees. Right, so we are done. 1 hour and 50 minutes, and Arsenal lost as well, which I was really annoyed about. So if you enjoyed the live stream, please hit the thumbs up. If you want to ask a question for next time, I will try and do these weekly. They won't always be this long, and they won't always be this late either. But there's a link at the bottom of the thing there where you can ask all of your questions. So Andrew Murray has just come in, and he's—I've just finished. So sorry, Andrew, but you can catch up on the the hour and fifty minutes that's just gone. I hope everyone has a really nice weekend. I'll speak to you soon. And if you're coming to the beekeeping show, come and tap me on the shoulder and say hello. All right, take care everyone. Bye-bye.