Black Mountain Honey: Let's Talk Bees With Laurence Edwards - Episode 8

So there's one viewer, so hello whoever that is. Um, if anyone watched the live stream last week, I said I'm probably going to do live streams a little bit more often because they're quite fun. Um, and I'm going to space them out. I'm not going to do them every week, maybe leave 6 weeks in between, and then 1 week later I'll do another live stream. So hello everyone, all 2 viewers of you. I reckon a lot of people might watch this one back because it's a bit of an awkward time, but I have to squeeze it in where necessary. But I just wanted to come on to kind of be a bit like, what's going on with Simon the Beekeeper closing down? Like, I've seen his video and I, I'm sure I did exactly the same as everybody here, which was got the email, couldn't believe it, gobsmacked, clicked on the link to see what bargains were available, and then was a little bit gutted that the link was down. I guess because thousands of people are trying to click on that link to see what half-price brood boxes they can get. So I will continue to click on the link because it always is good fun trying to snaffle beekeeping deals. But I'm a little bit like gobsmacked, to be perfectly honest, that that's the first major casualty as a result of Brexit. And he's really clear that it's a combination of Brexit and COVID, but mainly Brexit, in that people still want his products and he just can't get them. I just think it's really, really sad, uh, and I cannot believe that He's gone because I've got nothing but good words to say about Simon and nothing but good words to say about his business. So I'm really a bit gutted. He was one of the good guys. Um, so yeah, what does everyone else think? I'm just— I don't know what to say. I'm doing a live stream, I've set up a live stream, and I've gobsmacked and I have nothing really to say. So it is going to be like a Q&A. I'll do a Q&A as normal and talk to people about what's going on in the bee world. And I guess kind of like give you my own reflection on the impact that Brexit has had on us. And I am fully aware that the last time I did a video about Brexit beekeeping, I did alienate a few people. So it is what it is. Brexit is here to stay. We have to embrace it. And I kind of reflect on like Brexit on my part of the business in the previous video that I did, which did, uh, more on the side of Brexit was a negative for us, and I have reflected on that, and I kind of think maybe it's probably like in favor of Brexit actually for us. A very individual set of circumstances, probably a good thing because it means that we can sell more queens, and it means that the queens are more difficult to get from Europe. And I know that's not good news for everybody here, and that's not good good news for our customers because it was so much easier when you could just buy queens from Europe. And I remember the first time I ever got queens from Malta. I'll never forget this. I had an email come through from, from Amano in Malta saying, um, end of season sale, and they were like £15 or €15 for a queen at the time. And I clicked buy. I think I bought 10, 10 or 15 queens, and I clicked buy at like 3 o'clock on a Thursday afternoon, and they were here UPS by 9 AM the next day. And I remember clicking on the UPS link to see where they'd gone, and they'd gone from like Malta into Italy, into Germany, into France, into the UK, and then like 7 different bits in the UK. And then they managed to find themselves to my house within 17 hours of me placing the order. And it was seamless and frictionless and so incredibly easy to get stuff done. That's probably not the best kind of use of that term, what with Brexit going on. But now you have Simon saying the complete opposite, which is it's just impossible for him to continue his business. Not even, oh, we'll just continue with the business but things aren't going to be as good, or we're not going to make as much money, or we have to go with a limited line, a limited range even. But he's completely gone and closed it down, dissolving the business in March. So I'm flabbergasted, like I genuinely am, at And I'm just kind of thinking, who's next? Because I did see, and I don't know if this is true, and I'll probably get emails telling me off for saying this, but I don't know who posted this before, but there was a post on a Facebook group showing like a Bee Equipment company without saying their name. It was, it was clearly Bee Equipment. It looked like Bee Equipment was for sale, and I don't know how genuine it was, but it did appear that there was a company that also had a lot of kind of subsidiary companies that made like beeswax products and candle molds and stuff that was for sale. It did look like bee equipment, and I would imagine for them, they're experiencing like a really similar issue here as well, in that they're not able to, to kind of get anything through. I've just realized here as well that I'm kind of filtering on— ah, right, I was looking at the wrong thing. Sorry for all the messages that's come through here. Now I can see them. So I was thinking, am I even, am I even live? I've just talked, spoken for 5 minutes, and I don't think I'm even live. But I am live. I can see that people can see me. So, but then, so yes, I'm thinking Simon the Beekeeper's gone, who's next? And I'm thinking, could it be bee equipment? I don't know. They they look like they were for sale last year, and I can only imagine what with their wider range and the fact that they do get a lot of stuff kind of sent in, that they're going to be having super issues as well. So that's not what I want to see. What I want to see is lots of different companies offering lots of different things, which means that it drives the price of things down and gives everyone a better range. So. That was my kind of talk about Simon the Beekeeper. I'm gonna do an hour's little chat as well because I quite enjoyed it last year. Uh, I see Paul Beardmore is here. Hi, Paul. Um, I'm very much enjoying coming, uh, going to the beekeeping show. We could talk about the beekeeping show here as well today. Not the British Beekeeping Show. I've been told to make sure that I don't say the British Beekeeping Show, but the actual beekeeping show. So I'm very excited about that. I'm even more excited about potentially going in a little bit early. I'm helping Abello set up their bottling line and going and speaking to some people, some of the vendors that are there. So the plan, and Paul's already said I can do this, is to go in on the Friday night and go and do a bit of a live stream and give you all a little bit of an in-depth look as to what is available at the Beekeeping Show. But I am so, so excited about that. That is going to be properly cool. But I guess we're not going to see Simon the Beekeeper there, so that is a shame. Right, so I'm going to start reading through some of the comments. Uh, everyone's saying about, yeah, Brexit, Brexit and COVID hangover. Oh, so Edward's saying beer equipment orders are really slow too, they can't get stock in. Um, yeah, that's probably par for the course for them. Do you know what? Some people give beer equipment a hard time, and I can see why they've had their issues, but there's no denying it, like, they changed the game a little bit when they kind of came onto the scene and drove the cost of everything down. They really did. So there's a good range there, but it is frustrating when you have to wait so long for stuff. So I will turn this into a Q&A. I don't intend to be. I'm definitely not going to be here for longer than an hour today because I've got stuff to do. So I'll do a little bit of a Q&A, but happy to talk about Simon the Beekeeper, happy to talk about Brexit, happy to talk about the beekeeping show, which I am very, very excited about. How's everyone? How's everyone getting on? Got 62 people here. I always forget to say this, and I should say this on more videos as well. If you enjoy these chats, then give it a thumbs up because it does, it does help me. So if you enjoy the chats, please do give it a thumbs up. So I see Paul Beardmore here. For people that don't know, Paul is the owner of Happy Valley Honey and Modern Beekeeping, and he is a director of The Beekeeping Show as well. So if anybody has questions for Paul about The Beekeeping Show, about people coming, what the agenda is, what's going on, stick them in the chat and I know Paul will be more than happy to answer them. And I just see on here he is saying that Bee Equipment is for sale. So that is very interesting. And if they do not manage to get a buyer, then we could see another one, another liquidation sale, which would be, uh, you know, for Paul that would be good, um, and for other beekeeping businesses that would be pretty good. But I do think for the, the consumer, for the beekeepers in this country, like the likes of Simon the Beekeeper and the likes of Bee Equipment, are, are good They're good companies to have, and they do provide a good range of products, and they keep the cost down on it as well. And I remember, like I say, remember, I get all my foundation from Simon the Beekeeper. So I'm going to try and get back onto his website. Has anybody tried to get onto his website? Because it is, it's definitely crashing, isn't it? It's, um, too many people going on to, to snag the last of the stock that's on there. But I get my foundation from him, and it is a bit different, the foundation. I'm not— I don't know what it is, whether it's like a blend of beeswax and carnauba wax. It's not— it's definitely not pure beeswax. And I remember looking at it at first and thinking, that's a bit— that's not very good. But the bees took to it fine, and they did really well, and it was quite heavy. So, um, I don't know where I'm going to get my foundation from now. I'm going to have to start melting down frames again, aren't I, and trading it in. Right, so let's read some of these questions. Simon saying, gutted, great service, great value, great guy, perfect storm of trading conditions. I hope he has a long and happy retirement but keeps up with the videos. I completely agree, he's a really good guy, Simon, a nice guy, a genuine guy, and he doesn't, he doesn't take the mick. I won't swear on my live streams, I think. Uh, Pink It's Honey says, I was just in the middle of ordering some BS honeybees nucs from Simon's website when the announcement came in and the website seems to have crashed. Such a shame he's shutting up shop. Yeah, he's definitely not got good enough bandwidth on that website because it should be able to take a couple of thousand people on there. But yeah, I'm definitely going to have another go later. John Tusting says a lot of the suppliers seem to operate like it's the '80s with a sort of allowed 28 days for delivery type of service. That doesn't fly these days. Simon's almost next day. I completely agree on that one. It's you come to expect it now, don't you? And you come to expect like on the website to be able to go on on your phone, I think kind of seventy eighty percent of the time and order something and get all the way through and check out and it saves your details and like the transaction seamless. And I think if it's not like that, people get really annoyed and they kind of almost like vote with their wallets and say, "Well, I'm not buying from this place." And some of the websites that I see, like I know, so Thorn. Recently redid their website, and their, their original one wasn't the best, but it was okay. But their new website's really, really good. Um, Mazemore's though, they've got a new website and it's a bit better, but Mazemore's original website, like this time last year, it was, it was pretty poor. Um, so it's good to see that they're taking on board that and kind of getting them improved a little bit. But I think also you've got to target the demographic the beekeepers, and they're getting younger. Beekeepers are getting younger, but I think a lot of them, they prefer to go kind of in person and buy the stock there or get it from one of the shows. They're not so much dependent on the internet, on a website, but I do think that is changing now. Live chats are great. Thanks, Edward, good to see you again. Hello from Missouri. Hi, Neil. Damien said the website is down yet, so you've all had to go. The website is definitely down. Someone's going to log on later tonight, probably about 2 AM, and snag everything, aren't they? I'm really going to try and make that me, um, but I promise I'll leave some stuff for other people as well. It's fine. And if anyone else gets in there before me, get me a couple of packs of the thin unwired foundation. That's the one I always used to go for. It was great. Uh, Sinister Hippo. I, I always remember that name. Great beekeeper, loads of knowledge, uh, and an awesome YouTube handle. Sinister Hippo. I've got 2 bee jackets, so he says, I've got 2 bee jackets from Simon. They are still going strong. Elastic gave up on the sleeves, but no big deal. Good to hear. Yeah, I've, I've not really got bad things to say about them. They're not, they're not like the quality that I expected from BB Wear, but they're like, they're like a sixth of the price, so you're not going to get everything for a sixth of the price. Um, so I've got, I've got a few of their jackets and a couple of the suits and one of the Defender suits as well, and they're really good. Um, Simon says that the website keeps timing out even if you do get on. Okay, that's interesting. Says best price for 12 kilograms of fondant. That was one of the really big good things that they gave them on there, which was baker's fondant. If you, if you're trying to get it, you either got to get it through BakeCo and order a ton, um, or you, you get it from somewhere else And they charge you like 20 quid for delivery because it's so heavy. But really good, Simon's website for that. He kind of broke it up, and I think they did like little kilogram tubs of it as well. It was a cheap price, and that's going to be— that's going to be annoying. Uh, Darren says hello from Illinois, US. Hello, Darren. Uh, Honeybee Live says I enjoy your videos, thanks for what you do. Thank you, Honeybee Live. Uh, Emma says Simon's customer service was second to none. Will you let us know some when your live chats are on, please? Yeah, so I did— I said this last week week in that I can do more live chats, but they have to be ad hoc, so I can't kind of plan them. Because what I'll do is I'll be like, right, Saturday at 8 PM I'm gonna do a livestream, and then I'll just have my daughter going wild saying, ah, we're not doing livestreams, and then everyone's waiting and I can't do it. If I just kind of sneak in, then we're good. Sinister Hippo says the Maze Mall website was awful. It was Possibly the worst website I've ever seen, but it's really good now. It's fixed. Aaron Cornish says the Maysmore site was shocking. Was probably hard work to get an order in. Yeah, and properly difficult to see what you're ordering as well. They just didn't put pictures on it. Right, Sinister Hippo has caused another crash, saying the website is up. I'm gutted. I'm doing a live stream. Um, I tell you what, maybe you can share my screen and we can look at it. No, I don't think I can do that, can I? I'm not like 100% up to what I do on YouTube Studio now, so I won't do that. I'll try and break it. I'll leave, I'll leave it all up to you. But if anyone finds anything, maybe post some of the prices up down here. That'd be cool. Oh, um, no way, Sinister Hippo's doing that already, right? A Buzz Basic suit with fencing and round bells, £1.50. Oh my goodness, right, I'm just gonna have a quick look. If I, if I start going slow, then we will work it out. I just want to see if I can share my screen. That would be so good if we could. No, I don't think I can. Right, so people are putting up prices for stuff. I'm not going to look because it's going to crash this stream. So Damien O'Hare says £6 for a wooden frame Queen Excluda. Great price. Aaron Cornish says Buzz Defender gray jacket, uh, from £59 down to £24. Oh man, there's some serious, serious ones on there, isn't there? I can't believe it. Beekeeping Gardening says invite Simon the Beekeeper to the chat here. I did think of that and I would love to have Simon on here, so maybe I will see if— not, not for this chat, it's probably a little bit short notice, but if anyone is in contact with Simon, if any of his employees are watching this, I would more than happily invite Simon to this. I think I can do it now, um, or we'll do it, we'll do it another time. But wow, that's pretty much killed the chat, I think, because everybody is off on Simon the Beekeeper's website looking at all the deals. Uh, we've got some more, more, uh, deals coming up. Replacement valves are down from £9 to £1. This is like a, like a beekeeping market gone crazy, right? George Nicholls says, hello, at last I'm home for a live chat. I just want to say I love your videos and steer all new beekeepers I deal with towards them. Shame about Simon. Britain needs to get mated stuff again. So thank you, thanks for the very kind comments, George. Um, Oh, I'm kind of like half thinking I'm gonna go on the website and find some stuff. The things— what did I buy from Simon's website? So I've got some of his suits. He sent me some of his suits to have a look at, and I did like the Defender one. Really like that Defender suit because it was a big step up in terms of quality, I think, from the, the more basic suits. But it was still pretty cheap, so it was like £50, £60. Didn't— it's not the same suit as, as the Ultrawear suit. And I, I don't work for BB Wear, I don't have to say this, but their, their suit is very good. And it's a completely different material. Like, a lot of the ventilated suits, barring the Bibiwear one, they're not quite— in my opinion, they're not truly ventilated. They're more just like a material with holes in. So I've worn them both when it's hot, and you wear all of the other ones, um, apart from Bibiwear, and I don't— for me, I don't find the air really goes through them that much. Whereas the Bibiwear one, if you wear it with shorts on like you properly get ventilated, is great. But it is when you're comparing £60 suit to a £360 suit, like I say, it's 1/6 of the cost. So I like— I did like that suit. What else did I buy? Bought all my foundation from there. Just remember buying like lots and lots of foundation, and they'd get the orders and kind of be like, are you sure? Are you sure you've ordered the right amount? And I was like, yeah. And then I'd spend like 7 months trying to put it into frames. And my favorite, I said it before, my favorite though with them was the thin one. They did a wired foundation, they did an unwired foundation, and then they did like a thin, like a section rack foundation. And I always used to use that thin section rack. I can let everyone in on my, my secret foundation shenanigans now that it's not going to matter anymore. But that one was way thinner, but it was so cheap. I think it was £39.99. For for 100 sheets, I think that's right. Versus like 69.99 for 100 sheets of the thicker stuff, and I don't think it was like 50% less in terms of the weight. And for me, I don't I don't mind about the bees losing a little bit more stores to build it up. It's just a bit of feed for me. Right, Aaron Cornish. What are your big resolutions for the 2023 season? Good question. Not sharing. Brood, not sharing any frames. That— I stopped that last year, but that's something that would definitely be continuing through. Really very strict and very stringent on that now. Uh, I'm gonna say one that I will almost certainly break, which is I'm not going out and catching swarms, but I've already set up my swarm catching kit for 2023 because if there's a swarm there, like some of the videos that people have been sending me— and you can send me videos to go on the YouTube Shorts platform— but some of them are so cool. Like the one a guy called Carter Lindley, I think his name is, sent me one the other day of just sitting in the pub, caught a massive swarm, had a beer while he was catching it, which was fantastic. Really enjoyed that one. And then somebody had another swarm on a slide and they caught that one. And I would be really annoyed if I was out driving, uh, or I was coming back from work and I saw like a huge swarm and I didn't have my swarm collection kit with me. So a resolution is I'm not going out catching any more swarms because of all the issues that come with them, but I will probably catch a swarm. More queen rearing, focus more on queen rearing. I'm going to be more militant like I was at the back end of last year in terms of killing the colonies that I don't like. Gonna get really hard on them this year. Reducing my numbers down again, so I still, still can't get the numbers down to where I want them to be, so where it's manageable for me, so I'm going to aim to try and go— I'm gonna, I'm gonna try something a little bit different this year because I used— I started off with Apireza around like 20-25, and people said, what's the point? Like, you just do 25 times work and you're not getting the return on it. And I kind of thought, well, you know, I'm getting a couple of supers per colony, it's fine. But then someone said to me, come on, this is stupid, go down to, go down to 12. So I went down to 12, and it did— it made quite a big difference to the amount of honey I got. whether they were connected, I don't know. But I'm going to try this year, I'm going to try and go to 6, like 6 to 8 colonies per apiary. That's what I'm going to have a go at and see if it makes a difference. I've just seen there Sinister Hippo's retracted a message. I really want to know what was on that message. But yeah, so I think that's a good few resolutions. I see 100 people, we've got 100 people on now, and if you're enjoying the chat, do give it a thumbs up, it really does help. Thanks very much. Southern Sass Apiaries, great name, says, do you find that your queen rearing long hive with 8 nucs built up faster than the individual nucs do? It's not something that I've really kind of compared it to, and I would say it's not a fair comparison because all of my individual nucs are poly nucs, whereas that one is like all of the wooden nucs connected together. So I see where the question's getting at, that they're sharing the heat, and I think it's definitely a good thing. It's a nice cozy warm place for them, and I went up there the other day and had a look under the insulation, and they're all still there and really clustered up, looking very, very happy indeed. So I would say, yeah, the ones on the inside are looking good, and you can get a good amount of insulation in there. But for me, that 8-nuc long hive really is my favourite long hive. I said this on the last uh, live stream. Not got a bad word to say about it. And I kind of look at my other long hive and I'm thinking, I'm gonna have to, I'm gonna have to try and like retrofit that to make that the same. But it's going to be really difficult to do because I can't get the, I can't get the router in. As you should see my DIY, it's shocking at the best of times, but you couldn't get the router in to go all the way down to get the dividers in. Um, But I do love it. It is, it is like the best thing I've got. It's great. Honeybee Life says he has issues with thin foundation warping. So it can warp, but the way I did it is I was wiring up my frames, stainless steel wire, nice and tight, and then I get a car battery on it. And you need to get— I always forget, I always got the wrong one, and someone told me this before— you need to try and get— and someone will correct me if I'm wrong here— Is it like a 12-volt car battery, but you need the 24-volt one? There's like a standard that we have in the UK, you need the one that's double because otherwise it takes ages. But if you embed it on, then even if it warps a bit, the bees do tend to kind of fix it. Did you ever get to try out the 3D-printed queen cups? Not to the point where I would, um, kind of do another video on them. I do, I do need to have a little bit more practice on them. Aaron says he spent ages printing them for him, they were really cool. Things caught up with me at the back end of last season, a very, very busy season. How to keep it to 2 hives without losing them to swarming? My view, Demeray splits, can't beat them, they're the best things in the world. A rolling Demeray split is the best way to master the art, the most difficult thing in beekeeping, which is keeping the number of colonies that you own constant whilst getting a honey crop. If you, if you can nail that— I can't nail, I've not nailed that yet, it's really difficult— but if you can nail that, that is beekeeping completed. But I find, yeah, rolling demaray splits, if you're able to carry the big heavy boxes, then you're all good. When is the Black Mountain Honey Barbecue? We do need to have the Black Mountain Honey Barbecue, don't we? I was thinking the other day I might, I might just, even if the neighbors aren't too happy about it, I might just do some welcome to beekeeping classes in my garden and just get like 10 nucs up there, and then people can have like rotisserie chicken and pizzas and get the pizza oven going. It'll be very, very good fun. Uh, Terry Scott says hello from Barnsley Beekeepers. Hello, Terry. Bruce says thanks and he enjoys the videos. Thank you, Bruce. Any tips on how to approach landowners for an apiary? How does the deal work for both parties? So research, definitely got to research it first. Google Earth is the best thing in the world. I'll give a shout out to The Apiarist again because he did a really good article on this. If you go to www.apiarist.com and then search for apiaries, he did a great article spelling it out step by step how you find a good out apiary. So Google Earth is your friend. Identify roughly where you want it, identify whose land it is, and then work out for you what are your red lines, what's important for you. So for me, I will not take an apiary now unless it's within like a 5 to 6 mile radius of my house. That's my very personal circumstance, a lot of other people are go 50 miles away from their house. I'll not take an apiary that's anywhere near a floodplain. I will not take an apiary unless I can get my pickup truck up to the bees, literally touching the apiary, touching the colonies there, so good road access. I will not take an apiary if they're visible from anywhere, so if they're visible from train lines, if they're visible from anything like that, I won't take them. They've got to have good forage, so I'll keep on like tracking the amount of honey that I'm getting from them, And if they consistently poor, I will move them again. But then tips on how to approach them, so you need to do that homework first and say, right, I want to put my bees on this land in this exact spot. So go to them with a plan, go to them with your bee suit on, that is a really, really good way of doing it, go to them with a jar of honey, and just go knock on their door and just say, oh, I'm a local beekeeper in the area, as you can see from my beekeeper's veil, They instantly know you're serious. You've got honey, like a bribe, a free gift. And then you say, I'm just a local beekeeper from the area, really interested in keeping bees on your land. I've done a little bit of research, and I think you might have a really good spot here. Because what they will end up doing is giving you like the rubbish floodplain bit that you can't get the vehicle to. Whereas if you say you've done some research and there's a good area there, faces the right way, in full sun, that's another of my red lines now. and way out of the way of like the farmer's activities, then he's much more likely, or she's much more likely, to let you have bees on their land. So they would be my tips. How many apiaries do I manage? So I talk like I've got like 100 apiaries, I've now got 5, so only 5. I've heard that people use battery chargers across the wires. Yep, That is exactly what I do. And you, you want to— I get the voltages wrong, I'm not an electrical guy, uh, but I think it's 24-volt. You want the powerful battery, but don't electrocute yourself. Uh, Wharfedale Hive says, such a shame, is parts retail something you fancy? So I, I thought about this. Grefg does this, doesn't he? Uh, but no, um, we've not got the space to do it, and, uh, it's It's risky, as I think Simon's proven there. It's a risky business. I think we've still got very good vendors, like in the UK market, and I'm personally scared as to what it would do for our cash flow. That's the reason that I'd be very scared to do it, because there's one thing buying some frames and foundation and hive boxes from Thorn and, and being one of their resellers, but then trying to like— imagine keeping stock of 50 extractors and bottling machines and all that. Like, the amount of money is crazy. So no, it's not something that I think that I would do. Definitely don't have the time to do it either. Will you be serving shots of propolis vodka at the barbecue? 100%. Uh, that is not, not the proof, that is my commitment to doing it. RJ Kellerman says, hi from South Africa. Any experiences with Capensis— Capensis, how do you say that— Capensis bees and queens rearing? As you can tell from my pronunciation of them, no, unfortunately not, but I will have a look at that. John Miller says, got onto Simon the Beekeeper website but cannot move into any submenus. Yeah, that is well and truly broken. Arctic Beekeeping says, good afternoon. Hello again. Do you have any videos for demerara split? So yeah, I've got loads. If anybody would be so kind as to put a link for MAMA while I'm talking, that'd be very kind. There is a whole series on the demerara split, so it's called How to Keep Bees Without Making Splits, I think, and there is like 10 videos showing like every single cycle through that process. Gets a little bit convoluted, but it's just because I keep on going and going and going. But that was a monster colony, and we got them all the way throughout the year, and they didn't swarm. So it definitely does work. And then there's another, I think a 30-minute video showing just the single iteration of a Demeray split as well. Um, and if nobody posts the link, then I will, I'll post it up at the end. Uh, JK Photography says, don't the BBKA do something on their website for land and offer a contract you can use? I may be wrong. I've not seen that. It would be a good idea. There's a few land share things that I think Hugh Fernie Whittingstall used to do one for allotments, but I've not seen one. I know that one kind of was liquidated. I've not seen a BBKA one though. Trihuma says, is there a lot of vandalism in UKA parries? We've had it happen to us, not massively though, and I've seen It happened to other people, and I've seen theft as well. And I think as nuc prices go up, it will get worse and worse. We have some great security on our apiaries though, like top, top security. Um, I have to make friends with the guard dogs, and I've still not convinced a couple of them that I'm like one of the good guys. And they genuinely, as soon as they see me drive in, they try and attack the car. And it kind of like fills my heart with joy every single time I go into that apiary because I just think, if I can't get to those bees, nobody else is getting to those bees. So I feel very safe. Um, George Nicholls says, I got to the point last season where the car had all the swarm gear in it all the time. The minute I took it out to do something, there was a call to the swarm. Sod's law. Yeah, it is really handy. Like, I don't know who told me that, but I always keep a swarm kit in the car. and kind of keep everything in the box. So it's just like you've got one box with your bee suit and you can just go and pick it up and it's always in the car. And then you don't need to, um, you don't need to prepare it when you get the swarm call, and it means that you get there before other beekeepers. I remember going to a swarm call, must, must be before COVID this one, and got there and I was always like really quick. As soon as it came through, I was like, right, going, and just drove there really quick, especially if it was local, and got there started doing the swarm capture, and like 3 other beekeepers turned up all at the same time saying, oh, have you, you taken this one then? And I was kind of like, well, like, I'm 90% complete on it. They were really angry. They were like, well, someone's called me to say that I was allowed to come and get this swarm. And I'm like, well, I'm guessing they probably just put it on like a Facebook group or something, and everyone came, and it was genuine beekeeper wars. And they left quite unhappy, and I got a really rubbishy swarm, but I took that one as a victory. I was quite happy with that one. Right, let's see some of these other questions. Should I wait for queen cups to control swarming? Should I wait for queen cups to control swarming? I'm not sure what the question is there. I'll I'll redraft the question. Should you take down queen cups to control swarming? Definitely not. Um, it does— it just doesn't make any difference at all. So I'm not sure what that question is. You can rephrase it and I will answer it. Have you ever used a Flow Hive? Yep, I've used a Flow Hive. I can say that now confidently. Yes, I have had a full season on a Flow Hive and it was amazing. It's really good. And I've had a full season on a fake Flow Hive And it was equally good. Although I tell you what, I get a lot of hatred within the USA for buying fake Flow Hive gear. It's, and I do apologize if I insult anybody on this live stream. I don't mean to, but I think there's like a US-China, like we, I don't, you don't really get it too much in the UK, which is like, oh, China is the root of all evil. You get it a little bit. But I think in the USA, that's maybe that agenda's pushed a little bit harder, which is China is the root of all evil. Not not something, not a philosophy that I buy into. And they said, "How on earth can you like? You've effectively sold your soul by buying a fake flow hive, and you're just funding Chinese evil." Like serious abuse coming my way. And my view was, well, I'm not really promoting one or the other. I just wanted to see whether it was any good. It's not for me to kind of battle copyrights and design patents on behalf of Flow. Like, that's kind of their job. I'm just going onto Amazon and seeing what I can buy and buying stuff. Like, I don't think I've done anything wrong, but people really took offense to that. So I might not do any more fake Flow Hype videos. Uh, Mem Mustafa says, uh, hi Lawrence, thinking of having an upstairs downstairs hive. How do you feel about the bees defending so many entrances, and can you do a follow-up video on your upstairs downstairs hive? So yes, I will definitely do a follow-up video. How do I feel about them defending so many entrances? Not an issue with it at all. Um, I'll show you and I'll compare it to one of the Suyenti hives that I've got where the bees have just made loads of new entrances themselves. just chewing through, making loads of entrances, and that's kind of what they wanted. They wanted 6 different entrances dotted all around the place. Big strong colonies will be able to defend multiple entrances. As soon as that colony dwindles down a little bit and the wasps get in, I'd be getting a little bit worried. But the upstairs-downstairs one is not that bad. I think it's 4 entrances in total, and you can close them up. They give you little plugs to close them up, so I think throughout the early season and throughout the main flow, you can have them all open. And then if you wanted, you could go in when the wasps come and become quite bad, then you could just close some of them up. Tomica says 12-volt charger is fine. They're actually like 14 or so. So a 12-volt battery does work, but it's like it takes like 10-15 seconds to kind of like get it to properly go on. We're talking about foundation embedding it on there again. And I had to go on a 24-volt one and it takes seconds. So if you're doing like, I don't know, if you're doing a couple of beehives, I don't think it makes a massive difference. If you're doing thousands of frames, I'm looking at Jim from Bay Bees, doing thousands of frames and you're doing foundation embedding onto a wire, it does really speed things up. Speed things up if you use 24-volt. battery. Uh, Paul Beardmore says, honestly, a hard business. We need to get you on to do a chat, Paul, so you can give us an insight, because I do think people are struggling a little bit at the moment with Brexit and just getting hold of stuff. It's not just Brexit, like, and this is what I've learned from my previous videos, shouldn't blame it all on Brexit. It's not that. It's kind of global recession, it's fluctuating oil prices, it's poor shipping, It's people wanting to work from home. It's kind of a combination of all these factors, the fallout from COVID mass inflation, and it just, yeah, culminates in a very, very difficult environment. Um, The Maverick Beekeeper says, that is a surprise that Simon has quit. He'll be missed as a seller of great value. Definitely agree. Uh, Andrew Mallard says, keeping bees is hard enough, running it as a business as well. Yep. Right, let's have a look through some more. There's a lot of chat, there's a lot of people, 129 people. Hello everyone. Right, I'll answer some more of these questions. Mark says, last year I had a swarm fly past me along a hedge while driving home. I stopped, took a look, it landed, I got the kit out the boot and proceeded to collect it. It's a very nice story. Bob Hayter, is it Hayter? Is that how you pronounce it? Pronounce it. Is very angry at me because he's been trying to sign up to my channel membership for ages, but we've narrowed it down now to the fact that he's in Azerbaijan is the reason. So he's still, yeah, still in Azerbaijan. Really likes the chat. Bought a selection of kit very well priced from Simon online last week and was delivered to my home within three days. Yeah. I'm gonna miss that. Um, consider— considering Paul is on the call, it's probably worth giving a shout out to Paul, Modern Beekeeping. I've had very good service from Modern Beekeeping as well, and it's maybe not like one of the more well-known companies, but like everything I've got from them has been really, really good, and the delivery has been very good as well, and excellent customer service. So I will give a shout out to Paul once again. Genevieve says, can you repeat the website for finding an out apiary please on Google Earth? Yeah, so it's www.apiarist.com, so it's A-P-I-A-R-I-S-T dot com, I think. Apiarist. But great website. We had him on a chat and we disagreed about loads of stuff and he was probably right about most and I was just being awkward, but he was a really nice guy. and very clued up and has just spent like his whole life doing stuff with bees and science and just knows loads more than me, so it was good having him on. We still have the marathon place if you have changed your mind. So Dan at Wharfedale Hives, who makes great beehives, very nicely painted, asked me to do the London Marathon with him and I very promptly turned him down because I'm shocking. I'm not, I'm not a long-distance runner, um, although I could probably do with losing a bit of weight and training for it. But he's still, he's pushing for me to go and do the London Marathon, um, but it's still a no unfortunately, Dan. Pure Yorkshire Honey says, demo a split video by Black Mountain Honey. Okay, you're trying to find it. Says he has a fake Flow Hive with real Flow Hive frames. That's, that's a clever way of doing it. I was a bit gutted when they, they changed. They used to be able to buy like national Flow Hives from them, didn't you? Or at least like a national super. And I just think they're missing a trick there. That would have been great because you don't need the stupid pitched wooden roof that's just like— I think I've actually burnt mine now. It is the worst designed roof in the world, but they charge you loads for it. You don't need the stupid floor with the adjustable legs and all stuff like that. I shouldn't slag them off too much. I really like my Flow Hive, but I would just love that national Flow Hive super just to go on like a decent floor, a decent brood box, and a decent roof. Perfect. I would have loved that. That would have been great. But yeah, I stopped talking. Um, they stopped making it and they just don't want to— not interested in UK market anymore, and probably linked into Brexit. So on topic for this chat. Paul Beardmore says, how about a Paradise Smart Hive next? Up for that. Love the idea of a smart hive. I've had a couple of goes and I've not posted the videos on this yet. So, so either companies giving me stuff for free, um, and saying, can you, can you do a review of this? And I've said yeah. So there's a couple of different companies that have done this now for like smart hives and, and beehive monitoring things. and they've both been so rubbish, really bad. And I would have given them like 0 out of 10 and slated them on YouTube, but they kind of gave me the stuff for free. So I know like people would want to know and be like, well, should be honest and tell people, but it's like they're giving you like a £400 piece of kit to do a review on. And both of them, I just gave them back and said, look, I've filmed the review, I've done it, and I'm not posting it because it's really, really bad. And thanks for sending it through, but I just, yeah, I can't, I can't post it. So I sent them back, but I'd love to have a proper working waterproof Smart Hive that does it all, and not necessarily like extracts your own honey, although that would be cool, but just like weights and humidity and weather. And just, I think people, I think a cheap option for something like that would sell really well. Arctic Beekeeping says, thoughts on the, the bee vaccine, something you plan to use in the future? So what happens in the US maybe reaches us in 10 years, it seems, or it doesn't ever reach us. So what we're talking about there is the AFBB vaccine. I just thought, like, what great news. A problem, a real big problem, American foulbrood. Someone's been spending money on it. And trying to solve it. And okay, they might make a good amount of money on it, but just imagine if that worked and you could give your bees— and it wasn't even like a chemical-based one, I think it was like a bacterial version, I don't know the ins and outs of it, but it looked pretty good— a vaccine that meant that when, if your bees did get infected with AFB, that they were able to fight it off really quickly without it becoming kind of harmful or spreading. Approved for use in the US, But not going to get approved for use in the UK, is it? Because nothing ever is. Um, and then you look at like oxalic acid and you think in the, in the US they can use oxalic acid for like a trickle method, they can use it for vaping, they can use it with the supers on, they can use it as like an oxalic acid towel sponge method. Loads of different methods, all been tested, all safe, all approved in the US. And in the UK we get one vape of apibioxin at £20 a vape or whatever it is when you pay for it. So it didn't— that didn't hit a nerve at all. But yeah, I'm wounded. But I don't think we'll get that in the UK, and something I'm planning to use in the future. I would if it was safe for the bees and available and cheap, I would definitely use it. Can you talk about, do a video on the food safety stuff you need to comply with to become a honey Thanks. I can do. I think a lot of those videos have not have not gone down that well, and they're quite laborious and a bit boring for some people because not everyone wants to have like go through like the food safety hygiene and the HACCP and all of the control procedures you have to put in place to make sure that honey is honey with nothing else in it. But I might do it. I'll see if anyone else thinks that's a good video. Stick it in the. the chat there. I don't want to sound monotonous, and I'll maybe say it one more time after this, but if you enjoy the chats and if you enjoy any of my videos, thumbs up does really help. So just one little click would be great. Thank you very much. Right, I think people are trying to link the Demaray video, and I think it's blocking it, so I'll put that up at the end. Will you be inspected by food hygiene when you become a beekeeping business, and can I just show them my kitchen if I'm extracting honey in there at an early stage? Do they come during extracting? So they won't come unless you tell them to come, but if you're— if you want to get a food hygiene rating, you need to tell them to come. And then when they come, there's no, oh, we're just a beekeeper, so we'll bend the rules for you. It's a case of you're a food production business And when we had our inspections, they said we're not going to go in— like, the rules for you aren't as difficult as, say, for like a butcher where you've got like a real risk of harbouring quite significant disease. And then honey, with its natural low moisture content, it's not going to ferment in the jar in the way that a jam would. But we found that they were much more focused on your, your HACCP procedure. So it's H-A-C-C-P. I can't even remember what it is. If you Google it, it's HACCP. And I know what it is. You're protecting the integrity of your honey from when it's in the beehive through to when it's in the jar, and you're putting in place a robust process to make sure that nothing's leaking into it, that it's not coming into contact with any cleaning fluid, there's not— you're not getting things that are dropped into it. So it's all about like how you filter it, all about how you cover things over, All about how you transport it in your car, putting plastic mats down. And it was quite a lot of work. It is a huge amount of work to get like a 5-star hygiene rating. So they— do they come during extracting? No. Do they come when you ask them to come? Yep. And what I would suggest doing is saying to them, I'm contemplating doing this, can I have some advice? And get them to come. And give you the advice, and they'll help you, give you like a bit of a bespoke plan as to what exactly to do. But if you are extracting in your kitchen, it does make life a little bit more difficult for you than if you have like a dedicated area. Because say you've got like nuts or something in your kitchen, you need to show them that you need to have like a really detailed plan as to how you turn that into a honey extraction facility, and then how you kind of like turn it back into a kitchen again. So there'll probably be like some sort of deep clean methodology that you have to go through. Um, I'm not gonna lie, it's the part of beekeeping that I enjoy the least— the cleaning, the preparation. It's really laborious and really time-consuming. Right, Sinister Hippo says, watch eBay, there are plenty of amateurs that buy a real Flow Hive, realize their mistakes, and sell Used flow hives cheap. Best price I got was £100, 8 frame, but sadly with a super aggressive queen. Wow, so you got it with the bees in it as well? That's amazing. Um, yeah, there is so much that can go wrong with a, um, with a flow hive. And, and it is like their marketing— and again, people have had a right go at me for this, saying that their marketing doesn't infer that it's easy and you just have to turn the tap. And then I look at the marketing and I think it definitely does. It, like, they make it so easy. However, I know their YouTube, if you go and watch their YouTube channel, they make it very clear that there's no difference in terms of like the weekly management that you need to do to the colony. So they're not trying to muddy the water too much, but their marketing does. Uh, but people do think that they can just get a box of bees and then just don't do anything to them and just turn the tap when they want honey. their breakfast and all is good, and then their bees end up in their neighbour's chimney. You do need to keep on inspecting them. Right, there's a lot of comments on here, let me go, right, I'll start working through the comments. It's good to see so many people. Are you going to the bee show on the 4th of Feb? I'm not, I'm going to double-check now. Paul's watching, so I've got to be saying things right. 23rd, 23rd of Feb, I think it is. I'm going to the Beekeeping Show, not the British Beekeeping Show, and I'm only going to one show this year, which is the Beekeeping Show. And I will be there pretty much all day, and I'll be there the night before as well. So if anyone wants to come and say hi, definitely come and say hi. Just wave, and I won't recognize anybody. It's going to be a really weird one that people recognize me and say, hello, saw you on a live stream, and I'll say, oh, hello. You have to tell me your name, and if I— if you're on here, I probably will recognize your name. And if you're Sinister Hippo, you have to tell me you're Sinister Hippo as well. Uh, Maverick Beekeeper says, looking out for swarms this season to embark on a treatment-free experiment. Intend to educate myself. Contentious for sure. Thinking of logging the process and getting it on the video. Very interesting. Maverick Beekeeper does have his own YouTube channel. Well worth a subscribe, and I'll be interested to see how you get on there. Uh, Beekeeping Gardener says he has 12-volt battery but have done it by Electric Master and it is fast. I'm not sure what that is. Uh, Joe Murphy says, if you were starting OA sublimation next week, would you just do 3 by 5 day treatments or just one? 100%, you need to do multiple treatments now, I would say, especially with the weather. And I know it's getting cold again, you can definitely get in this next cold snap and do it. But I would do 3 by 5 days, maybe 4 by 5 days. As long as you're keeping that 5 days consistent, you're all good. Good evening from Louisiana. Hello. Thorn will be getting a lot more business now Simon has gone. It could become a monopoly. And with bee equipment up for sale as well, this is the risk, is that you— it will become like— it will become a monopoly. And I can't see many other people getting into it. Gonna be a challenge, right? Uh, Rui Ferreira says greetings from Portugal. Hello. We, we always play this game, and I should do it from some of the people from America as well. It must be a bit warmer than it is over here, so I'm gonna guess that it is like 15 degrees in Portugal at the moment. Uh, Geister Sound says checked my 3 hives last week to check the food situation as weather was warmer and have a glass observation panel, 2 hives clustered down, the other full of honey stores but no bees. Any clues? So full of honey stores but no bees, 99% certain you'll open it up, there'll be a tiny little cluster of bees, dead queen, probably won't find the queen, a couple of dotted drone broods around, and it'll be a failed queen. That is almost certainly what's happened there. Best invert syrups? For me, I don't think there's a massive difference between all of them. I have had, and Paul Beardmore will put me on here now, I've had a tankard, an IBC, or a tote depending on where you come from, of the syrup from Paul. So I went and collected it and it was really good and the bees liked it, and it's got like this yellow tinge to it. And I'll never forget that day, Paul, because I came down there and I got it And it very quickly got dark. So it's a great story, this. So Paul, remember, I'm shocking at driving, just full stop. Even worse at driving like a trailer, never drive with a trailer. So Paul had to like reverse it all around his yard for me because I just said, just, this is gonna be loads quicker, Paul, if you just jump in and just do it, turn me round. I can drive straight, no problem, but turning I have major issues with. So he did all of that for me and then it got very dark very quickly and then I I realized that I didn't have any lights on my trailer and the brakes weren't working properly either. And I had like, what, 1.2 tons of your sugar syrup, invert sugar syrup, on the back. And every time you like, you broke or you put the brakes on, it would just all slush up to the front like that. That is the last time I drove with a trailer. Uh, it properly scared me. So Paul, if I scroll down to the bottom now— Happy Mix, there we go. Happy Mix, that is the one. I can say I've used a full 1.2 tonnes of it and it was very good and the bees really liked it. And you, you can get that from— I think, I think it is only Modern Beekeeping that sell that one, um, but you can definitely get it. It's like an advertisement for Modern Beekeeping, this, this stream, which, which I feel a little bit bad about because it's supposed to be a final farewell, uh, farewell to Simon the Beekeeper, but, um, it will be gone. in a couple of months, and we need people to fill the gaps. Right, let's get some of these questions in. Oh, there are a lot of questions. Where are we? Right, so we did best invert syrups. Modern Beekeeping is quite near me in Manchester, thanks for the heads up. Yeah, great little yard. Great service from Paul every time. Joe says, I thought I'd have— I'd have thought Simon might have sold his business to someone. That was like the first, apart from going onto the website and seeing if I could snag a deal, that was the second thing that I thought, which was surprised no one's bought that because it's like a fully functioning, good business, good SEO, like search engine optimization, um, good loyal customer base, good reviews, good customer service. Like, it's, it's sellable as a business. But he obviously thought that it's not, and that he can't make it work in the current climate. But you never know. Put in a little speculative bid; he might just sell it to you. Oh, so the next question, Richard James: Are you going to buy the business? So no, I'm definitely not going to buy the business. Joe Murphy says: Have you had any losses yet this year? How do you think this winter will be in terms of losses? So I said this on the previous stream, I'm not checking. I will, I will do a kind of more detailed check once the bees start flying again, and I will seal off anything that's dead. But I'm not, I'm just not checking yet because I'll just kind of like give them a heft, and it's always the heavy ones, the ones that are dead. So as long as they're kind of feeling like relatively light, I'll crack them open and have a look in. But it's, it's too early to count how many are really, really dead without going through the frames. you can get them at this point of the year. Say you've got like a box like that, you've got a big cluster at the bottom of the box, you're kind of lifting them up and thinking, I don't know, are there bees in here? And you look at the top, you think, I don't know. Endoscope's good to get in there and have a look, but even that, you might not— you might just get in on a couple of seams and it looks good, but you don't really know. So I've learned just to not worry about it too much until they start flying, kind of like middle of Feb, back end of Feb, I will update you then. Would you use Demerage as your primary swarm control method? I increased to 55 hives last year and thought it was a bit daunting. So yeah, it's a really, really effective primary swarm control method, and the best thing about it is, is that you can prepare for it and treat a whole apiary at the same time. So you've got 20 colonies there, get 20 brood boxes in the back of your pickup truck, whatever you're taking down there, and you just turn up one morning and you just lift the box up, put it up to the top frame of brood with the queen into the brood box, and then fill it out with foundation and stack your supers up on it. And you just do it on every single colony, and then you know when you go back in 8 days' time, you know the status of all of those colonies. Like, the chances of losing any swarms in those 8 days is pretty much nil. and then you can just go back in and assess what you want to do. So I think as a primary swarm control method, as long as you've got enough boxes, it's really, really good. Definitely what we do. What's the Australian varroa situation like now? It's gone quiet. It's very— it's gone very quiet. I don't know, I was kind of expecting that to be like, right, that is it, it is going to be varroa central now and we're going to see huge amounts of losses But no, it has been very quiet. If anyone here is from Australia and knows more about that, that would be very interesting. Here in Poland, they work on medication against AFB based on some mushrooms. Oh, we had a conversation about mushrooms last time. That's interesting. Damien says might be boring, but I could sell my HACC template for anyone. Wanting to get inspected, I could do that. I'd probably give it away for free, you know that one, but I like your thinking, Damien. Cullen Brown says, what happened to Simon the Beekeeper? So they have closed their business as of March, they are dissolving it, which is really sad. Joe Murphy says, so can you sell honey without any hygiene checks? It's confusing. So I'd say legally no, Um, but plenty of people do, and plenty of people just give it away. But I think as soon as you start like trying to put it into shops, you're probably legally obliged to have some sort of certification in place. Thumbs up, people! There are 126 people watching and only 6 have liked the chat. Wow, I'm way down, way down on, uh, my chats here because 135 are watching now. 72 people have liked the chat, so thank you very much for that. It does make a massive difference, people liking the chat. So roughly what sort of things would they look for if I was producing honey in a kitchen? What happens if they come in the winter, let's say, then there's going to be no extracting? So they're not trying to catch you out here. Like, the first one for hygiene, they just come, they say, we'll come next week, is that good for you? We'll be there at 10 o'clock. On Tuesday, does that work? You can just show us around. So you kind of like you know they're coming fully prepared, and then for they've not for us they've not done a follow-up inspection yet, so they could come at any point. But I don't think they just turn up like because you think of the amount of time that I spend in like my honey shed. I'm there like maybe I don't know twenty hours, thirty hours a year, something like that. So they'd have to be very lucky to get there at the time. when I'm actually there. So they more than likely say, oh, we're going to come and do a little bit of a checkup, do an audit, can you be there next Tuesday? And you say, yeah, be there next Tuesday. So I don't think— I know you kind of get the impression that they're like trying to trick you or they're trying to catch you out, but ultimately honey production is very low risk for them in the greater scheme of things. And if you've got good management controls in place, then you've got nothing to worry about anyway. That's what I always think is just document everything, they like that. And then what would they look for if you were producing in a kitchen? So cross-contamination for you is going to be a big one, like if you— have you got any allergens in that kitchen? And if you do, how are you stopping those getting into the honey? And they're going to say, well, like if you're using a container for anything, has it ever been used for any allergens? And if so, you probably can't use it, or you need to show that your cleaning is going to be effective. That's why it's so much easier to not do stuff in the kitchen. And I know that's— it's not possible for everyone, but you— they're the kind of things— it's going to be cross-contamination, it's going to be cleaning, it's going to be like how you get your jars to suitable cleanliness. And that is dependent on the people that come in, because I know a lot of people do sterilize their jars, and a lot of authorities insist the jars are sterilized. And then a lot of other ones don't insist that. And I've always thought, why, why do you need to sterilize your jars? Honey's not sterile, is it? So it's— you're not creating an environment where bacteria can grow and thrive and then someone can become ill. So it's different from like jam, where if you, you've had a jar of jam and it goes off and it starts kind of— you get bacterial growth and you could get ill from that. Honey doesn't matter, does it? Like, it's just very low moisture honey. that even in a dirty jar is not going to go off. So we get ours, we get ours, they come cleaned, and then we have a process for making sure there's no kind of like detritus in them. And that's more important for us, that's what our process says. So we just, we like visually inspect them and then blow them with air. And then it's like little things, like, you know, if you're going through, if you ever pick up a box of jars and you hear like a little trickle like that, it's the worst sound in the world because it means that maybe like 1 or 2 jars is broken. So for us, our process for that is if you pick up a jar— if you pick up a box and you hear that sound, you open it up, you confirm that there is a broken glass, a single broken glass in a box of say 128, you tape it back up again, you chuck the box away. Like, it's as simple as that. That is our quarantine method for that. And you could put another quarantine method in, which is like you go and identify the broken jar and then you visually inspect all all of them, and then you put them through a thorough clean, and you go to the nth degree to make sure there's no shards of glass in your honey. But for me, oh my God, like, so much easier just to quarantine the whole box and just chuck it on the skip. It's cost you £20, £30, well, probably £50 now with the way prices are going. Right, so that is an hour of non-stop bee talk, and I can feel it, and I've drank maybe like a thimble of my tea. I will carry on for a little bit more though. Um, much appreciate the likes, so thank you for that, and I will do my best to get to the bottom of the comments. So right, let's get through. Um, Honeybee Live says hazard analysis and critical control points, HACCP. Thank you very much, that's what it is. Uh, Ollie's Honeybees, yeah, so, so Richard said beekeeping without splits, that's the series for the Demerara split. John Miller says, tell the USA they should stop buying Apple stuff as the majority is made in China. So I do not intend to cause any wars here, so I'm not gonna— I'm not gonna say anything there. I appreciate every single one of my viewers and my subscribers, especially the ones in, uh, the US. I'm only joking, I'm just winding people up. Uh, right, Joe Murphy says, ever thought of becoming a politician? Could see you backing the bees in Parliament and representing All us beekeepers politically need better honey regulation and a good voice to push it. So no, I've not thought I would quite like to be a politician. I got a lot of people have said this to me as a personal insult, and I take it as like it's truth. It's hard to insult someone when you're just kind of like telling it like it is. But they say you're such a bullshitter, and I kind of I sit there and I reflect, and I think I kind of am a bit. Of a bullshitter. And then I look at politicians and I think politicians are bullshitters as well. Oh, I got it wrong. The date of the beekeeping show is not the 23rd, it's the 25th. Is that right? It is the 25th, right? So it was, it was a cunning ploy to talk about it again. It's the 25th of Feb in Telford. Aaron says, do Abello need another helper to set up? I'll ask them. See what they say. I'm very excited about going in and doing like a little bit of a live stream. We will see. I tell you what, that is one that I will promote in advance, and that is one that is well worth a view. We're going to see some serious kit there. I'm so excited to see all the different manufacturers coming over. So you've got Abello, but you've got Lyson there as well doing a separate joined up stand. But then you've got like Suyenti, you've got Thomas Apiculture, it's Kalfritz. Is Carl Fritz coming as well? I'm not sure if Carl Fritz is coming, but that's like— we've been missing all of those, haven't we, from big beekeeping shows recently. So I'm really excited to go and play with stuff. I got a message from Damien today as well, which I need to put on his social media, which is, um, they're bringing a full bottling and labeling line, so you'll be able to like see like a full line from everything. Be great. And for me, that's really interesting because I've been looking at like a dedicated labelling machine for absolutely ages. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to bring some of my own labels and some jars of honey, and I'm going to label some of them up there just to see if it works. And Damian said to bring the trailer, which I don't know what that means, but I don't think I've got enough cash in the bank at the moment to buy one, but I really do want one. It takes ages labeling jars. Right, Hello, I'm interested in starting bee farming. Do you have any advice to try to get me started? I've watched loads of your videos and they helped me loads. Thanks for watching the videos. Again, I'm going to need to work out how to stick these links up. I did do a video which was like top 10 tips to kind of go from like a beekeeper to a semi-professional, like a bee farmer, And I'm like right at the low end of bee farming, 100-odd colonies. But I did do, I did do a video on that one, so I'll dig out the link, but have a search, there is one specifically for that one. Paul Beardmore says he's going skating at Telford Ice Rink. Okay, the night before, that'd be good fun. I quite, I quite like skating, Paul. I'm not anywhere near as good as you. I've seen your ice skating skills, very good, but I do like a bit of ice skate. Any podcasts coming up or more Q&As? Q&As with the main man Spinks on the cards, or the Welsh King of Camarthen. I love the names. I've never approached Stuart about doing, um, like a podcast or a stream, but I'd be well up for that. Like, he is a bit of a legend, isn't he? The, the original beekeeping YouTuber. So I'd love to have a chance to interview him and see if he'd Come on my channel, or I'd go on his channel, or the Welsh King of Carmarthen. So I did, I did offer, not, not, not to Griff, but I did offer to Richard Null and suggested maybe before the beekeeping show we could do a little live stream, this little preview thing. Sadly, Richard declined because he, I think he's got a bit bit too much on at the moment. But we'll, we'll see if we can kind of like pull their leg after the. Their arm, which one is it, after the beekeeping show and see if we can do something, but I'm sure I can agree one with Griff. Right, let's get back to these questions. Well, I'm going to go from the bottom up. Oh, here we go, someone's worked out how to put links in, there we go, so there's some links coming in now. See if it works with the spaces in it, so there you go, Damien, whatever you did there, it asked me if I would like to approve it, and I did. Right, so I'm going to go from the bottom up asking questions now. Uh, right, so Joe, uh, so Joe Murphy says, minimum number of hives for you to recommend VAT registration to them? Um, it doesn't, it doesn't quite work like that with VAT registration. You just need to be proving that you're doing like a commercial business. There's a lot of— it's a real gray area in terms of VAT registration, and I wouldn't get caught up in it unless you're really thinking of running it as like a commercial business. What I would say though is that from the moment that you do register yourself for VAT, you can go back 3 years and retrospectively claim for everything that you bought for the business. So although you might not be claiming it quarterly that you would do if you were VAT registered, if you think you might like to become VAT registered at some point in the future, keep all of your receipts, keep really good records records. Sign up to QuickBooks or something like that, does make it easier, and then you can retrospectively claim it. And that first VAT payment back is like bumper payment, really good. So Joe Murphy says, can you claim for VAT off clothing and things like that if you become VAT registered? So you can only claim for VAT on things that, that are kind of— you pay VAT on that are exclusively for the business. But that covers like most things. So beekeeping suits, definitely yes. beehives? Yep. Foundation? Yep. Cars? No. Trucks? Yep. Uh, says Colfritz is there. Amazing. That's— it's like to have all of those people all in one place and be able to kind of look at the different versions of extracts is going to be so much fun. Uh, says you said the other day that you aren't a full-time beekeeper. I thought you were. Everyone thinks I am. Can I ask what you currently do as a real job? Yep, I am a project manager in construction. Sharon's— oh, that's Sharon just having a chat with Lee. This is where— this is what happens when you start reading up from the bottom. With VAT registration and producing receipts, do you need to record the address of the customer buying at the market stall, for instance? I've read conflicting info online about generating receipts for VAT. No, why would you need to keep Their address? I don't— I'm either misinterpreting the question, but like, no, you just need to be able to issue a VAT receipt. You don't actually need to issue a VAT receipt. It's like if you go to Tesco and buy some fuel, you don't give them your address to put on the VAT receipt. They just give you a receipt, don't they, which says here's the VAT. Um, I think I've interpreted that one right. Uh, right. So Rui Ferreira says, today we reached 20°C in Portugal. This week has been like that. I already see some activity in the apiary. However, the arrival of cold weather is expected next week. I miss the summer and I miss the sunshine. I really, really like that. Um, I just see Kodiak Pharmacist sting that like button. Very good, love it. Joe Murphy says, any idea what will be in Simon's closing sale? We've been making purchases. So if you go to the top of the chat, people managed to get in there and started saying that it was like £1.50 for a bee suit. So this isn't, this isn't a marketing ploy, this isn't 10-15% off, this looks like a real get rid of everything as quick as you possibly can sale. Um, Tonhead says, hi, is there a waiting list for cancelled overwintered nuc orders please, or is it only 2023 queens now. So we are so oversubscribed on the overwintered nucs already, so it— there is a waiting list and it is full already for the overwintered ones. So it is 2023 queens now only. Um, but 2023 queens are good. Like, you get the benefit, you know, you know me, you get— you'll get good customer service. So if there are ever any issues with anything, we fix them. Um, but 2023 queens for beginners kind of like probably better, if anything, because it means that they're far less likely to swarm in the first year. Um, that might be me putting a positive spin on it, but it is genuinely true. 2023 queens made up kind of like middle of April, they're going to be nice and big and strong and much less likely to swarm. I think it's Wyndham, not Wyndham, says, so sad to see Simon retire. Any rumors about buyers Bee Equipment, really worried that it will go the same way. So I, I wasn't sure that that was true, but someone has confirmed that earlier on, that Bee Equipment are indeed up for sale. Um, I can't see anyone buying Bee Equipment. I just like— it was like 500 grand, I think, for the, for the business, but not the units. So it was just like the business. I don't know, I don't know whether that included stock as well, but it seemed a bit steep for kind of what they're asking for. So I don't— I'm not sure that someone would buy that business, which will be a bit sad. There might be another flash sale coming up this year, and you never know, there might be a new entry into the market. I— there was a shop that I saw, like a new Facebook page called The Beekeeping Shop, and I think they've taken over like a stall in like Blackheath, near where I used to live in London. But they— you never know. might take over the world. You never know what's going to happen, do you? Is Apipasta the best fondant available? So this is, this is the modern beekeeping show today. So I've used Apipasta and the bees really, really did like it. I don't, I don't use designer fondants, I just use the cheapest fondant available because my experience, the bees have done very, very well on it. I know what Paul's answer on that will be is that you're not 100% sure that it's got the right enzymes or that it's been specifically manufactured for bees, but in my own experience, like, good cheap Baco fondant is very good. However, the pollen patties and the pollen subs and then the ones with like boosters and stuff in there could be good. I'm not gonna say which one I think is the best one available because I don't think I'm in a position to kind of say that because I've not tried them all, I've not done like side-by-side tests, so yeah, I'm not going to answer that one. I have a question about drones, I still have them hanging about fully developed, any thoughts as to why they're still about? So plenty of colonies will allow drones to go through all the way throughout the year, and if there's lots of drones it does generally tend to imply that you're going to have an issue with the queen. So hopefully there's not lots and lots of them there, but I wouldn't worry if there's just a few coming in and out. Wouldn't worry about it at all. Any idea why no bees died in my English feeder, and then the last few weeks of feeding I had loads just drowning themselves? Made no sense, nothing changed. No, that sounds very odd. I've changed all my feeding setups now So I don't use the English feeders, but I use like polyashworth feeders, and I always used to put the plastic inserts in and I put like sand. I don't know if people have seen that one. So on, you have like a polyashworth, it's like that, and the bees come up like the— bees come up like that and then down. So what I've done is I painted it masonry paint on the inside, that stops the mould, then chuck loads of coarse sand on that angled approach, which gives the bees loads of nice grip. But what I do now This is a tip I got from Murray, great tip, really good. So I've taken out all of the plastic dividers so the bees have just got full access into the syrup, and then I chuck in a load of hay or a load of straw, and I put in way more than Murray puts in, absolutely fill the whole polyashtral feeder container with hay or straw, and then I put the syrup in. And the first time I did it, I thought, they're all going to drown, like it's just going to be like a bee massacre when I get back. But because you've got all the hay and straw in there, like, any bit, they'll fall into the syrup, they just climb out, it's great. And then I leave the hay and the straw in, and come the end of the season, like October, it's bone dry because all of the bees have come up and just cleared every single little drop of moisture off it. And I leave it in there and it's like added insulation. So that is my, that is my system now, and it works really well. Simon. Oh yeah, okay. So few on here, right? So Simon G says that on all business expenditure can be claimed back. That's very true. Chris Humphrey says there's a new beer equipment company just started up called Cross. Is it Cross Aspires in Morecambe? Still on the setup, but do have some kit in now. Just for that, Chris. Aaron Corny says just got an order for £250 worth of suits in. Oh right, so Aaron's cleaned them out for suits. Good work, Aaron. Uh, Brooklyn's Honeybee says, just on my lunch, so popping in to enjoy the stream. That's a very late lunch. We'll catch up on the earlier stuff later. Hi Andy, hope you're well. People haven't already, Brooklyn's Honeybee, you give them a subscribe. A good channel to watch. Uh, Sharon says— okay, that's just in the chat. Hello, I'm only 16 and funded all my hives and equipment myself. I work with Langstroth and National. I'm struggling with getting good equipment for a good price. Who's your go-to supplier? Thank you. So hi, Cullen, great effort by the way, like getting all that yourself and funding it yourself, and I think like you'll find like with beekeeping, once you do a bit of funding and get your first set of equipment, it should kind of like generate more income for you to organically grow your operation. My advice for people like you is always organically grow your operation because it means you're never in debt, which is obviously a bad thing, but it means that you learn your beekeeping at a pace in which you grow your operation. So don't be stupid and don't do what I did, which was go like 2 hives, 4 hives, 50 hives, 100 hives. Well, I've got 100 hives, I'm now 100-hive beekeeper and not having a clue what's going on. Much easier just to do it a bit slowly and learn, because you could— like, the difference between managing like 20 hives and 100 hives is negligible. You'll learn from your 20 hives. But getting back to your question, I'm struggling with getting good equipment for a good price. Who's your go-to supplier? So I have loads of different suppliers. I don't have like a go-to because it always of my kits kind of like a little bit different, but these, these were the ones that I would generally go for. So I would— I normally picked up the Mazemore frames in the sale because they used to be the cheapest, and I found like seconds quality frames were always just like pretty good enough for me. Never had any issue with second quality frames, and all of the prices seem to be there or thereabouts, but Mazemore seemed to be the cheapest. I don't think they are anymore, so I would just say go for second quality For me, DN4, national frame, self-spacing, and get them from whoever's the cheapest. So I don't think there's a best supplier out there, but if you buy them in packs of 50, that's generally the cheapest you're going to get them unless you're buying them like by the thousand. Make your own floors. That's what we do. Always make your own floors because they're so easy to make, they're so cheap to make. You can whip up a floor once you pay for the mesh. You're probably paying like a fiver, £5 or £6 for the floor. I always liked poly boxes, so I would always say if you like poly boxes, go for poly boxes, but at the moment they're so expensive, so I would go with a seconds quality wooden national cedar brood box. And again, no particular manufacturer of those, I find they're all relatively similar. The only one that I wouldn't recommend is the Bee Equipment ones with the pine locking bars. I just— that's just going to end in disaster, pine locking bars, for me. So I wouldn't go for them. I'd also suggest, if you're young, so you're probably quite strong, if you can lift a full national deep of honey, then I would do away with shallows, and you get really good cost efficiency by doing that. So if you just have everything on national deeps, regardless of whether you're going to use them interchangeably you're going to designate some for honey and some for brood, you end up getting more bang for your buck in terms of surface area for the frames compared to how much they actually cost. And then put your money in an area that's really, really good for you, which is adding insulation. So we have on top of that polyashford feeder, that's like the most expensive part of the setup, but worth its weight in gold because it's so versatile. And then any cheap old roof that you want to put on top of that. So if you go roughly with those guidelines, it should bring the price down a little bit, and then it means that you're not fixed to a certain supplier. When a beekeeper passes away, do you all do the tradition of telling the bees? No, I got— you have to tell me what that means now. I'm guessing it's a kind of, you got, if like If I lost my bees, someone would have to go up to my bees and tell him— tell them. I can already see it, right? So someone needs to nominate themselves for this. Yeah, so when I die, somebody needs to go up to my bees and tell them that I've died, video it, and they are going to nail you in the face. Absolutely nail you in the face. And that will be like my last hurrah. Um, and hope— and sod's law, you'll go viral, and then it'll just be like complete closed circle. Uh, Dee said it was a great stream and she's off to have her tea. I hope you've had something nice. Uh, right, let's have a look at some other ones. Uh, Mushroom says, I was talking to Maysmore earlier while giving them an order. Their prices on cedar will be going up around 40% and significant increases in all other things. Right, so I, I have it from a very well-informed source outside of beekeeping that the worldwide timber costs are going to be dramatically going down over the next 18 months, like mega, mega going down, because we're in a massive recession worldwide. Inflation is kicking in, and there is a lot of timber around apparently. So we will see if any of that gets passed on to timber products within beekeeping, because I have no doubt that in the short term the cost of cedar is going up. But I do think that we're going to see this reversal, and you can already see this reversal taking place in oil prices and energy prices, in that there's too much and there's not enough supply for— there's not enough demand for them. It's bringing the cost right down. So my gut feeling is that is going to happen also with wood, and I hope it does. I thought they closed the shop down in Blackheath last year. When I went past there, it was gone. Yeah, so there was a beekeeping shop there, then it closed down. What were they called? It was Park— Parks or Park Apiaries. They were the one that did the really lightweight nuc that was pretty cool but very lightweight. But then a new one's opened up. I think it's called The Beekeeping Shop, and I'm pretty sure they're— maybe not Blackheath in the same location. I think they're from a similar place though. Philip Moore says he's near Dallas and he's going to transfer 2 colonies to a friend's equipment on Sunday. Starting to get excited. It is the best hobby in the world. Hi there, first year of beekeeping for me and still have one bucket of heather honey to jar, but it is crystallized. What's your best advice for warming it to get it jarred? Um, do what— there's a guy, I've forgotten his name, there's a really big massive beekeeper in like West Wales who has like a, um, a contract with Marks& Spencer's. What's his name? Someone must know his name. David something. Wainsworth's. Wainsworth's. I can't— I should know this. Yeah, but anyway, he has a massive contract with Marks& Spencer's, and I was there. I don't always shop at Marks& Spencer's. I was doing like a very thrifty Christmas shop at Marks& Spencer's, and they had the best marketed jar of honey I've ever seen, which is Welsh crunchy heather honey. And I thought, oh, that's really, really clever marketing. It's like turning a negative attribute on a product into like something cool. Um, I thought that was really, really clever. And it is. I don't know if anyone— if anyone's not tried heather honey when it goes like that. Heather honey has like the largest crystals, and it is— it's not like it's gritty, it is crunchy. And some people say, oh, I love a jar of heather honey, extra Crunchy, please. They love the crunch. I'm really not keen on crunchy honey. But best advice for warming it to get it jarred depends how much money you want to throw at the situation. So the way that we warm ours is I bought the warming cabinets from Abello, paid full price for them, and they, they've revolutionized, completely revolutionized our entire process. They go up to 55°C, but you can, you can put them wherever you want, so you can put them up to 38°C. But we find that if we go up to 55°C and do it for a really short amount of time, keep the thermometer in the honey, and then by the time the honey gets up to 38°C, which is the temperature in the hive, it's completely liquid. So you can do it a couple of different ways. Or you do it another way, you can get yourself like a controller STC 1000 is a really good controller, and it's like great for people like me who don't have a clue in terms of wiring because it's just got 2 plugs. Plug it in, and then it's got a heating plug and a cooling plug. And all you want to do is on the heating plug, plug in like a light, an incandescent 40, 60-watt, 100-watt bulb, and then build a big Celotex, so like Kingspan insulation board box, and then you just like put this little sensor down into it, set the temperature for 38 degrees. And what that system there does is that it will just leave the light on until the temperature in the box reaches 38 degrees C. And then when it reaches 38 degrees C, turns the light off. And then after 20 minutes, when it gets cool again, it turns it back on. It keeps it really, really consistent. And that is the way that I would recommend. If you've not built something like that, it's quite an easy build. I even I could build it, and it works really well, and it doesn't take much energy, and it's cheap. So that would be my recommendation. Right, let's have a look more. Colin Brown says, "Oh, thanks. Your advice is amazing. I'm now going into my second year on six colonies with three hives in storage and nine new boxes. Hopefully." to fill them all this summer. Good luck with doing that, sure you will. Brooklyn's Honeybee says, I'm on lates tonight, the joys of working for the old bill. I did not know you're a police officer, right? I will, I will keep note of this. Simon G, national deeps for honey is great if your extractor can handle those frames. Yeah, that is a very important note, make sure they can. But I love it, you know, when I'm doing my extraction, I'll have loads of shallows and I have loads of deeps and I always do the deeps first because I'm just like, see how much honey I've got. And then I'm always a bit gutted when I have to go to the shallows, and it just seems like it takes a lot longer to fill the buckets up. So I do like it, and I find they extract really nicely as well. Did you manage to get a harvest from the plastic frames from Frames and Feeders? So no, they went in too late, so we'll have a, we'll have a look from them next year. And I'm definitely going to take some of those to the heather. That's where I think it's going to be. the most easy to get a good— well, they're going to add the most benefit in terms of me doing some stuff with them. Right, Steve Johnson says, new method for this year, put supers on early without excluder to prevent swarming, then a month later find queen and install excluder. Bees don't like going through the excluder early on. I know a number of people that do it like that, and they'll whack like 4 supers on And then just not inspect them. Um, I, I think it, it does work, but I don't think it's necessarily like the most efficient way for the bees. Great for the beekeeper though, really, really good for the beekeeper, especially if you're playing like a numbers game. If you've got 20 colonies there and you say, well, I'm going to do that with 20 colonies and I lose 2 swarms, you might think, well, that's worth the lack of effort. I quite like beekeeping like that, especially if you're somewhere like well out of the way, you're not going to annoy anyone with swarms. Aaron Cornish says you want the Inkbird ITC-308 controller. So the Inkbird does, but I, like, I know what I'm talking about, the STC-1000, there's a new one So I think it might be like the STC 1000 Plus, but you don't need to wire it yourself. It's the one that I've got, and there is one there. The STC 1000 is the one you need to wire yourself, and then they did another STC 1000 Plus, I think it is. But they're both pretty cool. Sharon says she really enjoys the videos. Thank you, Sharon. Kodiak Farm says use an old refrigerator that's broke, put the heat embalming sensor in, large capacity. Warmer. That's so much better than my idea. Definitely a good idea, that one. Yeah, use an old fully insulated fridge or a freezer or something. What a great idea, love it. Uh, Brooklyn's Honeybee says, not an officer, I answer the police 999 calls for the country. Oh, bees definitely help with the stress. Yeah, that would not be an easy job. Um, Pink It's Honey says about the fridge freezer as well, so I'm obviously Way behind the times with that one. Cheers, Pink It's Honey. It's a great one. Aaron Cornish says he stands corrected. I won't even. Okay, says the man with the orthopedic shoes. Okay, Tap Tapman Tan. Hi, Lawrence. Long time fan, first time messenger. Keep up the great content. Tap Tapman Tan. Tapman Tan. I've I've got a friend and it might be him. So if it is you, you have to let me know through. a weird sign. Watch out for a cold snap, the extra space in the supers can make for a cold hive. Yeah, so that is— that's how it makes it inefficient for them, but I think if you've got big colonies and you're doing it late in the year, kind of like April onwards, I think it should be all right. Well, I've got to the bottom, I've got to the bottom of the comments. I'll do like 10 minutes more. This is the final time I'll say it though, if you enjoyed the chat and you want to see more of these, do, do give it a thumbs up. Um, if you've got any more burning questions, you can stick them in there. Uh, Philip Moore says, you've got a gold star, Lee, you are, you're good more than just to look at. Very nice. Uh, Tyrell's Honey says, finally, Lawrence, another stream. Yeah, sorry, it's been too long. I will do them more often than I did before. I'm thinking as well, maybe what I'll do is I will follow Fred, Fred Dunn I remembered his name this time, is Lead, and, and maybe find like a repository for people to put questions, and then I've just got like a list of questions and I can like answer them in advance. I might do that. I might do it on the No Nonsense Beekeeping Facebook page, which if you've not joined, you should join because it is pretty good. Uh, what other stuff do I need to say? If you've got cool beekeeping videos, particularly swarm videos, cutout videos, sting to the face videos, Queen's Honey, send them to me. If you don't, the best way to make contact, blackmountainhoney@gmail.com. Try and send them through there. If you can't get them through, I will give you my phone number and you can WhatsApp them to me. So Tyrrell's Honey says, finally, Lawrence, another stream. A quick question, did you leave your full-time job as a project manager? If not, how do you manage to balance? So no, I'm still a full-time project manager. And if not, how do I manage to balance? Struggle, late nights, it's difficult. I think so, so many bee farmers have 2 jobs, it does just seem to be a standard thing, and I think with my kind of— because you see what I do and you get like, you watch the videos and stuff of it, then it might look like there's more, there's more to it than there is, so I just try and be really efficient and not spend half an hour inspecting a colony, you know, I do Quick five-minute inspection onto the next one, and then I take annual leave for when it's like extraction season, and then try and have a break in the winter. How is the concrete hive doing? So it's still alive. I looked into it the other day and kind of like tried to get the lid off like that. It is so heavy, the concrete hive, but they are still alive. Not very big. Um, so we will see how they get on next year. I need to do— I need to sort out the runners on that concrete hive, but they are still alive and they look cool. I love them. If they ever do fail, I'm just going to put them in the garden as like ornaments because I think they look cool. Hey, if your nuc is busting with bees, when is the earliest you could transfer to a full-size hive? So I saw someone doing this in January last year. transferring it to a full-size hive. I think January is way too early to be doing it. What I would say is that, say you've got a 6-frame nuc absolutely full to the brim with bees, they will manage. They're not going to swarm. I'll wager in the UK they're not going to swarm before the 1st of April, maybe, maybe the 15th of March. I'll retract it, take it to the 15th of March. They are not going swarm. Doesn't matter how condensed they are, they're not stupid enough to swarm that early. So let's, let's put another 2-week contingency on it and say the 1st of March. You've got another 6 weeks before I would even think about transferring them over. That would be, that would be my take on it. Very, very rare to swarm early in the year like that. If you're worried about it, what I would suggest doing is either getting a brood extension box and putting a brood extension box on kind of in 4 weeks' time. Or another little good tip for this one is putting on, if it's like a Maysmoors nuc and you've got the cavity in the roof, take the feeder out, just put the roof on with the cavity. It'll give the bees somewhere to cluster, and then what they will do before they swarm is they will fill that box up with comb. So you'll start to see wild comb going up, and then if you don't see any wild comb, almost certainly not going to swarm. When you start to see wild comb going up at a rate of knots, then you need to consider getting them gone. Matt Donlock says, I had an InkBird controller make me a lot of baker's honey when the relay stuck on. Now using EliTech one with an audible alarm. Wow, that is annoying. Baker's honey is horrible, isn't it? It is really horrible. That's why we use it in our hot fire honey. We use like 50/50 and it works. It's actually better for us for the hot fire honey because you can put more more vinegar in it. And it's like baker's honey, for people that don't know, is once you've heated it above 65°C, um, becomes baker's honey. And it's thick and syrupy and caramelly, but really like thick and runny. But then when we make our hot fire honey, we add vinegar into it and Scotch bonnet chili powder. So, so it's not too viscous. Um, it's good to add the vinegar to it, and the caramel taste is quite nice. But it is an absolute pain if you've not got another use for baker's honey, then it is, uh, Yeah, not good. Philip Morse asks how many I'm managing, so I manage about 100 plus a huge amount of nucs. Burning question, I have one hive, looking to replace my queen this year. How can I make a new queen while not impacting honey production too much? So Demerara split. I know, like, I'm like a one-trick pony, aren't I, with my Demerara split, but Demerara split is the perfect opportunity to requeen your colonies and like have a go at requeening your colonies whilst not impacting them at all. So generally what will happen, and they— this can trigger them swarming, but it doesn't always work like that. As long as you've got a big gap between them, it does work. So normal standard brood box, build the colony up nice and strong, queen excluder, build them up into the super, build them up into another super. So you've got the floor brood box, queen excluder, super 1, super 2, and then do your Demerara split. So you take that bottom brood box, chuck it up to the top, find a queen, single frame of brood, put that back down into a new brood box that's full of foundation. 8 days later, you're going through the top box to take down all of the emergency queen cells. If you're doing just a standard Demerara, you take down all of the emergency brood cells. If you want to requeen them, you can leave a single cell and then create an entrance in the top. And what you should end up with— they either swarm, sometimes they do swarm if they do that, they swarm with a virgin and it's really annoying. I've not found a way to kind of manage it, so sometimes they swarm, sometimes they don't, but they generally don't. But that virgin will emerge in the top box, she'll go off, she'll mate, she'll come back to that top entrance, and then you'll have 2 queens in the colony. And they can't supersede each other because they can't, they can't get to each other. And the colony, the, the overall colony thinks that it's 2 colonies, so you get that free hit. So if the virgin doesn't mate, you just need to go in and find the virgin, kill her, and then business as usual. And then if the virgin does mate, then all you need to do is go down to the bottom box, kill the, kill the mated queen. So your original mated queen in the bottom box, give it a couple of days, and then just take the top box and put it back down. to the bottom again, and then that is, that is how you can do that, and it has zero impact to honey production. In fact, it does the opposite, it massively boosts honey production, so that's really good. You were thinking frame of brood, so Simon's approach to potentially doing that was thinking frame of brood, frame of stores in a nuc, shake some extra bees in, let them make queen cells, and put them in a queen mating unit. So yeah, but that will impact honey production. reduction because you're taking away like quite a bit of resource from the colony there. But that's perfectly acceptable method of doing it as well. Doesn't Demerara require already drawn and empty comb for the queen to lay in? I put, uh, I put down my earlier failures for using foundation in the bottom box and the queen didn't have immediate room to lay. So no, I do that all the time with foundation. You can do it with, you can do it with all foundation, you can do it with all drawn comb. You can do it with a mix of the two, but it definitely works. But you need to make sure that when you do it, that you do it on a flow. So if you don't do it on a flow, they won't draw it out immediately. If you're, if you're doing it all with foundation, you could just bring down another couple of frames of stores down there, bruise the frames of stores, and then it gives them access to something that they will use to turn those stores into drawn comb. Cool. Well, we're doing really well. We've got 129 people. I'm just so keen to get that number of likes up above the number of people that are on the call. So we can do that in 2 ways. Either people can leave the stream— don't leave the stream— or people can hit the like button. But I would do 5 more minutes because that has been an hour and 40 minutes, and I said that, um, I said I would do an hour. So here we go. I guess I'll round it up at the end, like, with what we started with, which was I'm really sad to see Simon the Beekeeper go. There's a lot of different personalities in beekeeping, and people don't always see eye to eye, and some companies don't always give you the best customer service, and all they're interested in doing is kind of making a quick buck and getting away. And Simon just wasn't like that at all. He was really like a genuine guy. Anybody who spoke to him, such a nice guy, had a good heart and a good reason to open his business. And I think a lot— I don't think I've met a single person that has like a bad word to say about him or his business. And I'm saying that as a customer of his. You know, I've bought lots of stuff from him over the years and never had anything bad to say about him. And I'm just, yeah, I'm a bit gutted. I started this stream by kind of saying, you know, I'm really sad that he's going and I'm a bit lost for words. Um, with Paul throwing in the fact that Bee Equipment might be going as well, I really don't want to see the UK beekeeping condensing down into a few people that have a monopoly on the market because it is not good for anyone apart from those people who do have Monopoly on the market because all it means is less, less range for people, and then the prices go a lot higher. Uh, Joe's saying, yeah, I did, I got all my foundation from Simon, and I've got a big box of it here, but I will run out of it soon. Um, I've got a lot of beeswax though, so I'm gonna have to do something with it. Um, Michael Menino says, enjoy your videos, thank you, from New Hampshire in the USA. Thank you, Michael. Says, what's the worst sting you've ever got? Um, when I lost my breeder queen and it got me on the tip of the nose there, and it— I was literally crying, like streaming out of my eyes. It was so, so difficult. Um, but on that note, it did remind me of what I think I'm going to have a go at doing next year. Uh, so this year, this season, which is I'm going to do some live streams but I'm going to do them from the apiary. So if you think that's a good idea, I was thinking like having a hive like here. I'm not doing it to be like, oh, I'm gonna get stung in the face. Probably will get stung in the face. I'll do it next to a really nice calm colony, but I just thought it'd be pretty cool, you know, to like sit next to the bees. So I'll kind of sit like maybe here and then have a hive here, hot sunny day, doing their business. Probably take the top off it as well, and you can just see the bees like flying around. It means that if you're not interested in me like waffling, then you can just watch the bees. Uh, Dale Hancock said, I love getting stung in the face. I do, I do not love getting stung in the face. Right, it is 17:43 in the UK, 123 likes. Thank you so much to everyone that has dialed in. I will do more live streams, I promise you. Um, I'm gonna close it down there, so thanks everyone. If you've got any messages, you can email me Join the Facebook group, No Nonsense Beekeeping. Email is blackmountainhoney@gmail.com. Hit the like button, and I'll be back in about 2 or 3 weeks. Take care.