Black Mountain Honey: Let's Talk Bees with Laurence Edwards - Episode 50

Welcome to another episode of Let's Talk Bees. A Merry Christmas to everyone, and sorry I'm 5 minutes early, but I've been sitting here since about 10 past 7 thinking I'm just gonna start it early, and I got to 5:02 and then I just, I gave up. I had to crack on because it is in that weird period of the festive season when nobody knows what day it is, nobody knows what's going on, nobody knows if they should be watching the darts or the cricket or the football, or if it's turkey sandwich time again. It is just this big misty haze. So hopefully we can talk and chat about beekeeping and try and bring a sense of normality back to the very awesome festive period. I do quite like lazing around during Christmas. First things first, let's put it on this side. Um, somebody won my cap competition, so I've got one cap here, and unfortunately they said that they didn't wear caps, which is understandable, not everyone wears caps, and they said, well, the guy said that It was Cub Rider who won it, and his video for the frame uncapping got like about 400,000 views, which I was very impressed with. We will do more of those next year because that was quite fun. So shout out to everyone. Make sure you film your best uncapping frame videos because I'll do some more competitions for that next year. But Cub Rider won this cap here. I can't get into focus, and he didn't want it. Only joking. What he said though was his wife is. Running the Manchester Full Marathon in aid of dementia care, which I thought was very noble charity to be raising it for. And he said we could do a competition on here. Basically, if anyone wants to bid, you can bid for that. Highest bidder wins. Could be a pound, could be twenty pounds, could be whatever. And then I'll donate it to well, Cub Rider will donate it to dementia aid. For his wife who is running the marathon. So simple as this: if you want it, stick it in the comments. Make sure it's bigger than anybody else's one. Let's start it off with one pound bidding. See where we get to by the end of the night. Oh, let's let's crack on. I got a cup of tea. Nice cup of tea. I'm guessing we're not going to be here very long. It's uh, I don't think there'll be that many questions tonight. I just have a sneaky feeling we'll be done in less than an hour. We were done in less than an hour last time. So I know I shouldn't stop for a sip of tea straight away, but it is Christmas after all. So Merry Christmas to everyone. Let's start off with Denby Honey. He says, hi Lawrence, have a great evening. Unfortunately I'll be out on a festive night out tonight, so I'll catch up with it all in the morning. All the best, Denby Honey. So good to, good to hear from you, Paul. Hope you have a nice night out. Let's go straight into our next question from Harry. So Harry says, Wildways Farm says, hi Lawrence, I currently have a 9-frame manual extractor and I'm wondering about going to a 20-frame one. I want I'm also planning on buying 10 more hives, so I'll have close to 50 colonies. Any thoughts? So I do have thoughts on that. I would say the jump from like a smallish extractor, say, uh, like anything from a 3 to 9 frame up to a 20 frame, is a really good jump. But I would say, looking at the number of colonies that you've got there, I'd be going for a 30 frame. The, the jump from a 30 frame to a 20 frame really doesn't cost a huge amount more, kind of relatively when you work it out per frame. But you get this real big benefit from a 30-frame in that it's considerably wider than a 20-frame. The, the jump up for kind of the width from a 9-frame to a 20-frame isn't, isn't actually that noticeable, but when you get out to a 30-frame, it's massive. And what that gives you, as long as you can get it through the door— make sure you measure the drum first and you can get it through the door— it gives you a much lower center of gravity, kind of like relative to the width and the height of it. So the smaller ones are like anything from like 6-frame up to 20-frame, they're relatively narrow and quite tall, whereas the 30-frame ones and anything bigger than 30-frame, they almost look like a square. They've got a very, very squat stature. And what that means, that's good for an extractor, it means that the rotor doesn't need to work anywhere near as hard because the centrifugal force is a lot more intense because it's kind of further away from that point. Get back to my mechanics A-level there. But what it also means is you get this less, you get less bumping and bouncing, and it can extract more efficiently at a lower speed, so you don't have all this bumping and jumping around. I'm really happy with the one that I've got. It's not cheap, the one that I've got, but I bought the premium one. And I'd say with the extractor, that's the one area that I would upgrade with license stuff from the, the basic or the classic line up to the premium, because everything is just like a bit heavier, a bit better made. And with an extractor, heavier is good because it's like ballast, keeps it nice and down. Uh, weighed down. And then what I've added to mine as well is I wanted to have— you can have like water jacketed walls and a base. I wanted to have both, but I couldn't get it through the door, so I added just water jacketed base to mine, which means that you kind of like heat— you can heat up the extractor just to like a warmish level, keep it about like 36, 37, something like that. And then because you've got the water jacketing at the bottom, you've got all of this extra ballast right down, which further brings that center of gravity down as low as it can possibly go. So when it's on just keeps on going and it doesn't go anywhere. And you only really know this when you've bought cheaper extractors in the past, that the smaller, cheaper, more tall ones, they just shake a lot. And then to get all of the honey out, you're always like holding them down, which becomes very, very frustrating. With an extractor, what you want is an extractor that you can just push the button on, automatic. And the good ones now, they're fully automatic. You press the button and it just goes off on some weird front, forward, backward cycle and does it all for you. But that's no good if you have to be holding the extractor down at the same time because it's so lightweight and it's bouncing around. So very long way of going around saying that, Harry, I'd go— I'd look for a 30-frame one. And I would put— if you can get one secondhand, brilliant. Go for a nice big 30-frame one, nice big heavy one, and you'll— that will see you through kind of forever then. I don't think you'd ever need to upgrade from a 30-frame one. But looking at the number of colonies that you've got, you could easily make use of a 30-frame one, especially if you've got somewhere dedicated to put it. So I'm excited to see which one you get. Hi Lawrence, can you go over same apiary splits? So I certainly can. So the caveat and the first thing that I would say is to everybody, multiple apiaries will make your life so much easier. Do whatever you can do to have at least 2 apiaries, preferably not in your garden. The more the merrier though, like if you can, if you can get access to 4 or 5 really nice close apiaries that are a couple of miles away and even just keep 2 or 3 colonies on each one. It gives you a bit more work to do, but it gives you way more flexibility in terms of like moving stuff around, and then you can see which one's the best and then consolidate if you need to. But your question is about same apiary splits. So the reason that I don't like same apiary splits is that it's very, very difficult to balance the bees effectively to make sure that you get the right amount of brood and the right amount of bees in each one. Because what happens is the bees just kind of— you make a split they go out, fly off, and then they come back to the original one. So you generally find wherever the original hive is becomes overpopulated and X amount of brood in there, doesn't matter how much brood, they can always manage it. But then the other part of the split, you put loads of brood in and then not enough bees come back and there's not enough bees to manage all of that brood. The other one, the other negative of doing same apiary splits is that you can't feed immediately so that you could trigger robbing if you start feeding immediately. So you have to wait a little while to start feeding. So I don't like same apiary splits for those 2 reasons. but appreciate you need to use them sometimes, and I do use it sometimes as well. So it's— the process is exactly the same. So if I've got a colony of bees, I'll make a split. I'll take out, say, the queen, and I'll take out 2 or 3 frames of brood, and I'll take out some stores, and I'll make up a nuc. Then I will put that somewhere else in the apiary. You can do this right next to the colony, literally within an inch, or you can do it 20, 30 foot away. It doesn't matter in terms of the bees. It doesn't make a huge amount of difference. But when I'm just doing a straightforward 1 to 2 split like that, so I want 1 colony that's going to turn into 2, I'll put them right up next to each other. I will shift over the colony, the new colony that hasn't got the queen, into the space where the original one is. So if you're thinking about it, you're giving part of that colony some resources and you're going to add a queen in at a later date. that's the one that you want bang on the original spot where the bees are going to be coming in and out. Now you can make the split in 2 ways. You can take out the queen and put her into a nuc, or you can take out the resources and leave the queen in the original one. Both ways work absolutely fine, so I wouldn't even get caught up on which way you're going to do it. The bigger one is making sure that the, the split that's not got the queen is either in the position where the hive was or very, very close to it. So you're going to get— you're going to take advantage of some of that robbing— sorry, take advantage of some of that drifting. But then the other one that I would say is The timing in the day of doing it is very, very important. So don't do this at 9 o'clock in the morning. It's going to be carnage by the time you get back there at 4 or 5 o'clock in the evening, and you're probably not going to have many bees left in the split. Do it— basically do it when it's dark, or as close to dark as you can possibly get it. So if it's getting dark at 6 o'clock, do it at quarter to 6. Quickly make up the split and then put all the bees in, and then if you want, you can close the entrance up. But if it's dark, they shouldn't come out too much. And then what that means is you're forcing them overnight to stay in in that new part of the split. Then what I would be doing is getting some grass, some straw, some hay, whatever, and stuffing that loosely in the entrance. You're not stuffing it in there to stop the bees coming out, but you're doing it to make them kind of come out and think, oh, what's going on here? Something's a little bit different, trying to force them to reorientate. Some people do it with sticks as well. You can put sticks in there. I find just loosely stuffed grass or hay or straw works really well, and it kind of keeps it there a little bit longer and prolongs that reorientation. Apart from that though, everything else is exactly the same. So let's say you're taking out a split with the queen, you take out the queen, 2 or 3 frames of brood, couple of frames of stores, put that off over to one side, and then in the original hive you're waiting for 8 days, all the emergency cells are going to be made, shake off all the frames, take down all the cells, pop your queen in immediately, don't pop the tab, leave it 24 hours, come back, pop the tab, and leave it for a week, and then all should be good. The bigger risk in same apiary splits is the one that's not going to be in the original location. As long as you can keep the bees in there for kind of like 24 to 48 hours, you should be okay. After about 2 or 3 days, I'd start to feed them. Definitely don't feed them immediately. If you feed them immediately, you'll go back the next day and you'll just have all the bees in one with all the stores and just lots of dead bees and neglected brood in the other one. So hopefully, hopefully that answers the question for you there, Ben. Hi Lawrence, looking forward to tonight's stream. I'm looking forward to it too. Sorry it was 5 minutes early. He says, could you give me some advice please? I've got some frames from a recently failed nuc which still have capped honey and syrup in some of the cells. Just frozen the frames. Can I still use them next year? Got 2 nucs on order from you which I can't wait to receive. Many thanks. So thank you for your orders for the nucs. I would say absolutely not. I know many people will look at that and say it's kind of being too risk-averse, but I like risk-averse in beekeeping. And having been someone who previously, you know, had a tiny bit of EFB and managed to deal with it, I'm very aware of how that could have just taken over all of my colonies and not put us in the position that we're in today. And the reason that it didn't do that is because you took it very, very seriously. And I moved over from being in a position where I would have answered this question before, which was like, yeah, it's fine, just make up a split with those frames, there's no problem, should be all right, to absolutely not. So what I would do with those frames now is I would chuck them on the, the bonfire and I would just burn them completely. Or if you want to try and reclaim the wax, you could boil them up and reclaim the wax. I'd chuck away all the stores. The stores is no good for you, it's no good for any of your bees because of the risk of there being disease in there. So I wouldn't be using any of those frames. I'd be burning all of them, or I'd be melting them down and trying to re-sterilize everything, both the frames and the box that they were in, before reusing them again. And I think that is good advice, and it's advice that you should definitely take, because there'd be nothing worse than, you know, you've got a couple of new nucs come in, expensive nucs, and if you you had a recently failed nuc and that failed due to AFB, and then you just reuse the frames and then you infected the new nucs with AFB. It would be heartbreaking. So I would just get a clean start anytime you get a failed nuc or a failed colony like that. I've literally just done a video on one today. You need to, before the bees rob it out, you close the entrance, you seal everything up, you ratchet strap it up, you go and pop it in a corner, and you say, right, that's a winter job. Gonna get rid of all of those frames or clean those frames up, clean all the boxes up, sterilize everything, stack it all up ready to use again and not leave yourself in a position where you urgently need some frames and you know that you're going to go and grab the, the ones from the failed nuc, because it is, it is not a good idea. Rufus says, hi Lawrence, and all the best for the new year. Same to you too, Rufus. Uh, he said he sent that bit too soon. So, do you have any info on labels and jars and labeling machines, even if just manual ones? I'm considering going to round jars for ease of labeling. So I, I like, I like round labels and round jars. I find it's much easier for labeling. I know, I know some people, a lot of people do like hexagonal jars as well. I've not got anything against hexagonal jars other than it's a little bit more difficult and fiddly to get the labels on and trying to get them on right. But once they're on, I think they look— I do think they look really nice. I think they look particularly nice on the shelf. But for me, using a little labeling machine, I use the Label Roo, I— you need to have round ones. So all of mine are done on, uh, round jars. What else was I going to say there? Uh, in terms of information on like what needs to be on the labels and the jars, I did another video on that, so I'll see if I can dig that video up. Um, John, John sometimes likes to dig videos up as well, so if you want to dig that one up, John, that would be good. That gives you all of the details in terms of like what is legally required to go onto a label. The label machine I use, as I said, is a Label Brew. I'm very, very tempted to get the pneumatic one from Lyson though, but it is 10 grand and it's, it's one of those really annoying step-ups. Yeah, because at the moment it's just a one-person job but very, very slow using like a manual labeling machine. But then the, the £10,000 one is mega quick, but it's a 2-person job unless you have it in some sort of line, which I don't have space for. So it's, it's difficult because I've not got 2 people to do the job, and if I did, I didn't want to take up 2 people's time doing it. But I am, I'm tempted. I like, I like equipment, I like kit, and I know that one does work very, very well. Uh, but yeah, I think that, I think that answers the question. Uh, Jean says, good evening, Laurence, I hope you're doing well. Merry Christmas from California. Good evening to you too, Jean, and Merry Christmas to you. Rufus also says, where is best to go for labels? I'm trying to design one but starting from the ground up, I'm a bit clueless. So pretty much all the companies— so Bee Equipment or Hagens Bees or whatever they're called now, they do them. Uh, Abello do them, Thorns do them, Maysmore do them— where you can just kind of like stick your details in and get like a bog-standard design and they'll print them as well. Or you can try and design your own, or You— I was gonna say you can try and design your own or get someone to design yours and then go for a label company like Printed Easy is who we use, and they're, they're very competitive and good quality labels as well. So I just— I've not got my label up here. I've just finished our, our redesign that channel members will be aware of because I've done numerous videos showing about how, how wrong it's gone and how expensive it's been. But we've got there in the end. It's quite a cool label, I think. Nigel Lavender says, for once I'll be on time for a live stream. Oh, I've knackered that one up for you because I came on early, so hopefully you got the beginning of that, Nigel. Uh, Nigel also says, finally got rid of the family until New Year's Day, so I've been painting my new national and scorching an old brood box and roof ready for spring. Very nice, you've got a proper break from the family there, haven't you? Until New Year's Day, you've got like 3 days off. Nice. I don't know, I don't know what I would be doing if I didn't have the family. I would be probably making up some frames, but watching the darts as well. I'm a bit gutted that I did this on the night where Luke Littler was playing. I am very much one for watching. I do like to and dance. Right, where do we jump to now? Oh, I've just seen some bids coming in for the cat. Wow, we're gonna, we're gonna get some good money for Dementia. Okay, Marcus at Walker Bee Honey says, hi Lawrence, I hope you and the family had a great Christmas. Did Santa get you anything nice? Oh, Santa did get me some nice things. I, I got some Tiger Balm for my back. I've got many back-related, uh, pain relief ailments and treatments, which was nice. So I got like a spiky mat to lie on. I've got some different balms and lotions for my bad back. Sound like a proper— I'm turning into a proper, proper old man. I'm 38. I know I look a lot older than I am, only 38, but I'm slowly breaking bit by bit, which is a little bit sad. But what else did I get for Christmas? I, I'm the worst person in the world to buy presents for. I'm really bad and quite ungrateful when it comes to Christmas presents. And that sounds so bad. It sounds like, why are you ungrateful? I hate people buying me stuff that I don't need, and not in a way that I've already got that. I hate people wasting money on me. So for me, there's just— there's literally nothing worse than opening a present and it's something I've already got or something that I don't need, and someone's put a lot of thought into it, and then I'm not going to use it because I don't need it or I've already got it, and they spent loads of money on it, and I just feel a bit like, oh, it's really like it makes me like a bit sad. So I— we've got to the point now where I just kind of buy myself my own presents. I know it sounds really horrible, doesn't it? It sounds like I'm a proper Scrooge, but it's done for— it, it's from a nice place in that I don't want people to waste their money on stuff that I don't need. But I can, I can see how it comes across as not very nice. So, so I bought myself some weights. There you go, there's the answer to the question. I bought myself some weights to go into the gym. My, my weights only went up to like 30 kg, the dumbbell. So I bought, I bought the 30 kg to 45 or something, 46 kg set, and they're way too heavy for me, and I ruptured or really badly damaged a tendon in my arm lifting them. So Merry Christmas, right? What's going on next? Lynette says, uh, hi, Happy New Year, hope you had a good Christmas. I did, I had a very good Christmas, I enjoyed it, it was nice. Uh, Sime67 channel member says, hi Lawrence, Merry Christmas, it's Simon to save you from trying to pronounce my screen name. Oh, there we go, Sime. Simon will remember that. I have my first 2 nucs on order from you for spring. I bought 2 Abello 12-frame poly hives, uh, 2 Abello hive stands, as I plan to increase to 4 hives. Should I set the first 2 hives up right next to each other on one stand, or the 2 on separate stands? And then Simon says, if the latter, when should I put them in the middle to stop the stand tipping over and move the hives to one end when I add the new hives? Okay, so the Abello hive stands, when you put the wood in, you can basically get 4 hives on each stand. Like quite easily, you use a 2.4-meter piece of wood and that gives you 4 spaces. So you've got like your legs like that and you have 2 in the middle, and then you can have one on that end and one on that end. So I wouldn't worry about it tipping over because each hive stand you can have 2 on in the middle and you can have them in kind of either position without it tipping over. What I would say though, it's much easier if you're starting off with 2, have them on 2 separate hive stands. And then when you make your splits, make the splits on the same hive stands. Much, much easier. As I said, with the making splits in the same apiaries, it doesn't matter whether you have the split 1 inch apart or 20 feet apart, but I do think it's easier to balance the bees if you can have them right next to each other. So if you started off with 2 on 1 hive stand and then you had to make your splits, your splits are going to be at least kind of 6 to 8 feet away. Whereas if you start from 2 hive stands, each with 1 hive on, when you come to make your splits, you can have them right up next to each other and the bees will be far less confused. So that is why I would go for Right, where did we get to? I don't think I missed anyone out there. No, I didn't. Right, um, I'm gonna call you Ian. I know it's not that, but Ian says, what do you think about Carnica bees? Do they, they still swarm a lot? I, I like, I like Carnica bees because you can get really nice dark bees, you get really nice white cappings wax, you get a lot of the benefits of AMM without, you know, a lot of the negatives of AMM. Shouldn't say that. But they— I do, I still do find that they're like probably the most swarmy bees that I've kept that haven't been mongrel bees. It's just, I'm just not able to— whether it's me not being able to manage them, or I'm so used to managing kind of like big strong colonies of Buckfasts. You can get strong colonies of Carnica bees as well, but they just seem to go like that, and it needs a little bit more management, I think, in order to keep them there. But I quite like the challenge. But I'm still—I'm definitely a buckfast man. If I could only pick one, I would go with—I'd go with my buckfast. David says, "I wear caps." Good stuff. Tony and Liz say hello. David says, "Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas to you too! Merry Christmas to you, Jay!" Marcus coming twenty pound for the cap. I like it. Simon's gone twenty five. Marcus gone twenty six. Oh, bidding war! Simon's gone thirty. I think we're going to have reached the peak there. But that's—that's good. That's basically. We've got someone who's gonna, who's gonna buy the cat, which is very good. Broughton Bee says Merry Christmas all. I saw a drone outside one of my hives today. Bonkers. It's been mild, isn't it? I can't believe how warm it's been. I was up there today doing, doing a couple of videos just on some hives, and I had a look inside one, and it's, uh, they're very, very busy, which is good. I, I like it like that as long as it didn't get cold, like really cold again, and then you get issues with starvation. And the fact that it's staying warm, you will get issues of starvation. I think it will catch a few people out. I'm I do regular videos for the VIP exclusive channel members kind of giving tips. And one of the videos I did recently was talking about how milder winters definitely lead to more food being consumed throughout the winter. And it's January, February, March are like the killers. But particularly like as you progress through those months, the more starvations you get. And you can just have, you can think you're out of the woods in March, kind of back end of March. And you think, yeah, the bees are coming in, they're bringing in nectar. All of a sudden drops off a little bit and it gets cold. nectar dries up and then you've got all of this brood there and it's just like a couple of days and the bees are dead. So you just got to keep on top of it and make sure that you are always checking and hefting at this point in the year, otherwise it can end quite badly. I got my itchy nose again. Merry Christmas again, Laurence, to you and yours. Happy New Year too. Press like, everybody. Good stuff. Cheers, Paul. Andy says hello from Romania. Hi to you too. John Sylvester says, Merry Christmas and a happy blessed New Year, Lawrence, uh, and your family. Looking forward to the new 2025 beekeeping. I'm looking forward to it too. I'm, I'm struggling without being able to go out to the bees, I have to say. I forgot I did— I bought myself another present as well, which was— can anyone notice that? I don't know why I'm going closer. It's the most rogue explanation of what it is that I bought, but you might be able to guess. For anyone that— no, no one's gonna have got that. I bought myself a new lens. Yeah. So it's a bit— doesn't, doesn't do anything if I do that, and now it's just not in focus. That's brilliant, what a great lens. There we go, I'm back in focus. I bought myself a new lens because I'm doing a new— it's called 14 Day Beekeeper. I'm doing 14 Day Beekeeper, which is a crash course in beekeeping to take you from a novice to an advanced competent beekeeper in just 14 days, and of course I needed a brand new lens to film it in my living room, so I didn't Didn't need much of an excuse to go and spend loads of money on a new lens. But I think it is quite a nice new lens. You can see when I compare, compare back to older videos, it is maybe like 3% blurrier in the background that you— I just can't tell the difference. Basically bought the same lens again, spent loads of money on it. I am a sucker. Uh, right, Steve's Honeybees channel member says, hi Lawrence, hope you and the family had a good Christmas. Went to check the bees yesterday and today for fondant. I'm very worried. All but one of the hives we inspected had no activity at all. I wouldn't worry about that. I honestly wouldn't worry about that. It's the end of December, so the norm is no activity at all, and then you might just have one hive that's in a particularly warm spot or gets a bit more sun, and that's the active one. Nothing you can do about it, so don't go opening them up, don't go checking. I've had colonies like that that look dead, and you even like take the roof off and you're looking down, you're like, there's nothing inside of that, and then come spring, just a full massive colony of bees. So Don't worry about that. Keep your fingers crossed and sit on your hands and just go back in in the spring. Lawrence, if you have a strong hive and you're starting to see that some bees are on the ground with deformed wings and caving, what would you do? Thank you, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. So at this point in the year, not a huge amount, you know, like I don't treat on the basis of what I see, which some people would say is a bad thing. I preemptively and proactively put my bees on a sort of cycle that I know will keep them healthy. So, and I trust that cycle, and that cycle for me is a very early honey harvest, much earlier than most people do. Although I can see it, people are really bringing that back in, and I don't know if that's someone's doing some— I don't know, I don't know the reason why. People didn't always do that. I used to see a lot on Facebook, people would be harvesting honey back end of September, even early October, like taking their harvest and putting their strips in then, but now it's come right back in. So early August or middle of August seems to be the time where the majority of people are doing it, and I think that makes a massive, massive difference, treating your bees so early with like a good effective miticide like that. And I see a lot of people saying that miticides are bad and that they're wrong, and I stick to my argument, which is if your dog had like fleas or something, you would try and treat the dog Because it's got a parasite on it. And the same for my bees. I don't want bees that have to struggle with the parasite, and I don't want to be this person who says, right, I'm going to let all of my bees die because there might be one colony of bees in there that can, can resist it a bit and tolerate it, and then I'm going to breed from them. Because I just can't do that on such a wide scale to all of my bees when it's, you know, it's, it's the profession. It's, it's what makes the money. And that sounds harsh, it's not, it's not all about money, it's more I just can't kill that many bees. It's not something that I would ever or could ever do, but I do see a lot of people, treatment-free people, advocating that as well, saying you should just need to cold turkey them away from any sort of treatment whatsoever and just let the bees work it out for themselves. And I'll never buy into that one. And I do, I see, I get myself in trouble saying stuff like this, but I see it on social media, people saying We are treatment-free beekeepers and we're never going to treat our bees and we don't feed them. And like I said before, I admire people who are brave enough to do that, but let's give it 5 years at least of seeing the results of you doing that before we talk about whether that's a good thing to do. Let's not give it 2 years because it's well known that varroa don't kill a colony of bees in one season, they don't kill them in 2 seasons, might not even 3 seasons, but after 4 or 5 years of doing it and no treatments, you're gonna have very, very sick, ill bees, and you'll just have huge collapses. And those collapses will be probably blamed on something that's not varroa. It won't be the varroa that killed them, it'll be, I don't know, poison or pesticides or something like that. So what would I do is not answering the question at all. That was completely gone off on a tangent there. What would I do? I would I would trust that the process that I've kind of fallen within is doing its job, so I wouldn't panic personally if they were my bees. However, if they're your bees and you haven't treated and you're seeing deformed wings and caving and stuff like that on the floor, I'd be thinking like, what, what could it be? Could it be, could it be kind of mites? Could it be acarin? Could it be whatever? And I'd be looking to try and see what I thought it was from the remnants on the floor. Definitely wouldn't be opening them up because again there's nothing that you can do at this point in the year to remedy that except multiple doses of oxalic acid, which you could probably do without even opening them up. So that's kind of where I'd be looking at it. I'd be saying, what can I do without opening up the colony? I'll look at the bees on the floor, you know, if it is just deformed wings, it's probably a straightforward high varroa load, and even if it's not a high varroa load, multiple doses of oxalic acid or apibioxal won't harm the bees really that much. So I'd be, I'd be treating them and seeing, seeing how they get through the spring, and then keeping a close eye on them. And if they collapse before the spring, make sure that you close the colony up so that they don't get robbed out prior to cleaning them all off in the spring and starting again. Right, let's have a sip of tea. Talking about his, his bees that aren't active, saying they've all got plenty of fondant on them, were fed well with syrup in the autumn. I honestly, I wouldn't worry. They're probably tucked up nicely in a little cluster somewhere and they'll be very, very happy. Hi mate, hope you're well and had a great family Christmas. So with this mild weather, bees out most days bringing in pollen, they are taking lots of fondant. Is this going to be a problem if they don't cluster? So it's not necessarily a problem. The only downside, as far as— there's 2 downsides as far as I see it with warm, like warm weather going all the way throughout the winter like this. One is that you might not get a proper brood break, which means that your varroa treatments might not be as effective, but they should still be just as effective. 2 is that you're going to end up using a lot more stores. It's just the way it is. If the bees are warmer, they'll create more brood, which means they need more energy to kind of keep that temperature in the hive going. So just all I would say is, if they're already feeding fondant and taking fondant down, it is so easy to manage it because basically all you need to do is ensure that there's always some fondant on them. Simple as that. If you go back in and there's like an ice cube-sized piece left, you say, great, that's it, they've not starved. Stick another bit of fondant on and then just keep on going, keep on going, and you might end up doubling the amount of fondant. So it costs you, I don't know, £15 as opposed to £7 or £8. it's not the end of the world. The colonies that come through winters like this are always really big, nice, and strong colonies and do very, very well in the spring. So they should be good. On Facebook says, hi all, absolutely gutted, lost one of my hives due to getting wet inside. What's best to keep the rain out but not letting the hive sweat? So it's, it's an interesting one again, and I don't want to talk for like the whole of America because I'm not, I'm not an expert in terms of America at all or the beekeeping that goes on out there, but I see a lot of the stuff that's posted on there about ventilation and how you need to lift boxes up and have quilts and let all the moisture kind of come out at the top and at the sides. And I've always looked at that and thought, I wouldn't want to live in a house like that with like holes above the roof and like all the air going out and sucking up from the bottom. Like, it would be pretty cold. So I've always, I've always gone more setting the colonies up with bottom ventilation and top insulation. So I have the roof Polyashforth feeder, loads of insulation at the top, no ventilation at the top, and then, you know, supers or brood boxes or whatever all the way down to the bottom. And then I like an open mesh floor on the bottom, either a full one or kind of like a partially closed one like that. And I never have any issues with moisture in the wrong part of the hive. But the issue that you have if you're losing colonies due to wet is where you You have the top of the hive is not insulated enough, or the top of the hive is less insulated than the walls, which means that all the moisture forms above the cluster, sits on the bees, the bees get all damp, they get cold, the bees do not like damp and cold, so then they struggle and they fail. But the thing is, it might not be the reason that they fail. So what you'll find is if you've got like a really big strong booming colony, they create a huge amount of moisture. But they can also manage that moisture well. So if you open up a big strong booming colony and you see like, you see like a bit of moisture around the edge, but in the middle there's none, and that's because the bees are managing it well. Whereas if you've got a colony that's failing due to say like a drone-laying queen, or they're succumbing to varroa and they're shrinking down like that, then what you'll see is that the colony still produces a very reasonable amount of moisture, but they're much less able to manage that within the hive. can't dedicate resource to moving that around or out of the way where they don't want it, so it starts to condense on them and then they start to really struggle because of that. So it's a bit chicken and egg, you know, you might— a weak failing colony will look like it's being negatively impacted by condensation much more than a strong colony would with the same amount of moisture in there. So you'll get— it will kind of look like that. So I think that makes sense. Hopefully, That explains it though. What I would just say is on all of them, loads of insulation on the top, ventilation at the bottom, which means that the least insulated side of the hive is the walls. And then because it's the walls, the water can condense on the walls, tracks downwards, and it's got an easy exit route out of the open mesh floor. Is it best to perform a demo before start, middle, end, or after the honey flow for honey production? So The best time to perform a Demaray is before the bees are trying to swarm. It's the only time that you can actually do it. If you— if the bees are starting to swarm, if the bees are starting to produce proper swarm cells, it's too late to do the Demaray. And that's the best— that's the best way to work out when in the season you should be doing your Demaray. So don't worry about the honey flow, don't worry about the production or the time of the year or the months or anything like that. Just work out like the average date where your bees swarm. And then kind of go back a couple of weeks, and that'll give you roughly like the best time to do it. For us, I'll go— I have like a 2-week slot, so it's any time from like the 1st of May to the 15th of May. That is the first demaray slot for me. And then I'll get like 3 weeks after that, gets me into the June gap, and then I can take honey crops off and feed the bees back up safely because it gives them additional space. And then I tend not to do a second demaray now because you're so far past the season, and if you manage the bees well throughout the June gap, you can take the risk to not do a second demeray. But my second demeray, if I was going to do it, would be about July, and then I wouldn't— oh, 3 demerays, I think it's just a waste of time now. It's too— it's, it's not too much effort and it's not too much work for the bees, but it just, it confuses, it confuses me a bit doing 3 demerays. I like to stick, just do one demeray early in the season between the 1st and the 15th of May, and I find that works really Really well. I love it when people put a message like that. Have a drink of tea, definitely need it. Uh, Steve's Honeybees, I love, I love this. So it seems like it's so much of a plug, this question, but it's honestly not, and Steve will know that it's not. So are you currently taking orders for 2025 nucs? So we are, yes, and we've got like 3 or 4 nucs left, overwintered nucs left, before we close orders for overwintered overwintered nucs. It would definitely be before the 1st of January. Um, I, I can't quite get over the demand. It is, it's bonkers. We've sold more nucs for next year already than we sold in the whole of 2024. Um, I just— yeah, sorry, thank you. I'm amazed with the support. So we will— if you want a nuc, an overwintered nuc for next year, the, the Langstroth already sold out. The overwintered Nationals will be sold out by the 1st of Jan, and then we'll start taking orders for the spring nucs, which were— which are very, very limited and will be done— will be done by kind of, I reckon, middle of Feb, something like that. But yes, we are taking orders. Uh, Richard R. Bryner Jr. says, bee watching. Hello to you too. Steve's Honeybees also says, hit the like button. Very kind, thank you very much. Sean Seymour, channel member, says, hi Lawrence, I've ordered my first nuc and cannot wait to get them. I'm looking at buying the Anno Hive and I've seen your video on them I was wondering if you had the chance to use it, and if so, did you like it? First-time beekeeper. So I do, I do have the Anil Hive, and I, I do— I don't want to, I don't want to say like I do like it because I use it on the same run as the Abello polyhives that I've got there on. I've got the Poly Langstroth next to it, and if I had to pick, if I had to pick one, like I'll put the disclaimer up, I do the social media for Abello, so I do use more of their products and see more of their products, but if I had to pick one, the Anel versus the Abello, it would be a no-brainer for me in terms of the quality because I think that the Abello just looks nicer. I think it will last a lot longer. I think the technology is a lot more proven. It takes paint. I quite like the fact that you can paint it in lots of different colors, but the elephant in the room, like the Anel, is Way, way cheaper. So if I had to like spend my own money on it, I would be—I'd be weighing those up and thinking, like one is a lot cheaper than the other. Can I like? Am I happy with the way it looks? Am I happy with the color? Am I happy with the fact that it's kind of like a slightly different technology? Is it going to last as long? I honestly don't know the answer to—is it going to last as long? Because the technology for those injection molded plastic with polyurethane insulation is not—they've not been going. For anywhere near as long, and I can see how UV would potentially degrade that, but I don't, I don't know. So do I like using the one that I've got? Yep, it's, it's fine to use. The bees seem to do— the bees doing very, very well in it, but it is— the bees are doing well in the other ones as well. Um, I'm not a massive fan of how it looks, I'm not gonna lie. I don't like the little kind of like bits of plastic and stuff on it as well. but it is loads and loads cheaper, so you'll be happy with whichever ones you get, and I'm sure you'll be happy with the Anel ones at the price that they're available. Channel member, says good evening, Laurence. Good evening to you too, Lee. Hi Laurence, if I only had— sorry, if I just got words out— if only I had bought poly boxes rather than wood. Thermal insulation has massively assisted my bees this winter, and it It hasn't even been that cold yet. Very, very true. Even in the height of summer, it makes a massive difference with them being so insulated because it works the other way around as well. It means that when they're trying to like get the hive to the correct temperature, when the colony's getting too warm, or when they're trying to kind of fan the moisture content of the honey down, all of the thermal insulation is very, very beneficial in that scenario as well. So I do I do like my poly boxes. We've got your hat sorted. He says, this year I'm trying solid floors. Why do we usually have mesh floors? Bees in the wild go into tree trunks without mesh and prefer solid floors for swarms. So it's a good question, but Richard absolutely swears by solid floors. I was chatting to him the other day and he said the video series that he wants me to do this year is a combination, or comparison I should say, of an open mesh floor colony and a solid floor floor mesh colony, and he thinks the ones in the solid floor get a much faster buildup in the spring. So it's one of those ones that people debate. Obviously bees in the wild wouldn't have solid mesh, you know, it'd be a very niche location for them to find something like that, and in terms of swarms, they don't like going into it, so it is more of a useful tool for a beekeeper. It used to be called a Varroa mesh floor, and the idea was that it was very much there for monitoring and managing varroa. But then some people liked it as the entry and exit point for ventilation within the hive as well, and then it means that the mites can drop down and they're not causing an issue to the colony. But I don't think that really has a negligible impact on the colony. I have some floors that are solid, I have some floors that are open, and I don't see too much difference. between either of them, but I say to most people, just do whatever. I think either's fine, you should be happy with both. Hello to JK Photography, hope you're doing well. Laurence, is it true all bees should be hygienic? Is there others more so? There's definitely bees that are more hygienic than others when it comes to kind of most things, but particularly mites. You get some bees that are very, very good at removing reproductive mites, and that's where you get like the tests, the tests that they do to see how many mites are being taken out, or reproductive mites are being taken out, and not all bees carry those traits, so they're trying to foster those traits when they find them and breed bees that are better at managing varroa, which a lot of our VSH Queens are bred from mothers whose daughters have exhibited that. We get the terminology right there. So yeah, there's definitely a huge amount of variation in the hygienic nature of bees. Pestman UK says, hello Lawrence, when is your earliest delivery for F1 Buckfast queens? I'm looking for the end of April and about 20 queens. So earliest one is— it's crazy the amount of orders that are coming for these already, but there is— don't worry, there's plenty of queens to around. We're not going to sell out of Queens anytime soon. Um, 11th of April I think is the first one that we've got down, but you can, you can order them now and you can choose the specific dates that we dispatch on a Thursday and a Friday. So you can, you can go in now. All of the, uh, system ordering is in place for 2025. You can select the dates. Everything should work, should work okay. So feel free to go on there and have a, have a play around. Artem Tyrell says, evening Lawrence, good to have your streams back. There's not much going on at the moment. Oh, that's that's nice. Cheers. Just like a fallback for when there's nothing else going on. Only joking. Artem says, "Can you share your technique for transferring queens to new cages with attendance? Wishing you and the family happy New Year." I did. I did a video on this in terms of the different ways. Did I ever post that video, or was it a channel members? Was it a channel members video? I can't remember that one. There's there's a there's a couple of different ways of doing it. So the the one The way that I started doing it was I'd get an empty cage and I'd take the slide off, and then I'd find the frame of bees. Imagine, there you go, imagine that's the frame of bees. I'd find the frame of bees and I'd get the empty cage and I'd go boom like that over the queen and a few attendants, and then I'd get the slide and I'd slide up underneath like that. Now that works, but it's quite a clumsy way of doing it. So the way that I do it now, which is I think is a superior way of doing it, is I will get some cages and I'll just get some attendants into the cages, which you can do like a number of different ways. However you want to get the attendants in your cages, you can. You can do what I just said there, you can kind of put it onto a frame and slide the thing underneath, or you can, you can use carbon dioxide to sedate the bees and then just kind of dip them in. You can do that if you're doing loads, that's the quickest way of doing it. And then once the CO2 dissipates, the bees are just kind of like back to it. And then what I just do now is I'll do that and then I'll undo the slide, I basically pick up a queen by her wings, got the queen in one hand, and I'll unslide my other hand, and I'll just put the queen in and then close it all back up again. So that is the way that I do it now, and I think it's— previously I didn't want to pick up the queens, I just thought it's better if I can get away without not picking up the queens, this is the best way of doing it, but I found when I was sliding it back up you'd occasionally damage some of the bees' legs, and I thought that's— I don't want damaged attendant these legs in there. So doing it the other way was a lot easier, and then just putting the queen in, I found a safer way of doing it. So that's what I do now. Harry says, thanks for the advice on the extractor, Lawrence. I think a 20-frame is right for me, though 30 would be the dream, but it's too expensive. It's, uh, yeah, see, see what you can do. Speak to Damien, uh, Bella, and see what the best price he can do you on a 30-frame is. They've got some, they've got some different lines of 30-frames now. They've got the Classic and the Premium, but then they've they've got like a— I don't know what they call it, it's not a basic line, but it's black and they look pretty good. And you can get the 30-frame version of that for less than the 20-frame Classic, and I'd probably recommend that over the 20-frame Classic as long as you can get space to get it in. Hey Lawrence, greetings from Portugal. Something that happens to me a lot when I introduce a virgin queen in a new and weak nuc, after she lays a small amount of eggs she gets rejected. Any tips? So when it's a— So bees will do that regardless of whether it's a virgin or a mated queen, and we find it a fair bit with the Buckfast queen. So you'll make a split and then you're trying to put a queen in, and then the queen goes in, she gets accepted, she's walking around on the frame, she lays up a little bit of eggs, and then the bees kill her. And then you'll see some either some emergency cells, but more likely you'll see a supersedure cell. So 1 or 2 supersedure cells. And it looks like, you look at that and you think that's a defective queen, but it's not. It's just a standard kind of strategy that the existing bees have to try and keep their own genetics. And you could say, well, how do you know that? And I know it from personal experience, which is if you take down a supersedure cell, they don't often put it back up, but occasionally they do. And if you take down the next supersedure cell, they just kind of like give up. Get 2 or 3 supersedure cells in, they say, okay, would— that queen is okay, we'll let her get on. And then she lives for 2 or 3 years and she's one of the best queens you've ever had. So that when people say the bees know best, they're doing that supersedure for a reason, the bees know best. Sometimes the bees just are stubborn and they just want to keep their own genetics going and they don't always know best. A lot of the time the bees do know best, but in that instance there, they sometimes and very annoyingly try and supersede queens when and there's nothing wrong with them. So I think, I suspect it's, it's similar to that, regardless of the fact that she's a virgin. They're just trying to get their own genetics back in there. Channel member says, evening Lawrence and Merry Christmas from Danny Bees. Hi Aiden as well, how's it going? Channel member says, hi Lawrence, was checking my hives yesterday and one of them was like, has a pile of dead bees at the mostly— sorry, at the bottom, mostly in the middle and the back of the hive floor, but are very active. Is this normal? So I wouldn't say, I wouldn't say it's normal, but I wouldn't say it's anything to be worried about. So you can have, you think about when your colony goes into winter, so there's 10,000 bees there, and that's in like September, let's say. When you get to spring, when you get to April, there is literally not going to be any of those bees left. Maybe a few. Let's say when you get to— listen, when you get to May, there's not going to be a single one of those 10,000 bees left. So where have they gone, those 10,000 bees? They've got to go somewhere. So generally what happens is that bees, like, when they're going to die, they go off and just die somewhere, which is very, very kind of them. But a lot of them over winter just die in the hive, and then the undertaker bees will go out and clear them out whenever they can. So if it's too cold to do that, or there's not enough bees in the colony to do that, you'll get these piles of dead bees that will eventually get cleaned up. So it's just a case of like you've probably caught them at a time where a lot of them have died and then it's been quite cold, so they've not, they've not moved them, or there's not enough bees in the colony at the moment to move them. I think they will move them at some point, so you should be good. Wow, £40 for the cat from Steve's Honey Bees, and then Simon has immediately outbid him with £50. That is, that is a pretty strong and serious bid, Simon. I think, I think, uh, you're looking good for a cat for £50. No worries. It's a nice one though. No one's ever had this kind of style cap before because this one is blue. Uh, I always give out the black ones, but this one's like a nice dark navy blue. All the labels and stuff still on. Pretty cool cap. Uh, Julian says, what Christmas gift did you buy for yourself? I'm— I said before I bought myself some stuff for the gym. I bought myself loads of things. I bought this jacket as well, bought myself a new jacket, and I bought myself my new lens and my new weights for the gym and And, uh, but I also got some nice gifts as well. I got a new, like, my Yeti mug. It's funny because I saw Griff got a Yeti mug as well, but I got, I got a new Yeti mug, uh, so I've got 2 of them now and they are the best insulated mugs in the world. I love them. And then I got some Tiger Balm. What else did I get? I can't, I can't remember. I got a new scarf, I've got a new scarf and I got a new hat. I've got loads of stuff. I loved it. What have you said or done on the internet that's got you into the most Trouble. Oh, what have I done? I said I loads of things. I um I used to sell. I just get troubled again saying it. Used to sell. This is a this is really embarrassing. I used to sell swarm traps on eBay. Black comb swarm traps and oh there was a like a disclaimer on it. And this this wasn't done deliberately at all. But it was saying that they'd—you can see how I'm choking. I'm like, oh, am I actually saying this? It was that from a reputable bee farmer. That was the thing: you're getting it from a reputable bee farmer, and the the Bee Farmers Association were not happy about that. And I immediately took it down and looked at it. And when you know when they showed it to me from their perspective, I thought that's really really embarrassing because it looks so bad. And looking back on it now, I just think, how could I have been so stupid and so naive to think that that was an acceptable thing to do? So that got me in a lot of trouble. Um, I did, I did another one which I can, I can talk about now because it's not, you know, it was bad, but there was a, there was a formulation for wax moth prevention called Sertan B401 which was really, really good. And it came in this like little bottle, and then you sprayed each and every frame with it over, over, like basically before storage. And then I can't remember, I can't remember how it worked. I'd have to go back and read it. Like, you know, I'm not one for sucking in useless information when it's not needed, but I'm pretty sure that it was like, it was a bacterium that killed all forms of wax moth. So like the eggs, the larva, the actual full bodies and stuff. But anyway, they discontinued it, so it got, it got taken off the market, and they didn't didn't renew their license. And then there was this basically like a knockoff product, and it was something completely different, but it was the same bacterium, and you could buy it from Italy for like dead cheap compared to what Sertan was. And I was just doing loads of videos at that point and thinking, well, you know, this is useful information. And again, completely naive to thinking this is going to piss someone off, and it definitely did. So I got, I got really told off again for that one. And all of these things came in quite quick succession, which is really embarrassing. Um, but I, I was effectively telling people to use non-approved VMD, like the, the Veterinary Medicine Directive medicines. And that, yeah, that didn't go down well either. So, so I had to take that, take down the video for that. And I think, I think there was a few kind of like on, on a similar theme, which was just a bit stupid and a bit naive, but not really understanding the repercussions of it in that, like, a lot of people would have maybe seen that and taken that on and used that advice. So definitely got a slap on the wrists and haven't made the same mistake again, to be fair. Like, I'm much more— I would say PC. I'm generally quite PC anyway, but I'm much more stringent on what I put on the channel now. And even, even so much in terms of reviews, like I used to get a review, like review a product, it's the best thing in the world, I love it, and genuinely did think like it was the best thing in the world and loved it. And then, you know, 6 months, 12 months down the line, stuff started going wrong. And then 2 or 3 years down the line, thinking that is just a piece of junk, I can't believe I reviewed and recommended that to people. So, uh, you'll notice there's nowhere near as many reviews on the channel as there was previously because I don't like to. I'm not going out just buying stuff for the sake of it anymore, but also I don't like to review stuff until I've given it like a real thorough working in. But yeah, that's a good question. Like that question. What have I said or done on the internet that's gotten me into the most trouble? I think I think those two probably up there somewhere. J.N.H. Honeybee says, "Happy New Year, Lawrence from Tennessee. Good seeing you last year in Kentucky at the expo. How has your new business grown over the last year, Bryn?" Oh. Interesting. It has— good to chat to you, by the way, at the expo. Uh, I'm gutted I'm not going this year. I know I see all the stuff on social media, looks very, very exciting. The Nuke business has grown substantially. Again, it's— I'm such a natural pessimist, I really, really am. So I think we're at the peak, and I thought last year we were at the peak, and I plan like— I, I try and manage the business to make sure that we're never stung by that peak. It's not Not a deliberate pun, but you know what I mean. I just, I don't want to, I don't want to ever be in a position where we produce way too many nukes and that we can't sell them. And I've never been in that position. But I also don't, you know, I understand that the market that you want to be able to, you want to be able to sell as many as you can, and you want to keep the quality as high as you possibly can, keep everyone happy. And I think the way that me and Richard have developed that nuke side of the business is working very, very well. But I will never overstretch either of us in terms of like what next. So when people say to me, oh, like, what, where are you taking the business to, what next? And I'm just like, if we can, if we can plateau for 20 years, I'll be really, really happy with that. And for me, it's just about freeing myself up to go and spend time with my, my kids and, and stuff like that. I don't want to be, I don't want to be slaving away doing 15, 16-hour days anymore. more because I've done, I've done a good 15 years of that and it is hard and you can't keep going at that, at that rate of working, working 2 full-time jobs really. So I'm gonna, I wanna, I wanna see, see things plateau and spend, spend a bit more time with my family, which would be nice. Happy Christmas, Laurence, from cold Mottingham, South London. I do need to get back to London at some point. Uh, David says £35. I think, I think we're up to £50. Sorry, sorry, David. I feel I do feel a bit bad. I've not got many of these hats left. Otherwise, I would do. I would do multiple bids. Sophia Dem, my one Twitch viewer, says, "Yeah, the bees here are enjoying the mild weather. They were out and bringing back the pollen today." I do. I do like it when they go out and get a bit of pollen. Steve's Honeybee says, "Will you be at the bee show in February?" So not in a formal capacity, no. But I'm trying to move stuff around. I've said to them I can't come this year, but I am trying to move stuff around. In order to be able to come, but it's not definite yet. But I would recommend to people to go. It is very good, very good bee show. Aidan says chair. I'm not sure in relation to what. You have to add some more words onto that one. Sam Redmond says thank you for all your support to all us beekeepers. You definitely make beekeeping a lot easier with all you do. Legend. Happy Christmas. Thanks, Sam. That's a very, a very nice comment. Brought a smile to my face. David says, hope I've and your. Am I am I missing something there? I'm confusing myself. Sorry. Tony and Liz says, don't forget the like button. Much appreciated. Tap tap tap. Hit that like button. Abasi says, hi everyone. Cub Rider says, how long do you give a mediocre queen laying okay but nothing great? So if you know that at this point in the year, like do do the deed. as soon as you can get a good mated queen in there, I would say. No, no need to dwell on it, but I would give them at least like 2 or 3 rounds of brood before I'd make— I'd made a decision on that. Or even like see what they do, like if they fill the brood box and then they're working up, I would probably see— I would probably see how they go. That's when I do it, I do it around mid-August. You do have to treat. Oh, there we go, I'm getting— I'm getting back to this now. You mentioned 14-day beekeeping courses. Are you doing courses in 2025? So physical beekeeping courses were on like the cards for 2025, but I don't think I'm going to do them anymore. Going to focus— I need to focus on one thing at a time, and 2025 is the year of doing my online beekeeping course, which is going to be epic, going to be the best online beekeeping course ever. But it's going to take a huge amount of my time, and there's no way that I can do physical ones at the same time, which is a shame. I might go and I might do a beekeeping experience course with someone else where they can do all the management and I can just turn up for the day and just kind of like partake. That'd be fun, but nothing physical. Honey says £40 amount in the pub is for charity, well worth it. Oh, that's very, very kind, Paul. Sorry, it's £50 now. I feel really bad that someone's bid so high. I thought I was going to struggle to give it away, David Stevens says, hi Lawrence, when do you hope to release the 14-day beekeeper series and will it be for channel members VIP only? So I— it's weird because I'm doing, I'm doing this course and I'm doing it, I'm basically watching my own course on how to create a course and they say that you need to like pre-launch and do it all really, really quickly and I'm just not, I'm not buying that because I want to make sure that it's right before it goes out. So I So I don't think I'm going to be releasing it until— I'm going to do an early release to kind of like get some people through the door for like crazy percent off, and then I think I'm going to do like a firm launch maybe like October. So it's going to— I need the full year to film all the videos. It's going to be about 100 videos, 120-odd exclusive, never seen or filmed yet, not done them yet, before videos kind of taking everyone from, you know, from a novice beekeeper all the way through to an advanced beekeeper. But it's not gonna— it's not on YouTube, so it is going to be a standalone. It's going to be— it's going to be hosted on my website, and then there will be a separate community alongside that as well. So again, separate from Facebook, separate from YouTube, for, for people to learn more, kind of like a small close-knit community. Um, I'm working out at the moment how that's going to integrate into channel memberships. So that is very much TBD at the moment, and I will certainly look after the channel members in the way that that is managed, so rest assured. Aaron Paris says, I won't sell a nuke to anyone that says they don't treat their idiots. Oh, I like to sit on the fence a bit more than that. I have respect to people, I have respect for people, and I admire their— I don't think it's laziness. I don't think it's that they say they're not not gonna treat because they can't be bothered. They genuinely think they're doing the right thing, and who am I to say that they're not doing the right thing? Like, people are completely entitled to manage their bees in the way that they see fit. My own personal opinion that I'm entitled to is that I'm doing the best for the bees by treating them. Their opinion, which they're entitled to, is that on the whole they're not going to treat and they're doing the best for the bees by not treating. I can see both sides of the argument. But I just, I think as with all things beekeeping, you have to have respect for other people's opinions, even if you disagree with them. Glenn Charles says, thanks for all your help and information on your videos. Is there anywhere in the UK where I can purchase a high IQ? Your help in this matter will be much appreciated, and have yourself a very Merry Christmas. Am I missing something? Is it a joke? Like, you want to purchase a high IQ Is it like a you have to send a link or something if it's like a specific type of hive or something? I don't know. I just maybe laugh inside a little bit too much there, Glenn. Sorry. Cub Rider says thank you everyone for the cat bidding fellow beekeepers. Fifty pounds. Good bidding. Twenty six miles for a non-runner is a big task. It certainly is. Gareth Rose says hi Lawrence. I'm looking to start beekeeping this year and looking to buy some bees. Any advice? there a cutoff on buying bees from you? So my advice would be, there's a video on my channel when you go onto the channel homepage that says How to Start Beekeeping, about 30 minutes long, but it's a really good video to watch, especially at this time of the year. Gives you like a nice breakdown of pretty much everything that you need to think about before you start keeping bees. In terms of a cutoff from, from buying nucs from us, we've got like 3 or 4 days left. of overwintered nucs. And that is not— you'll see it, I'll post it on social media when we're sold out. It will be around like New Year's Eve, maybe the 1st of January for overwintered nucs. And then there'll be a very limited amount of spring nucs that are available that are going to be made up in April and will be sent out in May. And they'll probably be gone by about February, I would say. So the cutoff for overwintered, the next few days, um, for spring nucs, probably around February. And then in terms of any Advice, I would just say just kind of absorb as much information as you possibly can. Don't be afraid to ask questions. Like, I'll never make anyone feel like silly or stupid about asking questions because it's beekeeping, isn't it? Beekeeping is a challenging hobby. There's so much that can go wrong. There's so much that can go right as well. And to someone who doesn't know the lingo, like, there's no, there's no stupid questions. So just ask as many questions as you possibly can. You'll probably get some conflicting advice and some answers, so don't be afraid to ask another question. Challenge the status quo, I always say that as well, it's a good one. Don't just, because someone tells you something, don't believe them, you know, try it out for yourself, see what works, what works for you, and just try not to take it too seriously. Bees are pretty resilient, and if you just follow some simple structured advice with kind of like minimal intervention, but enough intervention to make sure that they're managed properly, you'll do very, very well, and your bees will be very happy bees. But good luck with it, always, always nice to see someone starting beekeeping, it is a very good hobby. David also says click the like button, I like that, I hope people are clicking the like button when these ones come up. I've seen that a few bees with wing virus, you can hit them with OA on a mild day. So it's, you can, it's not going to do a huge amount with the ones that have already got the virus, but it should reduce the load, subsequent load, on future bees once you get the mite load down to an acceptable level. David says he hopes Ivy and Lily were spoiled. They certainly were, at a very good time. Sorry, Daniel says, hi everyone, can I treat my hive with oxalic acid in mid-jam? So you can treat your hive at any point throughout the year with oxalic acid. Most effective time to treat them is at any point where there is either a natural or a forced brood break. The general advice, and you see it still given out now, is kind of like around Christmas time, New Year, go in now and do oxalic acid. I think it's too late now. There'll be brood in all of my hives. I should have opened up a couple when I was up there today just to show that there is brood in there. There's definitely brood in there now. So I tend to go in kind of like mid to end of November is my 2-week period to go in and zap them with apiroxal to try and get the mite load down. as low as it can be. But what I would say is, if you've not treated them yet, there's no harm treating them now in the middle of January. Do it just as soon, as soon as possible really. And if you're going to do multiple treatments, do it 5 days apart. Quite strict on the 5 days apart because it will interrupt the mite's reproductive cycle. If you do it 4 days, it doesn't. If you do it 6 days, it doesn't. It has to be 5 days. It's also bid for the cap, not quite the highest bidder, but thanks for the bid, Peter. Says, I looked in, I looked in Ivy's nuc today. How's Ivy's nuc doing? Doing very well, completely full. Says, is it best to requeen end of the season so not to lose any honey crop due to a gap in brood? Um, I would, I, I wouldn't, it doesn't make a huge difference. If it, like, if anything, you could argue that requeening kind of during a really strong honey flow gives you more honey. Because if you've got lots of brood in there, the bees always tend into the brood, whereas if you take the queen out and let the colony go broodless, all of that brood emerges and then there's no brood for the bees to tend to. So all of the bees are just like, it's brilliant, not got any work to do, we're just gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna get promoted up quicker, and then we go out and we forage. So you, you can see like a boost in honey production by requeening at the right time in the year. but it is negligible. I honestly wouldn't worry about that. I'd requeen for you at the most suitable time to requeen for you and not worry about the impact on the honey crop because I don't think it's going to be a massive one. Hi Lawrence, do you have a rough date month for 2025 queens? So all of the queens are now available on the website, so if you go on the website for each of the queens, you can actually select the dispatch dates. I I changed that from last year. So last year I did just like pre-order, and then I had to go back to everyone and say, when, when do you want your queens? And some, some wanted them in April and some wanted them in June. It was a, a bit of a logistical nightmare. So I, I did the hard work early and put all the dates in. So first batch of queens go out on, I think it's like the 11th of April. It's like the basically the second week of April. There might be a batch before that, but I can't— I don't want to take orders for that one yet. But we will update you as and when we know for that. Ed Walton says, hi Lawrence, what is too close to have 2 out apiaries from each other? So I've got some apiaries that are like half a mile away from each other, but I think ideally if you can keep them 3 miles away, that's perfect, and then you've never got to worry about moving them between the 2. Because I've got multiple apiaries though, it doesn't really make a massive difference to me, and I rarely move bees between the 2 that are half a mile away. I kind of just like moved them from other apiaries into one of those 2, and I use— I just, I have 2 quite close to each other because they're, they're quite nice apiaries and they've got access to different forage, and I don't like keeping all of the kind of colonies in one apiary, just like spread the risk around a little bit, you know, in terms of them being stolen. So preferably 3 miles away, I would say, but I wouldn't, I wouldn't worry too much about it if you're just going to have 2 apiaries and that's it. they're definitely more than 3 miles away though, because otherwise it takes away the benefit of having multiple apiaries. Do you know if a Langstroth Super Frame would fit in a National extractor? Any thoughts? Not unless I looked at the extractor. I would say probably not because of the way that it's quite a lot longer, and I think on the National extractors though, I don't think it'll work. I know a lot of them do work, so you're just gonna have to get one in and see if it fits. It fits. A lot of them, a lot of them do say that they do cater for multiple frame sizes. Any recommendations for Langstroth nuc hives, please? So the ones that we use are the, the Payne's Langstroth nucs that Simon the Beekeeper has now adopted, which is very good. They're the ones that we would recommend. They're very good. Shannon says, hi Lawrence, when are your queens ready for delivery? Wow, a lot of questions about queen delivery. So, so early. Um, oh geez, well, I, I am still here, that is just my camera that's gone. That's very annoying. I do not know why that is happening. Got— we've got a lot longer into it this time than last time, but I will carry on talking and I'm pretty good at fixing this quite quickly now. So let's give that a go and see if that's the wrong camera, which it is. And I— that's pretty much textbook. There we go, taking myself off. I'm, I'm better at getting that fixed. I do not know why that is happening, and it is very, very, very annoying. Um, I'm worried it's gonna happen again now. I thought I'd fixed it and it's not. But they will be ready, yes, 11th, 11th of April. for the imported ones, and then the first UK ones are like back into May, early June, depending on the weather. I hope you had a great Christmas. We are planning our spring splits and torn between producing our own queens or buying in mated queens. We know we have someone in the area, 1 mile as the crow flies, with a very aggressive colony. Is it worth the risk of our queens breeding with aggressive drones? And so you've always just got to take, take that with a pinch of salt. If you, if you can throw enough drones up in into the air and you've got good quality breeder queen stock, so pure stock, uh, so like F0— not, not really called F0, but you know what I mean, not one step up from F1, uh, which, which can be quite expensive— and you're happy to graft from them, then you, you can definitely rear some decent queens. Just be prepared for the fact that, you know, not everything is 100% when it comes to queen mating, and you do end up getting quite a lot of failures as well. I'm sure, I'm sure you know that already. I wouldn't worry about having someone 1 mile away with, with one very aggressive colony because that's not gonna make a huge amount of difference compared to the amount of kind of natural colonies in the area anyway. So I would give it a go, see how it goes, and then you can kind of take it from there. Merry Christmas, Laurence, and all the best for 2025. Thanks, Carol, same to you. Uh, Ed says, why do you think a bellow will last longer than an annel? I just— I've worked on like loads of building sites and stuff like that, all like for years, and seen a lot of like plastic that looks okay at the beginning, but then, you know, 5 years out on the building site, it's just not— it's just like nothing. Just you touch it and it kind of like shatters. And I'm not to say I'd like— I have no information to say that the Anil is like that, but it just— it looks kind of quite similar to the plastic that I've seen that's degraded a lot. And you, you don't paint it, so it's not got that ability to kind of like block out that UV degradation through painting in the same way that the Abello one would. I also just— I, I think like the Abello is like quite a bit stronger and tougher looking, but it's like I say, it's personal preference. The, the Anil one's probably like half the price of the So it's not really a fair comparison, and if it lasted half as long as the Abello, you could argue that that's probably better value. Whether it's better for the environment, we won't go into that, but that's just my observation from kind of seeing it and using it. I use a Govee thermometer and a thermal camera to keep an eye on my bees. Very interesting to see how they move about inside the hive. It's cool, you know, I'm gonna guess that you're like somewhere quite cold because when I tried to do that over here, I just couldn't see through. And I think it was because like I had a pretty decent thermal camera. It wasn't like a proper one, but it just went on the bottom of my phone. But it was, you know, you could see like pipes in the walls and stuff. But then on the beehives, it just didn't work unless I went up there middle of the night when it was really, really cold, and only then could I see through. But I think it's because I had polyhives, because the poly's so insulating that you just can't, can't penetrate. But I'd love to be able to see that if that worked. Like, and I know it does work for some people. If it worked for me, it would be very comforting to just kind of, you know, see a big cluster in there at this point in the year. Be great. Uh, Zabit says, how are you treating to be so good to be high? I'm not, I'm not 100% sure on that one. Sorry. Uh, David says, where's your drawing pad? We miss your drawings. I've got Got absolutely slated for my drawing pad. I will, I will bring it back up at some point. I need to get another camera up here. What I was thinking, I could just get like a board. I could just like write on the board. That might, that might work a bit better and save me £400 or wherever it is for my extra screen subscription to StreamYard. That's not the reason that I'm thinking of ditching it. It's more just because I've got too many like cameras and cables and they just get like lost in everything. Over this side, Jean says, "Thank you so much for all the educational information you provide for us." My pleasure. Oh, that's the best one. Thanks, thanks, Lynette. Much appreciated. I normally have my tea in like a cup that keeps it warm, and it is properly cold. It's not enjoyable. Alan Brown says, "I was thinking of starting beekeeping at my allotment in 2026 as I'm going to Vietnam in April for three weeks." And I think it might be too late in the season to start later on, but there are lots of rats as it's near a small river. I'm just looking through to see if there's any other— wow, there's some— I'm just flicking through, there are some serious bids on that hat, that is pretty amazing. Right, where have we got to? So I wouldn't worry about the rats, you could just set up the hive stand so the rats can't get up. And I think I should keep them at bay. There we go. Uh, right, Jean's off to run some errands. See you later, Jean. Uh, Cub Rider says a Bello 20 frame is down from £1,400 to £95. Bought one the other week. That is a pretty amazing discount, really. Uh, and, and a very, and a very good, um, radial extractor. And I know that one does take some Langstroth frames as well, so you'll be, you'll be very happy with it. Jag says picking up queens is the joy of beekeeping. It's amazing how fast she I do. I do like picking up queens, and it's one of those things that at first you just you're scared. Like I've got big sausage fingers. You're scared of damaging the queen, but then when you kind of come to the the realization that pick that's that that's the safest way picking them up because you've got so much kind of like feeling and dexterity in your fingers. Like picking the queen up, making sure she's safe, and then putting her in like that is loads better than trying to manually crush her in. Steve's honeybees. Oh geez! That is really annoying. Very— I do apologize. I will just carry on talking. For anyone who's on the podcast, they'll be thinking nothing, nothing, like no issues here. But the, the camera does keep on breaking, so I do apologize. Like I said, I've got pretty good— ah, spoke too soon. I was going to say I got pretty good at fixing it. Let's give it another go, and if not, I'll have to turn over to like the really substandard camera. I'm gonna have to work out why it's happening, and I really just don't know why it's happening at the moment. Here we go, we're back on. I said back on. There we go. Hello, hello. I— it's really annoying. I just don't understand it. I think it might be the USB connection. It's just gone a little bit iffy. Uh, so Steve's just ordered 2 nukes. So well done. Thanks, Steve, much appreciated. I'll get around to Well, you will receive an email in about 15 minutes with lots of, um, lots of information in there. So there we go. Julian Norley says, can't seem to get channel member working lately. Tips please. Oh, is that on— is that on Facebook or is that on YouTube? Drop me a— drop me a message on Messenger and we will look at that afterwards. Right, Steve's Honeybees bid £55 on the hat and then David gone 51. Um, Cub Rider's loving this. Simon's gone up to 60. David's gone 61. Simon's gone 65. That is, that is immense. But David has also gone 65. Simon's gone 70. David's gone 70. And David has— looks like he's, he's taken it with 71. That is impressive. Thank you so much for everyone's generosity there. We, uh, literally as I close, I will announce who as well. But at the moment it looks like David's in the lead. Right, he says, hi, 3 hives into winter after the recent snow, 1 hive seems to have died, lots of bees in front of hive and blocking the entrance, gutted. As the days recently warmer, 2 hives still have bees flying. So sorry to hear that, it is always gutting when you lose a colony of bees like that, but what I would say is you've got a number, you've got another 2 to make your splits from and kind of get the colonies back up really, really quickly. So good, good to see that you have spread the risk a little bit and you've got more than one colony going into winter. What I would just say though is, is be, be as careful as you possibly can with the colony that's died. Melt down the frame, sterilize everything, get it back to kind of good working condition before you start making those splits again, and kind of nip in the bud any, any disease risk there. When is the best month leading to spring to sublimate? So I, I would say any, any time between now and spring is absolutely fine to sublimate. If you're going for your best bang for your buck, I would go mid to end of November. But if you're looking to do a spring treatment or need to do a spring treatment, I did, did a channel member video about this recently, is, is talking about using Apivar as your spring treatment. So Apivar, the prerequisites for Apivar are you can't have, you can't have any supers on That's basically it really, that's the only prerequisite, and you can't extract honey from any of the frames that have been kind of tainted with the Apivar. So what that means is come early February, what you can do is you can just go and put Apivar strips into all of your colonies, you just pop them down, like you can imagine going in there today, very loose clusters or not clustering at all, pop your Apivar strips in 1st of February, 1st of April go around, take all your Apivar strips out, you can put the supers on the next day, and that is a perfectly legitimate use for Apivar. So if you're looking at doing a spring treatment or need to do a spring treatment, that is the treatment that I would recommend. Very, very effective and gets your bees into a perfect— pardon me— condition coming into the spring. David also is just giving me a shout out of my tea, my cold tea. Thanks, David. The legend has put 2 videos on the Facebook page in the latest labels. Much appreciated, thank you, John. My bees in Cumbria are on 2 brood boxes, 8 over 8, with open floors for ventilation. I'm thinking next season to go 3 brood boxes, 6 over 69. 6 over 69, um, I'm guessing, I'm guessing that's 6 over— I don't know what that means. 3 brood boxes anyway, I— it could only help. The further you get them away from the floor does seem to help the bees, so there is probably some argument to the fact that they don't like the open mesh floor, but with a big strong colony, I think they can manage it. Uh, Aiden says the chair was a guess to the new lens that you have. Okay, no, yeah, no, that was— it was a good guess, but it wasn't a guess. I, I do want to get a new nice office chair. Um, Jay says, speaking of full-time jobs, do you ever think you will go full-time bee stuff and stop the regular job? So possibly at some point in the future. but not, um, I'm not considering it just yet, um, but we will, we will see, we will see what happens. Uh, Glencross says, hi Lawrence, Simon here. I ordered a Buckfast nuc yesterday, May delivery, for a new hive I have bought. Should I change this to an overwintered nuc? Um, if, if you, if you want to, we can, we can change that to an overwintered nuc for you, Simon, that's no problem. You'll see that I just added on the new— I'm getting basically preparing the website for the new spring ones, so you can, you can basically have either one, whichever one you want. If you want to change it from overwintered one, that is fine. Some people prefer a spring one if they're like a new beekeeper. You can argue a spring one's possibly a little bit easier to manage, gives you a bit more time to prepare, and less likely to swarm in the first year. I did a— if you go on to the website and have a look at the blog, there is a blog post specifically talking about that, whether an overwintered or a spring nuc is better for you. and there's tons of detail in there, but if you have any more questions, give me a shout, but we can, we can swap it over for you if you give me— drop me an email if you would like to proceed with that. Here we go. Hi Lawrence, here in Cumbria my bees are on 2 brood boxes, insulated, 8 frames over 8. It's been successful, but I'm thinking next year to go to 3 brood boxes, 6 over 6 over 6, right, to reduce swarming risks. Um, I wouldn't, I wouldn't say it's going to have much, much of a huge impact on reducing swarming because you're kind of like similar-ish number of frames there. It's only 2 frames difference. If you're saying you've got 8 over 8, so you've got 16, or then 6 over 6 over 6, which is 18, then you've got 2 more frames in a slightly different configuration. So I wouldn't, I wouldn't say it'd make a huge amount of difference. 8 over 8 is a, is a very, very nice Format. I'd be sticking. I'd be sticking on that. Less lugging boxes around. I think that'll work well. Abasi says, "I'm an Iranian professional commercial beekeeper. I had more than a thousand colonies, and I live in Nottingham." Very nice. What are you doing? What are you doing? You got work? Simon's gone to seventy-five pounds for the cap. Other Simon. Another Simon's gone to eighty pounds for the caps. Crazy. We do this every week. Aaron says, you're a great guy, dude. I love the way you see things. Oh, thank you very much. Thanks, Aaron. It's my YouTube persona. I'm dead miserable in real life. Uh, Glenn says, sorry, it's supposed to say Hive IQ. There's like an OBJ thing on there as well. I don't know what that means. Um, I'm still, I'm still lost. What's— I don't know what Hive IQ is. I'm just gonna Google it. Is it like something really similar Simple that I should know. Hive IQ. Oh, it's just like a type of type of polyhive. Is that what it is? I think I have seen them. I've forgotten what the rest of the question is, Simon Glenn. I'm really sorry. Wait, I'm just scrolling back up now to see if I can find the rest of the question. I blame it just being you know it's that weird gap, isn't it, between Christmas? So here we go. Glenn says, "Oh, thanks for all your help." information. Is there anywhere in the UK where I can purchase a Hi-IQ? Right, so it's a specific type of polystyrene hive made in Australia. I just had to Google that. And my camera's gone again, which is brilliant. So this is like the last stream I think I'm ever going to do with this camera. I don't know what we're going to do. I, I am fixing it, don't worry. I'll get myself back on if I can work out how to do it. Anybody know about cameras and why it keeps on cutting out like that? Very, very annoying. So, Simon, sorry, I don't know where you can get those, but I would say that there's plenty of comparable polyhives in the UK, um, that, that just having a look on their website, that would do just as good a job if not better. So I just have a look at some of the UK ones as opposed to trying to get the The Australian ones. Right, where was I on here? Here we go. Right, so Aaron says Merry Christmas from Canada. Merry Christmas to you too. Westcliff Honey Company says I missed the start of the live. Are you heading over the pond to attend NAB this year? Unfortunately not. I wish I was, but can't do it. Simon has gone to eighty-five pounds. Mark Shannon, channel member, says hello. Hi to you, Mark. Simon's gone to ninety-five pounds. pounds. Amazing. Uh, David says, uh, have you any more info on the mini mating hive you posted? The wooden one, not the Abello one. So I, I did a video about that today, so that is on channel members. You can see that video today. So I've just done a full kind of breakdown, full review of it on the channel. That'll be released probably early to mid-January, I would say. I think there's like 6 or 7 videos on there now that are ahead of that. There's 65 exclusive videos, I think now. It's either 60 or 65 exclusive ones that are on there, so I'm hoping people are enjoying those. Hello from Colorado. Hello to you too. Broken the big 1-0-0, so £100 for the hat. I don't think, I don't think it's going above £100. That is a serious bid. Good evening. When you see a lot of dead bees outside a hive but you still have a small small cluster still in the hive. Should I expect them to make it through to January? So it's a difficult question to answer that one, like it kind of depends on what small cluster means. I would say best bit of advice that I could give you is that you can't do anything at this point in the year to fix it, whether there's an issue or not, so cross your fingers, don't go prodding around too much, make sure they've got enough food, and see what they look like in the spring. I've had colonies that look 10 out of 10 now die through starvation, and I've had colonies that look like a 1 out of 10 now turn into really nice big strong colonies later on in the season. So you do just have to give some colonies time to get through. Hi Lawrence, can you tell me, do you know of any links between washboarding and any other hygienic behaviors? I'm not, not like other than anecdotally I would say no, it's not something that I really pay a huge amount of attention to. Uh, with stuff like that, you know, now that you've said that, I'll kind of maybe look out for it a little bit more, but it's not, it's not something that I've looked at, so I'll refrain from answering that one, I think. Oh yeah, that's a good idea. All right, Gary Wheeler says, hi Lawrence, my bees are thriving. I've been feeding sugar blocks, same as last year, in tubs around of sugar per block with a little white vinegar added to lower the pH. Is this a bad thing or not? So see, in America all the time they use like kind of similar to the candy boards that they use out there and feeding dry sugar. For me, the only reason that I don't feed dry sugar and I give the bees fondant is it's just loads easier for the bees. I try and feed my bees exclusively on syrup and switching out to invert later on in the year, and then if they need fondant because they are going to die unless I feed them fondant, I'll feed them fondant. And then my argument for feeding them fondant then and not sugar blocks or dry sugar is that in order for them to process the dry sugar, they've got to go out and forage water. Oh wow, it's really annoying. Whereas if I give them the fondant, they don't need to forage kind of anywhere near as much water. So that is my argument for feeding them the Right, let's get this camera back working. It went on for so, so well at the beginning, and then it's just gone crazy, isn't it? It's just every single time now it is turning itself on and turning itself off. So let's see if we can get it back on again. I think— right, give it one more go. I can see some crazy bids coming in as well. This is a great idea, Cub Rider. We do this, we do this every week. There we go. All right, camera's back on. I'm going to power through the questions because I feel that we've got a limited amount of time here. I know there's not that many left. Right, so Simon's bid 105, amazing bid. Simon, other Simon's gone to 110. Uh, David Bisco says my beekeeping association said to use the varroa strips September, then OA early in the year leading to spring. That's what's made me ask when to do it. So, so that is generally the advice that people give, which is rower strips like August, September, and then oxalic acid kind of like Christmas, New Year. I just think that the advice has shifted a bit. So for me, mid-November to the end of November's best time to do it. Mark Shannon, channel member, says, hi Lawrence, I would just like to say hello and thank you for all your video content. I got my first hive at the end of August and your YouTube channel has helped loads. My pleasure, thank you Mark for being a channel member and for your support. Gone 120. Other Simon's gone 125. Says, thinking of doing chunk honey next year, what is the best way to keep the framed honey until you're ready to cut and jar it? So either in the beehive or in the freezer, 2 best places to keep it, preferably in the beehive I would say, and if you can't do that, freezer's good. Uh, says, hi Lawrence, 2 nuc orders for 2025 from you. Just thinking about queens to do some splits later on. What's your preferred queens for calmness and best for honey making? So definitely I would go with the Buckfast. Our Buckfast ones are the calmest ones that we do and very, very good at producing lots and lots of honey as well. Uh, says, love the bidding, well done, you outbid my budget. Congratulations to whoever wins it. Right, you've reached the max, £135, Simon. That is, that is excellent bidding, so thank you very much. David, sorry that it's been cutting, cutting in and out, cutting out the whole night. That's pretty shocking. Casino Royale with bees, I love it. As we, we did that one. Patrick Schmidt says, which dealers can I buy Buckfast bees from in Germany? Can you recommend one to me? So I'm really sorry, we do get breeder— we do get a lot of breeder queens from a breeder in Germany, but we've been sworn to secrecy. They said they don't want any promotion and not to mention their names. So we do get Buckfast German breeder queens and they're very good, but I can't, I can't say who they were. If it wasn't for your business, what frames would you have everything on? Langstroth, like mediums. Yeah, just like standard Langstroth brood frames, definitely. Family is number one, without a shadow of a doubt. Is there a difference in characteristics between foreign mated Buckfast and the UK mated Buckfasts? Absolutely none whatsoever. There really is no difference between them. They're— a lot of the time they're from the same breeding stock, so they're just, they're just the same. Uh, Cup Rider says, PS, the more questions I ask, the longer the bidding goes on. That bidding is— I, I was just about to say the bidding is definitely finished, and the other Simon has come in with £150. That is, that is immense. I'm, I'm very, very happy we've done this, and I'm, I'm over the moon at people's generosity. That is brilliant. We will— I'm definitely going to do more of these. Wow, this is like the best way. I don't care about making money on these. Let's do some bidding for charity for the hats. Just anyone, anyone else want to name a charity and we'll do it? There we go. Thanks, Lawrence. Amazing pizzas at Abello, thanks. Do you recommend a good pizza oven Dad can buy? Oh, they were good pizzas, weren't they? I would go with the The one that I used was the Ooni, um, the 16-inch Ooni one, the gas-powered one. Really good. But then Aaron bought the Gosney one. I think it's called like the Gosney Rock Box or something like that, and that was really, really good as well. So both of those would be good. Uh, Cub Rider says, beware, I had one queen I picked up but she played possum. 2 minutes later she was back to normal. I so nearly squashed her, but luckily left her in a cage. It's crazy When they do that, isn't it? You just think they're dead, and then they just kind of like one eye. Is he is he gone yet? And then just crack on, get on with it. Aaron Paris says yes, but they're a pet, and you have to look after your pets. If I do that with my dog, I'll be charged. I fully agree. Right, Simon has gone to one sixty. These these are two Simons who are very very intent on not losing this bidding war. This is brilliant. Rufus R8 says sorry yeah so that's on. It's a Facebook beekeeping group called No Nonsense Beekeeping. Go on there, join up, you should be able to find it. Simon's come back with £170, brilliant. Aaron says, I have a dog and horses, they're my pets. If I don't look after them, they have parasites, I'll be fined, then I lose my animals. I think that's the same for bees, they're our pets. I agree. I'm really enjoying the bidding, best bid ever, and you've got other— this is like you've got other people coming in with bids now as well. Richie, Richie, 160, 180. Simon's on 200. I've lost. Where's— who's the biggest bidder here? It is— Simon's at 200. Wow. And it's still going. Oh, you're not getting any of this. This is, this is my stash now. Yeah, we forget about that. I'm only joking. 100%. What, what we will do is the winning bidder can just— have you— if you've got like a GoFundMe page, if you've got a GoFundMe page, they can bid directly on your GoFundMe page and then I'll just send the cap in it. Right, Simon's gone to 210. Richie Rich really, really wants the cap. Um, Brian says, are you going to Nabi this year? So no, not going to Nabi this year, but I will be following it from afar with a camera that works a little bit better than this one here. What a rubbish camera. It's a very expensive camera. Do you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to try— I'm not going to do it now, but I'm going to try And I'm just realizing that my second camera comes up there, doesn't it, when I'm doing that? That would be good if that wasn't such a mess. All right, let's have a look. Here we go, and we're back again. I'm just going to rig up my second camera as like my backup. Where is that? That's a really good idea. Let's knock him down there somewhere. Here we go. And then at least when the first one dies, you can see how Poor quality. The second one is. There we go. Right. Contingency camera is in place now. So no, not going to Nabi this year. Bee enthusiast Peter, channel member, says hi Lawrence. Only just tuned in. Hope all is good, and I hope you have a good 2025. Thank you, Peter. Same to you. Four Seasons Homestead says any gaps about any gas faps made in the U.S.? I can't get one from the U.K. Oh, I reckon it'd be pretty easy to make one of them. Just go into like the local. Hardware store or whatever it's called out there and buying some copper bits. I reckon that'd be good. Jay says it's not the camera; it's that posh new lens. Next time it happens, have a sip of that cold tea. That's that's a good idea. It's definitely not the lens because it was happening before I put that lens on. It's um I don't know why it's doing it. It's really annoying me because I like my camera and I like the way it looks and I like things that just work and it's not working anymore. Uh, Jay says smash the like button. Definitely a good idea. Says overheating. No, it's not overheating. I've had that running for like 6 hours before on a live stream. It's not a— it's not an overheating camera. And it's like, see what I'm wearing in this? Freezing in my house. I don't know what it is. Uh, Aaron says he's never really liked plastic hives. Uh, Simon says freezer was a good idea to kill pathogens. Simon's gone 220 for the hat. Simon Coates. Coates. I would say Coates, not Coates, is it? Simon Coates says, are the German breeders from an island? No, so they are artificially inseminated. David says, give the hat back and do another auction on the next live. Definitely doing auctions. This is this is game changing. We're gonna we're gonna make some money for some charities. I can't believe people want this hat this much. Right, Simon's gone 230 for the hat. Jensen's Bee says, amazing to learn— oh, sorry, amazing to learn about the bees last year. Your channel has really helped. My pleasure, Jensen. Uh, and like and subscribe, of course. Thank you very much. Uh, Paul says, could it be the second camera is causing the problems? I know it shouldn't be. Everything's been set up exactly the same way that I've done all of the other episodes, and we're on to like, what, episode 50? And it's only started happening in the last 3 episodes. But anyway, I'm down to the bottom now, so this is good. Andy Bryson says, hi Lawrence, first time I've been able to turn into Tune into a live chat. I've got 2 colonies that I need to move 15 meters away from their current position. Is it okay to do that in the winter? So normally yes, but wait for a period where it is like 2 or 3 degrees. Don't do it at the moment because you'll lose flying bees. But if you get like a couple of week period where it goes down to low single figures, and that's just perfect timing, then you should be absolutely fine. Right, let's, let's start the cam. We'll go to the poor quality cam. There we go. How's that? Oh, it's nowhere near as nice, is it? Look at that, you get like— you've got my secondary lamp in there. That is, that is rubbish, isn't it? But we will, we will finish, we'll finish the live stream like this because there's only about 5 minutes left. Uh, and, and David's got going once, going twice. You've got the last probably 2 minutes to get your final bids in, but that is the winning bid at the moment, £230 from Simon. Glencross, £230. Going once, going twice. I think you've got a minute if anyone wants it. That is an exceptionally generous bid though, so well done, Simon. Uh, Rufus says, does freezer kill EFB on old frames? So I wouldn't, I wouldn't want to trust a freezer to that when there's so many other proven ways of doing it. I suspect it probably would, um, but I don't know if it properly would. Once you get the temperature back up again, and with a lot of bacteria, it it can kind of like incubate. What does it do when it goes into like hibernation down at a lower temperature? So I wouldn't I wouldn't risk it. Simon's come back with 240. That is that is pretty serious. 240. So I think I think what we'll have to do, I'll carry on talking for the last two minutes, but instead of outbidding, let's go for best and final offers. We'll go straight in best and final offers. So you both got one more chance. chance to give me your best and final offer for the hat. There we go, the hat. And then we will, we will agree who is going to be the winner. But both of you have been— well, that is super, super generous. I, I thought we might get £30 for it, and I think Cub Rider, uh, maybe thought £15. But there we go. So we come to the end. Um, we've done an hour and 37 minutes of talking about bees. I love doing these chats. I will get the Camera fixed. I'm going to try and download some new firmware, I think, and should should be able to get it fixed. We're still doing monthly live streams, so once we get into April, we'll go back to doing it every other week. So we're kind of and what I'll do is I'm going to fix a date. I think this week like a day, so it'll be like a Friday or a Saturday or whatever time at a specific time. So it will kind of just be like very very regular, and you can. tune in and get all of your beekeeping questions answered. So no one's come back. David says bravo to the 2 Simons, so I think on that basis we are gonna have to announce Symes67, Simon, as the winner. £240, unbelievable. If you drop me an email at blackmountainhoney@gmail.com, I'll get this hat sent out to you. and chuck in a couple of other freebies as well. Why not? Because you've been very, very generous. But there we go, so we are finished for the evening. I know there's a couple of extra questions that have come through. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna go back and answer them because I've already started to do the outro, but I hope you have a very nice rest and time off over the kind of festive and New Year period, and I wish you all the best for your bees in the upcoming season. So That was the most fun livestream ever. We're definitely going to do more auctions again, so bring your wallets. Uh, but until then, uh, I hope you all have a very, very good end to 2024 and a prosperous 2025. So see you all soon.