Black Mountain Honey: Let's Talk Bees with Laurence Edwards - Episode 76

Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Let's Talk Bees. There's no comments there, so this is going to be the shortest live stream ever, but if you would like your question to be asked or answered, even stick it in the comments and I will do my very best. I will just start talking about what's going on at Blackmans in Honey then. So the first drama we had this morning was the mics didn't work, and when I say didn't work, I should replace that with Laurence couldn't understand how to use the mics. because they were stuck on stereo as opposed to mono. And then I spoke to Zane, who's up editing already, and he fixed it all very, very quickly. So thanks, Zane, and hello to Zane as well. There are some questions, so that's great. I don't have to do— I don't have to do the preamble. But there we go. Let's go into who says, morning everyone, have a great weekend, whatever you may be doing. Isn't it cold outside? Like, I was out last night, not even nighttime, probably like 5, 6 o'clock, Walking down the village, and it was freezing. Like I said, I have to go home. And I was in trousers, t-shirt, jumper, gilet, and I was standing there, and it was really, really cold. I was thinking, it's the middle of May, shouldn't be cold now. I wonder if anybody else is experiencing that in the UK. I'm guessing quite a lot of people have been disappointed with the weather for the past couple of weeks, and it's having a huge impact on the bees. It does look like better weather's on the way. Um, but I would say for the majority of people, we're going to be in— going to be in June gap territory now. Middle of May, with all of that cold weather behind us, all of the blossom off the trees, it's either going to be here soon or people are experiencing it or it's already gone. And there's not going to be many people who are going to have 2 or 3 weeks left before they hit the June gap, I would say. Uh, I don't know why I started talking about that. Dave and Ella, channel members, says, morning Lawrence, just wanted to say hope things are going well as they can be and that Helen is recovering well. well. Sending best wishes to you all. We just wanted to say that we're loving Forcing Day Beekeeper. Well, thank you very much for your kind words. So many people have got in contact and said nice things to me and of course to Helen as well, and it really does, it means the world. I'm so lucky to have just, we're so lucky to have such a wonderful beekeeping community, and having seen it in kind of UK and seen it firsthand in the US as well, it's a brilliant community. And for all of the negatives that you can have in beekeeping with people choosing the colour of bees and things like that, we do tend to attract very nice people. There's not many not nice beekeepers, I don't think. So thank you, thank you for the kind comments, and I'm glad that 14-Day Beekeeper is going well, people are liking that. Good morning. Good morning to you too. Got a few people saying good morning. So Sam, Beard and Bee, cool name. Tom says, morning, how best to unite 2 strong colonies? I've already split colonies twice this season and they are wanting to swarm again. I can't keep making splits as running out of equipment. Good, good question, and one that a lot of people will be struggling with, I would say, this year, definitely the early part of this year. Uniting 2 strong colonies at this time of the year in the middle of May is only going to do one thing, which is trigger them to swarm yet again. So it's kind of counterproductive putting them together like that because they will swarm again. If you've got colonies that are swarming again and again and again and again, like throughout a single season, I would look at the genetics of the colonies because they shouldn't be doing that. And if they are doing that, it will be because you're potentially making lots of splits from them. So if you have a colony that swarms really, really early, and then instead of taking down all of the cells and introducing new queens— and it's not a plug for new queens, it's just the understanding of the genetics— then that colony has been selected for what it's done, which is early swarming. So if you just keep on doing it, that you end up with all of your bees saying, well, this is clearly the way forward because we've been selected on this basis. So the way to stop it, and some people, when they see this for the first time, they're a bit like, oh, that's— I've never seen that before, which is take one colony and just go and requeen it with like a new, brand new queen. F1 Buckfast is what we would recommend there, and put it all the way through the season and just see like how a young new F1 Buckfast queen goes, because a lot of the time they won't swarm in the first year, but if they do swarm in it, and it is likely that a queen will swarm kind of in the first season, if not like the second season, highly likely. But if they only swarm once, then it's quite manageable. And I bet, I bet you would, you would take that if you just said, right, each colony can only swarm once throughout the year, then I would say any more swarming than that is kind of on the beekeeper. I'm not saying, not saying it's on you, but it, it'd probably be a management of space. So if you're confident that your genetics are not going to swarm repeatedly throughout the season, then it's quite easy to get away with just one swarming event throughout the season. And then if you go ahead and do a demerare as well, a demerare takes that event out of the calendar, and sometimes you can get through without doing it at all. So I wouldn't unite 2 strong colonies because they will swarm again. I'd kind of trace it back a little bit and see how you can stop them repeatedly trying to swarm like that. Andy, I love that you've got your little spanner there. Morning, Andy. Sorry, I know I am behind on many, many different platform messages. I'll get back to you all. I'm sorry, mate. Steve says, morning, Laurence. Boy, I've Have I got a couple of demo rate conundrums for you today? Quick, have a slug of coffee. I'll detail below. I like that, Steve. I think loads of people have got in before you though. Oh no, you're probably still typing, but thanks for the slug of coffee. Appreciate it. Oh, I always do that. Does anyone else do? I like my coffee. I've got this. Not no advertising, but my Yeti cup. I I have my coffee quite hot. Like a hot coffee, and then I'll be here, and in the morning I just I nurse it. Have it for about an hour. I sip my coffee like that, and then when someone invites me to drink it and I take a big glug, burn the back of my mouth. Ow! Good morning, my nuc arrived successfully on Thursday, not sure the postman was happy. Anyway, given the weather, is it good to move them to my hive today? So yeah, I would go ahead and do it. With the nucs, like, there's enough bees in there to get them out in pretty much any weather, like kind of middle of May weather. You don't want to be doing it in winter, but it'll be— as long as it's double digits, you're fine. So if it's kind of like 10, 11 degrees, anything above that should be good. The reason that we give the advice to not make people introduce the bees on the day that they arrive, because so many people used to do that, and it was obviously my poor instructions, but they'd get the nuc, they'd put the nuc down, they'd take the lid off, and just all the bees would fly away. So we say now a couple of days, just then they definitely know where they are. And then the weather one, unless it's blowing a gale. and really, really raining, they'll be fine to go in. And then they're better set up in there as well because you can get the feeder in there. I know you can feed in the nuc, but feeding in the nuc gives you the space issue because you'll quickly fill up all of that available space. So getting them into the beehive, getting the feeder on, getting them feeding, getting them drawing out the comb, and then if you watch the My First Nuc series, you'll see that the next 4 or 5 weeks after that are quite easy weeks. They're nice, they're nice enjoyable weeks, so don't panic too much and go and enjoy it. And obviously we'll be here for the the live streams if you need anything. Is it best to delay weekly inspections if it's cold and wet? And after underbrooding, do we inspect from top down and move top brood box when inspecting? So good question. No, you have to inspect when it's cold and wet. A lot of the time it's when it's cold and wet that they go and swarm because all the foragers are in there. So no, you have to do it. It doesn't have to be a long inspection. It can be— a lot of the time I'll do it, I'll just go in on like a double brood colony. Really good one, tip for a double brood colony actually, what a lot of bee farmers use is, um, is they'll just go in and lift the top box up So imagine you're kind of like peeking in between the top and the bottom box, and what you're looking at is you're looking at the bottom frames on the top box, and that is likely where the swarm cells are going to be. And that is, that is their inspection regime. So they say if a colony is going to swarm on double brood in that configuration, it's highly likely that the swarm cells will be on the bottom of— sorry, yeah, on the bottom bar of the top frame. And if, if they're not there, I'm just going to assume that they're not swarming. So then you kind of say, well, you don't have to do anything there. You've not even got to pull out any frames, you just got to crack between the two. Any swarm cells? No? Move on. And I would say if it's cold and wet, that's probably quite a good halfway house, which is you're still doing something, you're still going up there. If you were— if you're doing it the other way around though, underbrooding— sorry, so in terms of underbrooding, do we inspect from the top down and move the top brood box when inspecting? You can do it either way. A lot of the time the easiest way when you're underbrooding is just to lift the top box up, look down, see if they've done anything, No, put it back down again and then just inspect the top box. Generally, that's what what would happen if they started to move down into the bottom box. I don't even bother go down. I don't even bother going down looking there because I see everything that I need to see in the top box. If they're gonna if they're gonna create swarm cells, it would be in the top box. So if you're if you're just looking for that, you don't need to go into the bottom one until it's quite like much more established. Sam says weather in Berkshire has been a bit rubbish this week, but the lime are budding, so hopefully that will be out in full bloom in about three weeks' time. Slightly early June gap, I think, is imminent. I think I think it is, or I think. we're kind of in it because people are saying, oh, we're not in the June gap, we're just in a poor weather period. And it's like, well, that's also true, we are in a poor weather period, but I just don't think that when the flows come back online, I don't think it's going to be the spring flows. Certainly going to be the very, very end of the spring flows. You might get a few days out of it where we are here, and then further down south might be long gone. I had, I had quite a cool idea. Ah, I won't, I won't spoil it. I got, I got a very cool meeting with a very cool guy on Monday, so hello, hello to cool guy, I'll see you on Monday. Good morning, Laurence, we got our Black Mountain honeybee on Thursday and going to put them into the hives today, very excited. It is really, I get excited for people about kind of queens arriving and nucs arriving and I'm not sure which one you've got there, but they're both very, very exciting and I love, and what we're really working on is helping to share that story like from our customers a bit better because we, we don't have the best place for people to put their stories. But I love it when people tag me in the posts and they say, oh, we got, we got our bees and we put the nuc in and here's some, here's some honey. It genuinely is my favorite, my favorite part of beekeeping. So I'm glad that you're excited. I hope it goes well and like let me know how it goes. I see you met up with Bob Binney. What's your take on the use of probiotics? So I like, I like Bob Binney. I didn't speak specifically to him about the use of probiotics, but I'm I'm a big fan of probiotics, kind of in non-beekeeping in any way. Helen's always stuffing me full of like yogurt and good stuff for the gut, and I don't need any convincing that feeding yourself well and good gut health is key to like general health for everyone. So I'm well on board with that, both with bees and with humans. Hello from sunny Leicestershire. Hello to you too. Oh, this is a sad one. Hi Lawrence, how's it going? How is Sploge doing? So Sploge Probably like early 2025, I think I went in to check on Splodge and Splodge was no longer there. I'm afraid she had been superseded, which is very sad because that's what happens when you give your queens names. You become attached to them a little bit, don't you? But she is gone, um, and it is very busy at Black Mountain Honey, but it's all good. Jacob says, thinking of double brooding a few colonies today due to a conference of brood box. I'm not sure what that means. New brood box with foundation above existing brood box. Um, so Couple of things. Double-check if you want to double brood. Double brooding just before the June gap is probably, probably like the worst timing for it unless you've got a specific reason for it. Double brooding after you've taken your honey supers off and you go into the June gap and you feed is a really, really good, really, really good way of setting them up, and it's relevant to where you put the box. So if you, if you're just naturally double brooding, you want a colony at this time of the year to kind of like to go into double brood and you're doing it maybe early to middle of May, you've still got a few weeks left of the spring flow, then I would say just stick the box on top. That's fine, be done with it. Don't worry about feeding because you're still going to have your supers on. But if you're doing it the other way and you're taking your supers off and then you're going to put a feeder on and get them through the June gap, I would feed— I'd put the brood box underneath. And I know it seems— it does seem counterintuitive because bees are supposed to go up, but it's just the access to that feeder. What I would say is if you do set them up like that, go back in and check to make sure that they're going down because the last thing that you want at this time of the year is for them to not realise that the box is below them, and there is a chance of them doing that. So if they don't recognise that there's a box down there, just change it up immediately and work out a way of getting them to go up to the feeder, because if you're taking off all the honey, you will need to feed. If you find a charged queen cell, is it too late to add extra space, i.e., will they swarm? Definitely yes. So if you find cells, you need to make a choice and take some action. Steve says, found queen cell upstairs but also 2 charged queen cups on a single frame downstairs. Is this swarming or possible reaction to queen not having laid much in an empty box? I think if you're finding queen cells, it's swarming almost certainly, depending on how many there are of course. Like if it's just 1 or 2, I would treat it as supersedure. If it's anything more than that, I would treat it as swarming. He panicked and went— I like this, like following Steve's story— he panicked and took them down, but going in today, day 14, what should I do if there are more cells? Reverse a demer split, have a Black Mountain Honey queen arriving Friday. So the word demer and queen cells always gets me really, really scared because they can never go hand in hand and never should, apart from the emergency cells that they create during the demer. So if you go into a colony like beginning of the year, you've done no manipulations yet, if you go into a colony and you see more than 3 cells anywhere across the beehive, you have to do some sort of swarm management. You have to make a split, you have to take action, and the action can't be Giving them more space. The action can't be just taking down all the cells and hoping. The action must be separating the two, splitting the colony. So you're going to take the queen, if she's still there, with some brood, with some bees, take that off away, and then what you're going to be left with is kind of half of everything else and some queen cells. And all you do is you just knock down all the queen cells except one, leave them as they are, 4 weeks, come back, hopefully the queen's good. Or knock down all the queen cells completely, every single one, Assuming that none have emerged, and then you put your queen in. You have to do one of those two things, otherwise they will go ahead and swarm. I know it's a bit harsh, isn't it, when you say it like that, but I see a lot of people doing it. They'll go in, they'll find swarm cells, they say, oh no, there's swarm cells there, I'll just take them all down, put it back together again, come back next week, they've swarmed. Or they come in and there's loads of swarm cells, they say, oh no, swarm cells, ah, what do I do? Demerary split, I'll do a demerary split, and then they do some crazy formulation of a Demaray split and then come back the next week and the bees have swarmed. So if you've got a chance to go back in and reverse anything, I would reverse it. Get them all where they need to be, change it from a vertical to a horizontal split, probably have to take it to a different apiary site if you've got one. You don't want bees to be bleeding kind of all around the different parts of the apiary. I had a bit of that earlier this week. Hopefully it works well. You've got a Blackmansen honey queen arriving soon, so should have the ammunition to fix it. Morning. Justin at JJB says, girls are filling the highs following a demerit after returning top brood back to the bottom. They are not moving the honey up. Any advice? So first thing is they need— it needs to be bruised, like really bruised. So if they've capped it, pardon me, it needs to be open for them to get it up. If they're still not doing it after that, you can potentially uncap it and then it makes it more palatable for them to move. Make sure it's not crystallized. If you've got like all seed rape up there and it started to crystallize and set in the frames, it'd be very, very difficult for it to move. Check that the colony has not swarmed and that there's enough bees to be moving things up and down, and then once you've done all of that, you start thinking, okay, they're definitely not going to move this honey. So then you think, well, what can I do with that box? Can I do something different with that box? Can I just take that box away and go and use it to make up some splits with the frames of stores? That's generally where I end up because it's very useful to have frames of stores. You can just take it off and add frames of brood in, add queens in, and make up splits. The other way of doing it though, and this is— it's If Zane's watching, hello Zane. We tried, we were going to start filming something on May the 7th and I've not filmed it yet and we forgot to film it this week as well, which is the demeray. So it's really frustrating because I keep, I keep wanting to do like the full demeray video and I keep on getting the timing wrong. I released a reel or like a carousel showing this full season demeray proposal. I've not nailed it yet, I've done it a couple of times, but it's interesting because it mentions this bottom box and what you can do with it. So what one of the things, Justin, if you're, if you're coming towards the end of your spring crop now and you're thinking, oh, it's pretty cold outside, we may be in the June gap What I would suggest on your colony there is take all the supers away, extract them, and take the bottom box and put it back on top in the position of the super with the queen excluder in between the two, and leave them like that. Like, that's just a really great configuration to sit. Quite a lot of space, double brood, brood at the bottom, stores above, and the queen excluder in the middle to restrict the queen. And then it just buys you— it buys you a little bit of time. So what you could then do is when you come back after the June gap, you come back in, add more supers on top, take that top honey box and have another go, stick it underneath, see if they'll move it up again. And I bet you get a good summer flow and the honey's not crystallized and enough bees in there, and they'll move it up at that point. So it buys you a little bit of time. Oh, hi Janet! She says, I've got a green Buckfast queen, saw her butt pattern, it's very patchy and only random eggs. Bees are very unhappy, aggressive, they created a supersedure cell. Do I leave them for three to four weeks or something else? So if the if these were my bees, it would be the clearest, easiest thing in the world. Yeah. What you've what you've got there is a queen that's failing, and if you want to let them supersede, you can. So you could just leave. They created a superseder cell, which is brilliant. You have to question the quality of the superseder cell. Needs to be a nice, good one. But if you want to go down the route of letting them supersede, it's probably best just. kill the queen, put her out of her misery, and then leave them with the supersedure cell. But if you're saying the bees are very unhappy and aggressive and potentially this is— okay, no, it's a green marked one. So what you're gonna have there, yeah, the colony is getting a bit agitated because they've not got a functioning queen in there, probably not giving off enough pheromone, and then the bees are responding to that with their aggression. All I was going to say with the supersedure cell is that you're not going to replicate what you've got with a green buckfast queen with the offspring. You might replicate it, you might get something very, very good, you might get something even better than that. There is always the chance that they become a little bit more aggressive as well. So what you have here is a, is a quite a nice neat option for doing something that is a bit horrible, it's a bit horrific, but if this supersedure queen fails, you have to do this anyway, which is killing, killing a queen. So if this was my colony, I, I, it's the easiest thing in the world. I would take down the supersedure cell and I would kill the queen and I would requeen them. Because it's, it's just a great opportunity to go in and fix all of the things that are broken. The existing live queen will be dead within a few weeks anyway because they're going to kill her. Supercedure cells, unless it's a really big strong colony, I'm never a fan of supersedure cells because I just feel they're a bit inferior to something that's been like purposely fed all the way through. And then if you're not happy with kind of like bees being aggressive, this is the opportunity to maintain your genetics. It—I understand that's not for everyone. It's just where some people end up with with this one is they'll let the—they'll let the queen supersede. They won't kill the queen. The superseder cell will come out. Maybe she doesn't get mated, and then the colony is just going to dwindle away and die unless you can find the virgin. And finding the virgin is way more difficult than what you have to do now, which is finding a really slow, lethargic, marked queen and taking down a swarm. So taking down a superseder cell. So I—I know it's horrible because I—I feel it, and I—I kind of when I'm selling it to people, they're thinking, "I don't want to. I don't want to kill." the queen or take down the cell or pay the £40 for a new queen. But when they come back in 6 weeks and say, I'd like to buy a queen and I can't find the virgin to kill her, they realized that it was a much easier, if, yeah, slightly horrific option at the beginning. Morning, a question about honey. When a colony is waiting on a virgin, I have a— sorry, I read that completely wrong. But morning, question about honey when a colony is waiting on a virgin. There we go. I have a colony that are filling every box full of honey. How do I make sure the brood box isn't backfilled and they just swarm? So that is the main challenge when you're waiting on mating flights like that. The bees will naturally store honey, as like as soon as they come into the hive, they just want to offload it. They say, yeah, get rid of that. And you see that even in really big strong colonies where there's a queen in there and there's loads of brood. If you go in during like a nectar tsunami, as I like to call it, and you're pulling out the brood frames, like the majority of the brood frames that are not going to have like capped brood or eggs or larvae in, all of the rest of the cells are just going to be saturated with nectar. And the only reason that the bees kind of leave the space for the brood is because that's where the brood goes. The brood goes below the honey. So as soon as you take out the brood, they just say, well, we're just going to fill it, fill it all with honey, which is exactly what you're experiencing. And it is a little bit of a challenge. I would say I don't even really— it's not something that I do. I don't leave a big strong colony with a cell, so I never do it, so I never have the problem. But I do have a number of people come to me and say, well, what can I do to kind of fix it? And the only real fix is to let them naturally move everything back up, which is incredibly slow and will trigger swarming, or use the frames of stores for something else, make up some slits, stick some frames of foundation in there, and then Once you've got the virgin in there and she's laying and you've got that nice flow back, to have the brood nest full of 6 or 7 frames of foundation is the best cure. It's really good for swarm suppression. So you've kind of gone from having a brood nest that's completely saturated and congested with nectar and you've just taken it all away. Just have a plan for it and go and make up some splits. I'd say that's what I would do there. And it's kind of for that reason though, backfilling, that I don't ever let them mate in that situation. All right, Peter. I'm gonna have a sip of coffee first. Peter says, "Morning, Lawrence. I have one colony with CBPV, which is chronic bee paralysis virus. What is the best action to take? It has three supers on. Can I extract them or not? Is there any issues extracting these? I have 75 hives. This is the only one." Oh, CBPV is not nice. So if if these were mine, if the if I was in this situation and we've we've not had CBPV, we're kind of out of the. way of it, it seems, at the moment. If that was my colony and I had 75 hives— you've got a lot of hives there, Peter— I would do a really simple thing, which is going to take it to a brand new apiary site on its own with 3 supers on, which you can probably just about lift it as it is. I would put on another 3 or 4 supers, yeah, like go wild, put way more supers on than you think that they need, and then I would leave them until the end of the year. Still, still go and do your management and stuff and go and do your inspections and manage them the way that you need to, I wouldn't take any honey off yet, and I'd give them like treble the space that they need because CBPV is like a contact virus. So when you— it shows up a lot in winter or at any point when you have massive compression. So one of the— probably the best way of not dealing with it but alleviating the transmission or reducing the transmission is to give them lots and lots and lots of space. If you do that and take them to a different apiary site, you've isolated it all, so it shouldn't be spreading elsewhere. Like, I'm looking at that and thinking it's one colony. Do what you need to do to isolate it to that one colony. Do everything that you possibly can because it's the 70— it's the 74 that are going to be the more important here. So I'd take it to a new apiary site, I'd give them ample space like that, I'd do my inspections, I'd quarantine it and make sure I'm washing everything as I'm going in and out of that site, and then I would only extract at the end of the year. And it gives you a chance for it to die down a little bit, and hopefully come the end of the year it won't be as severe. it is at the moment, and then you can, you can make a decision then on what to do for your honey. But also leaving it until the end of the year is brilliant because you can go and do all of your honey extraction and supers and everything apart from that one hive and get it done, get it into buckets, and then like the last one of the year could be that one, and then you could clear up after it. So it's just, it's, yeah, I think about just the order in which you're doing things. But what's nice is that going and taking it somewhere else and putting the extra supers on is, is not only what's good for the transmission of the disease, it's good for kind of your, your process throughout the year as well. So a few options there. The Short Beekeeper says, loving 14-Day Beekeeper. I have a plan starting this weekend to go double brood on my 2 colonies, then do a hive inspection one week later, and then a week later I'm going to take splits and add queens to both nucs. Okay, okay, cool. So you're— I missed the question. Is there a question in there? Is that— was it like, okay, is that a good plan? I'm going to assume the question is, is that a good plan? I think that's a good plan if you're, if you're looking to maybe buy a nuc or buy a couple of nucs and then think, well, I'm going to build those nucs up and then I'm going to take some splits and I'm going to add some queens in, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna buy 2 nucs but come the end of the year I want 10 colonies. Double brood is your friend. It really, really is. It just gives you so much flexibility and reduces the chance of, or reduces the probability of the bees swarming at that difficult time of the year. It means you can constantly feed them. Yeah, brilliant. So that is exactly what I would be doing. Sounds good. Ntab35 says, morning all, hope you're looking forward to some warmer weather next week. I really am. I just looked at it, it said it was gonna be 25 degrees on Thursday. I just want to go and sit kind of in the sun and just go, oh, I'd be very happy. And at the moment it's just like, oh, it's freezing. Right, there's a question here. It says, Laurence, we have lots of uncapped OCR, I think all seed rape, I'm guessing that is. We're worried it will set in the frames. Do we wait until it's capped? Definitely not. No. So oilseed rape is, is really, really easy to get it to granulate in the combs. The, the most frustrating thing is cold nights is what gets it to go. So I would do it this weekend, just get it off, get off as much of it as you can. And you need to go in, look at the boxes, don't worry about the capping, shake the frames like that. If you're, if you're going into a box of oilseed rape and you're going to like one of the outside frames, it's the frame like closest to you or the frame furthest away, and you're pulling it out and it's fully drawn out and filled up with honey but not capped, and you're shaking that outside frame and nothing's coming out, the whole box is good to go. You can take that whole box off, just clear the box and get it into buckets as soon as possible. You need to, you need to go a little bit earlier. The cold weather messed up so much stuff this year. Oh, is this the next bit of your one? Okay, so this is Steve's reversal of the Demerara. Yeah. if you do a demaray and they're not connected, yes, if you go ahead and do a demaray split and move the box upstairs and the queen downstairs, you come back and all the bees are at the top and then there's just this little tiny piddly amount of bees downstairs, you did the demaray too early. I'm really sorry to say that, Steve. Good morning. Morning, Jay. Hi Laurence, how do you do an oxalic acid treatment on an underfloor entrance? So So you can configure a hole underneath the mesh if you want, but it will start to condense down on the mesh. The easiest way to do it, the way that I do it, I do it on all my underfloor entrances, I just go from the top down. Much easier. So in, and it's better for the concentrate as well because it naturally falls downwards like that. So all I do is I go in, I take the roof off, I take the polyashphalt feeder off, I expose the bees, I put the eek On the top, solid eke, it just goes on. So like the feeder comes off and then within a second the eke goes on. The bees are like, oh, up in there, okay, it's dark again. And then I sublimate from the top, leave it. So I've got a few of these ekes built up and I kind of go along, do 10 at a time, and then leave it for everything to dissipate and then come back in and just switch them back over, take the ekes off, put the feeders back on, and they're done. They're all good to go. It's a much, much better system, better way of doing it, I would say. Thanks, by the way, for the video on saving a nearly starving colony. Showing your mistakes is amazing and definitely helped me save that queen this week. That is the reason that I go ahead and do those videos, and it is embarrassing. It is. And Zane's like, you really want to show that on camera? And sometimes we say, oh no, okay, we're not going to show that on camera. But a lot of the time, like, I'll always show the mistakes. I was saying this to Zane yesterday, if, like, I'm not the best beekeeper at all. If I was the best beekeeper, the YouTube channel would be really boring. It'd be terrible. Just imagine if all the colonies never swarmed, or like there was no wonky comb, or like if nothing went wrong, there'd be no opportunity to say why it went wrong. And I just think that's the best way for people to learn, is seeing, seeing people make mistakes. Not that I actively go out there and make mistakes, I'm just a rubbish beekeeper, but seeing people make mistakes and then understand why that's happened talk about it and then show people how to fix it. And I think that little combination on a video is just, is just very, very good. That's how I would like to learn, because most people will come to the videos in that state of, um, oh, something's gone wrong, I need help. So they're kind of at that point in the video anyway. So they get a bit of the beginning, a bit of the understanding, and then the fix. And generally, like, it is good advice because it, it does work, the starving bees one. Nobody shows that because it's really embarrassing. Because if you're showing your bees starving, you've mismanaged your bees. Yeah, like, it's my fault, I messed that up, and it's my responsibility that a lot of those bees were nearly going to die. So I kind of feel responsible for not only trying to save that colony but maybe helping other people not get into that situation. And then, so once you've kind of got over the fear of just saying, yeah, I was rubbish, then it becomes quite easy because you're showing stuff that other people wouldn't show because they've not got past the fear of just showing the mistakes. So pouring syrup onto a dying colony of bees like that, I had a few people saying, what are you doing? Like, that's— whoa, that's— you can't do that. And then when they— when the colony came back to life, they were like, okay, that worked. Didn't think of doing it like that, but it's— yeah, so it's quite— it's quite a drastic way. I will always show my mistakes. I'll always show the bee stings. It's good fun. Oh, okay, I won't say that. I've got— I'm I'm gonna start reading from first time. First time I've been awake on a Saturday to catch a live, yay! What is the best way to get the bees to move honey from a brood box filled with honey post-demarating to the supers? I only say that because I'm one for cursing, I'm terrible. The best way to do it is take the top box, the brood box at the top with the honey, and ideally do it whilst it's still uncapped, and then you place it underneath the brood box again, give them tons of space above, and they should move it up. That's the theory, doesn't always work, and then I spoke about earlier what you can do if that doesn't work. You can just keep it there, take the honey supers away, go and harvest it, and then pop the filled brood box with honey back on top to get you through June gap. Good system though. Nearly missed you this morning, puppy had the— puppy went to the toilet in the kitchen. Hey ho, we carry on. Oh dear, I hope you've cleared all that up, but hello, hello to David. Morning all, it's been a cold week here in Cambridgeshire, a couple of frosty mornings, Fresh new growth has been frost burnt. It will recover, but a bit of a shock of plants and bees after the warmth. It's really sad, isn't it? Like, gardening has become like a little— I've not got much time to spare, but a little bit of my therapy at the moment. And we've created a herb garden just, just outside, just kind of up the steps in our garden, and planted some strawberries and got some tomatoes out there. And I've got some Cape gooseberries and I've put some sweet corn in and thinking, come on, it's May, it's not going to get cold again. And lots of— a lot of it is dead. The herbs are fine, but all the tomatoes are there, they're shriveled and cold, and some of them have got through, some of them definitely are dead. I don't like it when it gets cold in May. It should be all nice and warm now, shouldn't it? Hopefully next week everything recovers, the warmth comes back. Swarming question, thanks for that, Laurence. I've been wondering about genetics. They have plenty of space, so I'm still not sure what else I can be doing. I think it might be worth requeening. So I say this from personal experience because when I started off as a a bee farmer, wannabe bee farmer, I used like the local, my local bee. And I was really confused because I kind of, I read the books and it was like, yeah, let the bees fill up in the brood box and then when they get to this stage you put super on and then once they've filled that super you put another super on. So you just, you read that and think, okay, my bees are going to do that. And then you put like a 4 or 5 frame split into a brood box and they're building up to 6 frames, onto 7 frames, and then you go back in thinking, okay, it's probably going to be Probably going to be time for a super now, and they swarmed. You think, what are you doing? That's not what you're supposed to do. And then it happens again, and it happens again, and I would have done exactly the same thing, which is, oh well, okay, they're swarming, but it's got 7 frames there, so let's split it out. We'll have 2, 3 framers. Like, they'll stop doing it eventually. And it was only when I realized that I was selecting for exactly what I didn't want them to do, and that's what was kind of causing them to swarm. And obviously they were pre-selecting that for millennia maybe before I got involved as well, but it was a trait that I didn't like and it was something that I had control over, so I kind of made the change. And then when I made the— when you're stuck in that, I'm not sure if you've had like an F1 Buckfast queen or a queen of known kind of heritage like that, and when you put them in and see what they do throughout the whole season, people have been like, whoa, like just never ever seen that many bees, because that's what I was like. They'd get to 6 or 7 frames and then swarm, and then occasionally they'd go up into a super and give me half a super, but it was— it would be very, very rare to get like 2 supers of honey. So a brood box full and then 2 supers full of honey and full of bees, that would be like, oh, there's so many bees in there. And then you do a demerare with a Buckfast colony and you've got 7 supers on and 2 brood boxes and it's full and you're like, oh, okay, there's a lot more bees. And more bees does often equal more honey if the weather plays ball. Right, so I did that one there. We're getting through the questions quite good today. What are we on, half past? Okay. This is good. Sorry, do that one first. Grizzle Mackey, is that not? That's not how you say it. Grizzle Mackey says good morning, Lawrence. Good morning to you too. John says breakfast shopping on the way to work, so listening in. Hello to you, John. John just continues to smash it out of the park, so thank you, John. Frankie says hello, Lawrence. I hope you're well and the weather's on the turn. Got four of your beautiful queens yesterday. Beautiful queens. Nice. There was it was a very it was a very nice batch. I saw a lot of the queens going out yesterday and I was like. I'd be— I say I would be happy, I am happy to have some of those queens. That is my job today, I've got to go out and make up some splits, but they were good, and good luck with the introduction. Paul says, 2 Black Mountain honey queens introduced and accepted, very happy. Excellent, I like your new logo as well, Paul, it's very cool. Lawrence, in the nuc arrival email it says if you're unsure about anything call me or WhatsApp me, but doesn't give a number for WhatsApp. That is a typo, I'm afraid, yeah, sorry, that is— that, uh, we need to change that because it should be— it's Buzz via WhatsApp. Sorry, it would, um, it's very— I get a lot of messages, I've got a lot of emails, and I get a lot— I've been taken away out of the firing line, I'm afraid, because everything that's going on with, with my wife, uh, is— and yeah, I can't even talk about it, it's difficult. There's no WhatsApp, I'm afraid. So, um, there is Buzz. Buzz should still be there. And then we are working on like a really cool new system. But if you need any help, Mark, email's the best. Email gets monitored every single day, so it'd be the quickest way to get a response to anything. Nick the Nuke, that's a cool name, says, I'm currently on deeps and shallows Langstroth. I had an idea of switching everything to all mediums, fewer different formats and frame types. So I did that. The one thing that people never look at, and whenever I say that, it's never like telling people off or saying, oh, they've not missed, or they've missed something here. I kind of am saying that, but I'm saying it from the point of view that I missed it as well. So I did it and I made the mistake and then I went back. So the thing that I missed when I did it— there we go, I can say it like that— was it seems really good in principle. It makes buying things a lot easier, makes storing things a lot easier. It makes the management of the beehive potentially much more difficult. And the reason for that is if you're using any sort of treatments on those frames, you have to start determining which one is a brood frame and which one is like a super frame, because you need to make sure that you're not putting contamination into any of the supers. But then depending on where you're going to put your queen excluder as well, if you ever get brood going up into those frames, then you're gonna have to start replacing them out because the wax moth will get them and they'll start going dark, and then you might want to extract honey out of them anyway. So it's kind of nice on paper, but then in reality, when you're looking at the management it, you, you probably have to say, right, well, that one's a brood box and that one's a super anyway. Or if you don't, then it leads to cross-contamination issues, or it leads to maintenance issues on the frames. So, so I did that. I went through that whole process there, and I got to the point where I was like, well, I can't use that one as a super anymore because of the Apivar in. I can't really use that one because it's got tons of brood in it. Or where do I, where do I store that one? Do I store it with the Apivar brood frames, or do I store it with the super frames. I don't want to store it with the super frames because it's got brood in. So I'm making all these like crazy decisions, but then as you go throughout a few years, you find that the majority of the brood boxes do come in contact with some sort of varroa chemical, and then they become not suitable for the top box anyway. And then the only other one is that the supers are quite a lot heavier. So I've reverted back, and I only just have brood frames for the brood box now and then shallows for the top. And what's nice is that when you're framing, like making up your frames for the shallows and the supers, and you're putting the wire in and the foundation, and the bees are drawing it out, like it kind of just stays like that forever as long as you manage them properly. You never have to replace your super frames, they can just go on and on and on and on and on because there's not really much contact or any contamination coming into them and there's no brood being reared, so it's quite a good investment. So I don't think it matters massively what size the boxes are, I think you're stuck with the management system depending on whether they're being used for brood or being used for honey. So hopefully that was helpful. Try it that way. Don't need these names. Hopefully not off topic here. I like off topic. We have found a decent farm and we have 6 this year splits queen right. The owner wants— sorry, the owner wants a contract, which is good, but I don't know how much honey to offer. I wouldn't get in a contract with someone. I just, I wouldn't get in a contract with someone like that because I don't have contracts with anyone. We have tons of bees on loads of people's farms and I know loads of, loads and loads and loads of bee farmers who have They're very informal. They're a case of, can I have some bees on your land? Yes. Can I have some honey in return? The farmer says yes. And it's like, okay, don't go signing— I wouldn't go signing up to contracts because you don't know that they might not produce any honey, and then you have to give them— you have to go buy some honey from someone else for the pleasure of having them on the land. I think most decent landowners, yeah, wouldn't be as militant in terms of having a contract. And it would it would put me off if I went somewhere and said, "Oh, could we could we have some like a couple of hives on the land?" And we do some videos, and we'd like to take some videos of your of your sheep or whatever, and we can make a cool video. And then they said, "Oh yeah, that'd be great, but let's just get into contract first before we do anything." I'd say, "Thanks, thanks, but no thanks." So I wouldn't I wouldn't go into a contract. Maybe on the back of a back of a bit of paper. Say fag packet there. Frankie says, "I have a hive. They're on brood and had to." Sorry, they're on 2 broods, so double brood, and had to requeen. They failed, so I've had to merge them with the original split. Now they're on 3 brood because of the merge, but 2 of them are full of honey. Guess in there, what would you do? Right, so first up, I would assess whether the brood frames can be used as honey extraction frames. So have they ever been used for— have they ever been used for Apivar or anything that's going to taint the wax, really, is the one that's going to get them. If they have, then It doesn't really matter what you do next because the only thing you can use them for is making up splits. If they haven't, then really easy one, put the queen excluder where you want that line to be between brood and honey and then just go off and extract them. That's what I would do. You kind of only got those 2 options there. I don't think there's much of another option. If it's Apivar tainted, you can't extract it, and if it's not Apivar tainted, I'd get the queen excluder in and extract it. Yeah. Denby Honey says, how would you place a National Nuc into a Langstroth, please? I have a few nucs that I want to change into Langstroth. Oh, you should go over to Darren, remember his name, Darren's post on No Nonsense Beekeeping. I think he's done one on HiveQ as well where he came up here to collect a nuc after I messed him around and gave him the wrong nuc, gave him the National Nuc, and he's gone through the process of putting that into a Langstroth beehive and showing everyone how it's going. And I'm pretty sure that you've been cycling out the frames as well, Darren, if you're listening, so An update would be wonderful. I'm not asking you for an update. Paul, go over and have a look and see because that's the best way of doing it, I would say. What's nice, Jake, National going into Langstroth is that the, the top bar of the National is shorter than the Langstroth, so it means that you're not restricted by the size of the box. So it works, you can put a National into a Langstroth. You can't put a Langstroth frame into a National, just doesn't fit. There's no way, there's no way of configuring it or moving it around. So It's better to do it that way. There's loads of different ways of doing it. You can screw the top bars together, you can zip tie the top bars together, you can put little screws inside the Langstroth to give you the additional, like, space in order to hold the frames. So in a Langstroth box, it's going to be— Langstroth box is going to be longer and your National is going to be there, so you just have a couple of screws to hold the additional frames in. I've done a few videos on that, but it definitely works. Chris says, oh hi Chris, says, morning Lawrence, how long after successful introduction would you clip the queen's wing? I would say once the— well, ideally once her brood is emerging. I would say that's a really nice safe time to do it, so 3 or 4 weeks, and she shouldn't be swarming within that period, but yeah, within 3 or 4 weeks you'd be good. Matopka says, as a beehive maker, do you have any suggestions for me to implement or something you would add in a new design? Oh, I love questions like that. So first up, what a cool job being a beehive maker. That'd be fun. Nothing— I love, I love working with wood and the smell of it, and I'm terrible. Like, I'm so bad at woodwork. And you know when, you know when you get some people say, I'm, I'm terrible at something, I'm really, really bad at it, and they show you it like that, and you look and you think, you're not terrible, you're really good, and you're just fishing for compliments, and that's annoying. When I say I'm terrible at woodwork, I've got many people that can vouch for me. And If you saw some of my joints that I made, a— no, what? I can't even get it right. I'm gonna say dovetail. Was it a dovetail? I can't remember. I made a super, my first ever super. I made it out of some oak floorboards that I had kind of left over from something, and I burnt it about 3 or 4 years ago. I should have kept it, shouldn't I? It was so bad. It's like one of those when you— oh, you don't need to pilot drill oak. You definitely don't need to pilot drill oak. Let's just wham a screw in there, and then it just goes splits and you think, oh, take the screw back out, get a bit of glue in, and then put it together like that. That was the better one. Okay, so you don't want to take any advice from me for beekeeping, but you are a beehive maker, so you're probably a lot better. Suggestions for me to implement or something that you want to add in as a new design? I'm one for real simplicity when it comes to beekeeping. Really like simple things. I don't like I don't like if I lift something up and a couple of bits fall out. I'm like, oh, it's not— don't like bits falling out. So I like things really nice and simple. I like nice solid materials. I like things to look nice. I think that's probably where I would go as a beehive maker and look at the demographic of beekeeping and look at what people are doing and say, oh, could we make something? Could we make a— I'm back. That's bad, wasn't it? I was saying to Zane the other day, having a talk with Zane about what can go wrong when you're public talking or things are live, and yeah, my camera just went off. Gutted. Right, we'll carry on. Oh no, I didn't ask you a question. Yeah, so what I was about to say was David Beckham. Yeah, billionaire. They're officially a billionaire, so I would design a beehive for a billionaire. There we go, that's what I would do. And not to say that you're going to go like diamond encrusted, I don't think, I don't think people would like that kind of thing, but exotic materials and inlays and like just make it a beautiful thing to have in the garden that's simple, that's functional, that's not like, oh, it's got like this different feeder on there, like no, none of that, just wow. The design, the design of a beehive is great, I just do it, just do a standard Langstroth beehive And make it like incredibly good. That's that's the beehive that I would go for. Nick the Nook says, "Hey Lawrence, cheers for the three queens last week, all successfully accepted." My question is, I have a hive format question. I'm currently on Langstroth eight frame deeps and shallows five hives. I have to go to the next bit here. Oh, I'll have to come back. I'll have to come back when the question comes up. Ed says, "What is the latest in the year you can put a nuke in a hive and it be big enough for winter?" So it depends how big the nuc is, but if you've got a big 6 full-frame nuc, I would say like all the way up until the end of the season, even into September, you could probably do that if it's a big 6-frame nuc. Just be aware that when you put it in, really reduce the entrance down. That's the thing that will get them, is like robbing bees going in there if there's any dead space. 6-frame nucs are not going to be able to defend themselves very, very well, especially at that time of the year. But if you can get them in and get them so they're not robbed, then it should be good. Zane is there. Zane is saying, I'm currently editing Black Mountain Honey YouTube videos whilst also listening to you guys talk about bees. Got to make sure I'm ready for any issues that come up with my nuc. Absolutely, Zane is swatting up, I love it. Anyone want to say anything to Zane, you can stick it in the comments, he's listening in. Would you be able to guide us on the 2 Black Mountain Honey summer nucs that just arrived with the June gap not far away? Should we just keep feeding or add another national deep brood box? That is a really good question for people kind of building up their nucs and coming towards the June gap. So I'd ask the question, what do you want to do with your bees? If you want just the easiest life possible, not that fussed about honey, maybe you kind of want to make a split later on in the year, you just don't want your bees to swarm, you want to get them through the year, I would say yeah, keep on feeding, and then once they're filling that first brood box, get another brood box on and then continue feeding them up. But then you're going to want to stop feeding definitely before they reach 50% on that top box, and then queen excluder and super up, and you should be through the June gap by that point. So you just have to do your inspections. What's nice with that configuration, what I really like with that configuration there for a beginner though, is that if they don't swarm and you get through, it's the easiest thing in the world, which is you just take off all of your honey, leave the bees on double brood for winter. and obviously treat them. Really, really nice configuration going into winter. And then if you— if they do go ahead and swarm, you're on double brood, so it's a case of just taking the 2 brood boxes and splitting it. So you go from 1 colony to 2, but it's a really easy, predictable split. And as long as you're just taking down all the queen cells and leaving 1, or requeening at that point, which is for a beginner what I would recommend, if you're doing that, then you're going to go into colony— sorry, you're going to go into winter with 2 really nice strong colonies. So that would be my recommendation. When do you know— sorry, when do you know when the June gap is for taking the honey off? So you need to go into your colonies and have a look, go into the apiaries and see what's happening, look up in the sky, feel the temperature. You can look at the trees. If you see all the blossom being blown off the trees day after day after day, and then you add that into kind of your knowledge of roughly when it's going to appear in your location. And for us in North Wales, it is reliably around the first week of June, like last week of May, first week of June. But because of all of this cold weather here, it'd be interesting to see what happens next week, kind of what flowers are coming out and the activity, because there'll be a lot of activity. But I think even, even in North Wales, it's going to be some of the, the later forage that's available. I'm hoping, I'm hoping I'm wrong, and I'm hoping there's a couple, a couple of weeks, or a week, a couple of weeks more of the June gap. I'm not taking anything off yet. I'm going to see what happens next week because the weather looks a lot better. And then I will, I'll give people a shout. Sam says, I know, sorry, I know you're an advocate for F1 Buckfast from your experience, but I ended up down a rabbit hole the other week on the Elgon line. Just wondering your opinion on Elgon queens, they seem intriguing. So we, we sold Elgon lines for ages. The only reason, like, there's a couple of reasons why we reduced down the number of different queens that we sell, but the main one is just for simplicity, um, and to keep— the majority of people just want a nice, calm, simple, all-purpose Buckfast bee, whereas the Elgon line specifically bred for their VSH tendencies. And, and we did, we, we sell them, and Melitta Bees have access to the exact lines, you know, the drone semen or whatever the semen was that came back. Yeah, obviously drone semen. I'm just trying to work out where it's from. Um, I forget, it was, it was Swedish researchers that brought it back from Mount somewhere. Where was it? It was in Kenya, I think, wasn't it? But anyway, they brought it back and they have access to the, the very specific lines. But my— when I look at the Elgon queens, I assess them and say, okay, well, they probably are better for VSH, but they're a little bit more cranky, like they're not as calm as the F1 Buckfast. And then I have to make a decision, what do I want to sell to people? And just to reduce— I think I had too many queens on there and I think it was confusing. So now just trying to like restrict them down a little bit. So the Elgon was one of the ones that got cut, and it got cut because it wasn't quite as calm as the rest of the Buckfast lines, which is what we pride ourselves on. The Arctic Beekeeper, good morning from the Arctic. Hello to you. Yeah, every time you're here, we're going to meet up somewhere else at some point, hopefully in the Arctic. Jay says, yesterday I was able to do day 0 of a 10 over 10 but found charged cells, so made a split and carried on with a queenless 10 over 10. Any issues apart from emergency cells? No. So they do— was it emergency cells or was it swarm cells? Because If they, um, if you, if you put it in a 10 over 10, did you take the queen? Did you take the queen out? I'm forgetting which point of it you're actually in, but it's— I always go in. There's always going to be kind of some cells in there if they're either triggering the swarming or at the point where you take the queen out. So it's just go in and do it. Once you, once you get to that point where you're queenless 10 over 10, any issues apart from emergency cells, remove all the emergency cells and then they will be completely queenless 10 over 10, and then just compress it back down. I did a cool video the other day though. It's only— I'm thinking in the background what would have been a better version for you and the way that I did it. I did a different video the other day which was kind of like the 10 over 10 but it's slightly different, so it's repeatable as well on pretty much any format, which is you go and get 2 empty brood boxes and then you just go around the apiary taking frames of bees and brood, so bees and capped brood, a little bit of stores in there as well but not much, and you just fill these 2 brood boxes with all of these different frames from all the way across the apiary. You could, you don't need to do like from 10 different colonies, but you could go into a colony and take like 3 or 4 frames of bees and brood, but specifically the nurse bees you want, and you're just filling this double brood configuration, and then you're going to take that double brood off to another apiary. You can do it in the same apiary, but you'll get bleed. We're going to take it off to another apiary. So you've just got a double brood that is full of brood and like a little bit of stores in there, full of bees, no queen, and then you just come back in 8 days later knowing that there's going to be emergency cells everywhere. So bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, take down all your emergency cells. You lift off the top box and then you place it off to one side, and then you put queen excluder on, shake a box, shake all the bees from the top box through, and then the top box worth of brood you just go off and make your splits with. And what you're— what you end up with is just kind of a similar version of the 10 over 10, which is loads of young nurse bees, like way more young nurse bees than you would normally get in that box and then still tons of capped brood that over the next week or so is going to emerge and just kind of further populate that nurse bee population. So I did that, I've done a video on it, and, and I just thought I'll just, I'll chuck it together because that will work, I know it will work, and it worked really, really well. So then I just put the feeder on, I put my pollen frame in and grafted straight into that, and, and that was just a very nice repeatable system. And the reason that I like that system and the way of thinking about it is that it doesn't matter if it's National, doesn't matter if it's Langstroth, But more importantly than that, it doesn't matter if it's a 10-frame box, 12-frame box, a 6-frame box, it works in all of those configurations. So you could do that on a 6-over-6 configuration, and then you've only used 12 frames. So it just prompted me, because when you said about not having enough brood in order to do the 10-over-10, I was thinking, well, you could do a 3-over-3. Like, it's— 3-over-3 probably wouldn't work, but 5-over-5 would be a really, like, Nice configuration for that, and I've got loads of 5-over-5 boxes up there, as in, sorry, I've got loads of 5-frame Langstroth boxes, so I could do a 5-over-5, and then it's just the 10 frames of brood. So I think, I think I'm going to further develop that idea, and I can see why a lot of people don't use that method because it is incredibly resource intensive. But if you're making up splits off the back of it, it doesn't, it doesn't really make a massive difference because anything that you lose into the starter finisher, you're taking back out again and making splits. Right, where are we going next? What is the best way to split a hive and be sure that both will work at most cases? So I think when you're splitting a hive, you— if you want to just get the biggest bang for your buck, the best way to do it is to split the hive, knock down the queen cells, add in a new queen, get them going again. That's going to be the best way of keeping everything moving. It's gone again. No, there we go. Sorry about that. Zane said to me at the beginning of this one, he said, oh, it's frustrating not being able to be there to fix the audio issues. And he must be cringing at this, is what it is. We need to fix that. I think it's because the mic's on there and it's overheating. But we've got 6 minutes left, so I'm going to power through. If it cuts off again, it is the end of the stream. So apologies for that. We will fix it. We will fix it next time. So when you're making the splits like that, if you go ahead and make a split and don't put a queen in, then you've got 4 weeks of kind of nothing. So you're going to go backwards. So if you want to get the most out of it, keep the queens going. But then just understanding that when you make a split, you are, you're taking one and turning it into 2 halves. So you can't treat those 2 halves as one before they've built back up again. So there will be a fairly lengthy building back up process. Right, I'm going to go quick. We— oh, we did that one. Okay, that's good. Easy. Is a queen excluder necessary? So no, queen excluders are not necessary, and they probably will produce more honey without a queen excluder. But oh my goodness, do use a queen excluder. Makes your life a lot easier. Marcus says, morning, Lawrence. When requeening my hive, if I cage the queen for a week, will they still draw out emergency cells, or is there enough pheromone from the from the cage's queen? I've not read that right, have I? I showed that process. it doesn't work all the time. So whenever you're doing that, you do have to go back in and double-check, which means that the caging of the queen becomes kind of a bit pointless. So I don't do it anymore. My hive made a swarm cell about a month ago, but I not saw it capped, nor they swarm. Should I remove it? So if they made it a month ago and they've not swarmed, it's not been capped, I would say it's probably not a swarm cell. Anything like that, take a picture, send it to me, I'll take a look. 3rd year of beekeeping and now thinking of taking it a little further than just a hobby. Been offered to have some hives on a local farm. Any advice. Um, so definitely take it up. Uh, great, great hobby, great little side hustle as well. So it'd be good fun. I've got a video on that. There is a video, and I'm just aware my mic's going to probably cut out on the camera again. There is a video which is like top 20 tips for finding out apiaries, and it goes through every single one of them in terms of the things that I would be looking for and like siting and location. And just because you've been offered space there doesn't mean that it's the best one. I would watch that video because it's really, really good. I do say so myself. Uh, Titan Game says, hi Lawrence, how have you been? Lost my hives to German wasps this year. Will we start fresh next year? I'm sorry to hear that, sounds pretty horrific. What's the latest on Circle? Is it coming very soon? Um, so it— we're hoping it is coming very soon, but at the moment all of the functionality for both is within the existing system. So we started posting the channel member videos now onto, um, onto Wix, and then we'll move over to Circle when it's ready. We're going to start getting testers in within the next week or so, but I don't want to, I don't want to move everyone over there until it's working and it's fully ready. But it's coming, it is coming soon, hopefully like full launch still within May. A fellow beekeeper recommended Vespex wasp agent, does not attract bees. It's probably, probably quite good. Yeah, there's a lot of different lures out there that will attract wasps and won't attract bees, but best defense is a good attack when it comes to wasps and just having really big strong colonies that can defend themselves, which is weird because they're supposed to be attacking. Thanks, if I take out a queen and supersede a cell, is it too long to wait until the 28th of May to give them a UK-mated queen? I'd prefer UK, but see you on pre-order. I'm just going to update you now. No, it's probably It's— you've got the existing queen there, so you could— oh, I'm just trying to think what's best. No, I think you can just take them, take them both out now and then wait until the 28th. That'd be fine. It's not that far. Was it the 14th today? Yeah, you'll be fine because normally it's on day 8, but you wouldn't actually have to— oh no, you will have to wait because there's still open brood, isn't there? Yeah. So the earliest, if you, if you killed the queen today on the 16th and then you have to wait 8 days minimum before the queen cells are there, so you're going to be taking up to like the 20th. We can count properly, 24th, so it's gonna be Sunday the 20th, so Monday the 25th, you know, you're like 3 days before it. It'll work very, very well. So summarize that: kill the queen, take down the emergency cell— sorry, kill the queen, take down the supersedure cell, wait 8 days, take down any emergency cells from anywhere, shake off all the bees off every frame, make sure you get every single one, and then when that queen comes, she'll be fine to go in. Good morning. Morning to you too. Morning, I had one of your F1 queens delivered yesterday. I'm planning to do a split, however the weather is much better from Tuesday onwards. How long can I keep her in the cage? Oh wow, get her into the hive as soon as possible. Our recommendation is that the queen goes into the hive on the day that she arrives, like that's the recommendation, and they can die in the cage. I would get her in as soon as you possibly can, very, very quick to make a split and the bees will just be fine afterwards, so I would go in and get it done. Sorry if that's changed your weekend plans. We have a couple of strong colonies at the moment which are trying to swarm, so making a split today, but moving forward, is it best to split into Small nuc boxes or straight into full hives? It kind of depends what you want to do. Like, there's— this is the beauty of beekeeping, is that you get so many different options here. You can do a straightforward split where you split into 2, and if you're looking for honey production, maybe in the long run that's a better way of doing it. Or you can say, well, I just want to get as much honey out of that one hive as possible, so I'm just going to take a frame with the queen, one frame with the queen, one frame with some stores, take that off to another site, and then I'll leave them with a single queen cell. And just come back. And then that way is, is completely imbalanced or unbalanced, whichever one it is, uh, but that's better for you. So it's kind of, kind of up to you to decide what, what your objectives are there, I would say. Uh, Bebop HD says, early bees catch the live stream. Yeah, we are, we are well and truly into it. Be True UK