Black Mountain Honey: Let's Talk Bees with Laurence Edwards - Episode 48

Good evening, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Let's Talk Bees. We are 30 minutes early, so I do apologize for being 30 minutes early, but I was sitting here about quarter to eight thinking I reckon people would appreciate me being 30 minutes early today because I got it wrong with Greenwich Mean Time. Everything gets shift back, so I know everyone does this. It's eight o'clock now, but it is really nine o'clock, isn't it? Everyone's getting ready for bed, so I thought I'd shift it forward 30 minutes and. Get on with it and talk about bees. And hopefully anybody who wasn't expecting it will just kind of get the alert popping up that it is going to be 30 minutes early. So I haven't spoken to anyone for ages. There's absolutely loads to talk about. If you have any questions, stick it in the chat. We'll talk about everything to do with bees, and I will answer absolutely every single question that is there. Few public service announcements first. I— you will see I've chucked loads of different links up in the chat, so across Facebook, across YouTube, across Twitch. Looks like spam, but believe me, it is not spam. So the first one is nucleus colonies. We're selling out of nucs very, very fast. I think we possibly will be sold out before Christmas. Already sold out of Langstroth Overwintered, National Overwintered very, very close to being sold out. So if you want nucs, um, best to get in there as soon as possible and reserve your colonies. Next one is queens are now available to pre-order. So if you want to order or pre-order any queens for 2024— 2025, I should say— then you can pre-order now to get top of the list. Um, I've just kind of rebranded the channel membership a little bit. So I know a lot of people here are channel members anyway, but we're moving away. So you, you'll see that the— a lot of people are on the early access videos, so they will get access, early access to videos without any adverts, um, as soon as they get posted onto YouTube. And a lot of people like that membership level, but you'll see that there's the new one now. So he said that I've given the VIP exclusive video access to all the early access video members for about 6 months I think I've been doing it now. That is due to expire in probably about February. So come February, the, uh, the exclusive videos will no longer be available on that early access videos platform. So you've got— just giving you another heads up, basically another 4 or 5 months and then things will change around a little bit. But then the upgraded one will be the B mentoring one. So I know I don't always get back to everybody's comments, but that is my commitment to you now. So if you sign up at that level, the VIP exclusive mentoring level, you'll get early access to the videos, advert-free videos, all of the exclusive videos, and then complete two-way communication. So you can just put a comment on any video and I will get back to you. So the live streams are good because you can, you can ask me stuff live and I put me on the spot and I have to answer it, but I only do them every 2 weeks in the season. So maybe you want something like a little bit quicker than that, you want a quick response. So my commitment is I'm not gonna— there's no guarantees here, but what I'm gonna do my very best to do is to try and clear the comments every single day. I'll do that with emails anyway, but I'm going to do it with VIP exclusive mentor comments on YouTube videos. I'll clear every single one every day. And then the final comment that you might see in the chat there that looks incredibly spammy, and it's not, it is this, this is a really, really good deal. Yeah, so I signed up to E.ON, um, about 8 or 9 months ago now, and I signed up to a 12-month fix with E.ON. And the reason I did that is that we, we charge our car overnight. We basically have everything on overnight, so the dishwasher, tumble dryer, which I don't think you're supposed to do, but everything goes on overnight and we have really cheap electricity overnight. Save loads of money that way. We also charge our batteries up overnight. But if you've got an electric car, this is a no-brainer for you. I know a lot of people are on Octopus Go. So Octopus Go gives you either 4 or 5 hours at 8.5p overnight, and then it's about 30p per per kilowatt hour during the day. I will get to beekeeping questions in a sec. The E.ON tariff that I'm on at the moment has just gone down to 6.4p overnight and 24p in the day per unit kilowatt hour. If you sign up on my link, I get £50 and you get £50. Everyone is a winner. Best thing about it is they lock you in for 12 months and there's no exit fee. So if a better deal comes up, you can just transfer over to it, and they'll even let you transfer to their own best deals. So I've just kind of like continually moving on to their best deals. So if you want really cheap, good electricity from a very reputable company and you want to earn 50 quid at the same time, you can click on my referral link there. So sorry, that was a heavy advertising or an advertising-heavy first 4 minutes, but we'll crack on with it now. I'll just answer some questions. So most important thing before I get to Mick is I do have a very hot cup of mint tea, which I'll just have a sip of. Not used to talking so much. I've not done a live stream for ages. I'm out of breath. Ready? Here we go. Mick says— I just choked on a bit of cheese. Sorry, Mick. Right, we'll start again. Hello from the Urban Apronry. Thanks for putting this on, Laurence. It's much appreciated. So it is my pleasure, Mick. Sorry it's been so long. I did say I'd do it once every kind of once every month, and I think last one I did was 5 weeks ago, so next one will be in 4 weeks' time. So I'll just skip down all through my, my spammy comments there. Apologies for that. And we go back to Mick again. So Mick says, Richard, Noel, and Griff have invested a huge amount of money building new honey houses and fitting them out with top quality equipment. What are your investment plans for 2025, if any? Good question. So I'm taking a very, very different angle to Rich and Griff, and I watch on with great interest, but I'll be perfectly blunt, the UK and the EU honey market is only going one way. And I'm not investing in lots of top-quality equipment and honey houses to, to slog away trying to sell cheap honey in a barrel, because I just don't think the money is there to pay back that investment. Now, I don't think necessarily what they're doing is bad, and I wish them the very best of luck, and I, and I love watching on with, with great interest in both of them, especially Richard's build. It's phenomenal, you know, coming from a a project management and a civil and structural engineering background. I like watching things being built. And the same with GRIPS, it's cool. It's on a slightly smaller scale, but they're both epic projects. But there's no investment plans in terms of growing what I've already got. Like, I, I've gone— I'm going backwards. Uh, I had my original honey house and I had my sump and my pump and 3 different tanks and all of these different things, and I've just been selling them. Like my wax cappings press, uh, the wax capping spinner, you You know, I bought all of that stuff and had it all in a space that was arguably too small, and then realized I didn't need— I didn't need it. So I just sold it all. And extracting honey now is loads and loads easier. And I know every year I say I'm going to do a honey extraction video this year, but it is the most difficult thing in the world to do in that room. And that's the only one thing that— where I really wish I had a much bigger kind of open, lighter honey extraction room where I could, I could video it properly because it's just, you just can't, you can't get a single tripod in there. So I need to get someone. A couple of people did offer me last year whether they wanted me to, a couple of people offered me to come and help and I just said there's not enough space. But I think the only way to actually film something is to get someone to come and help me do it. So maybe I'll take someone up on that offer next year. But I, yeah, so in terms of investment plans, no, there's no investment plans whatsoever for kitting out Um, honey rooms. We, we might, we might invest in some other things, um, but not, not honey rooms. No. Good question though. John, how we doing? Good to see everyone again. It feels like not seeing anyone for ages. Aiden there, channel member. Hello, Lynette, wave to you too. Uh, PJ Morgan says exciting but Bake Off just started. Sorry about that. I'm, uh, I don't watch telly. I don't watch telly anymore. You still got record function on telly though, haven't you? You not got a record function on the live stream, so all good. Good evening. Uh, oh, I don't— I will mispronounce your name. I'll just say I says, how about Buckfast VSH bees? Have you heard? Um, so we do, I do, and we have heard. So we've got a couple of different really nice breeder queens that we did some testing on this year. So we're bringing in UK F1 VSH Buckfast queens and then also the imported ones that we've got that I was very, very impressed with when I was doing my, my tests in my apiaries, looking at the different queens that we've brought in from Melitta Bees. The VSH ones were the ones that really stood out to me in terms of their ability to, to be hygienic. And I'm going to do a bit more testing on the, the offspring, um, from my breeder queens, but also the F1 VSH queens that we get from Melitta Bees next year. But just the overall kind of prolific nature of them, probably, probably the nicest ones that I've got, I think. Uh, Lynette says thank you for replying to my email on Sunday, much appreciated. It's my pleasure. Uh, Chronistitan. God, I love it when people come up on Twitch. He says, howdy from New Zealand, I plan to use your method of adding queens in the next 2 weeks. Oh, excellent, it's nice to see someone's actually got some genuine beekeeping to do. It's all just, um, nothing going on over here now, it's just like scraping boxes and cleaning stuff up. But hello. Uh, I— again, he says there's a Buckfast breeder in Luxembourg, Paul Jungles, he has queens with mite resistance. Yeah, so I, so I, I know of Paul, I've had Paul's breeder queens before. He's, he's very well respected in the Buckfast world. Channel member says, hello Lawrence, welcome back. Hello all, 3 hours again tonight please, as you started early. It's only 8 PM. We can do 3 hours. I'll just keep on going until the questions dry up, and I think we'll finish early tonight because I don't think as many people will dial in on a school night, but also on kind of like off-season. That's what I'm just— I'm hoping for anyway. I'm only joking. I will keep on going as long as the questions come in. Says hello. Good evening, Lawrence. Have you ever sold queen bees to customers that need one for emergencies? So yeah, pretty much all the time. I'm guessing that you've got an emergency, John. It's crazy the amount of calls that I get at this time of the year saying, I desperately need a queen. I get a lot of people saying they've gone in, gone into the colony, opened it up, full of bees, like full to the brim with bees, 12 frames, you can't see anything, it's covered in bees. every single frame is full of honey, can't find the queen, no eggs, no larvae, no brood, and they're panicking. They're like properly like, oh my God, they're gonna die over winter. And I just say, well, that's kind of what they should look like. Like if I go into a colony that I know had a mated queen a few weeks ago or like 2 months ago and they're looking like that, I'm thinking, nice, that's what I want them to look like. The big thing, the big question that I say is, why are you going through your colonies? Don't start inspecting your colonies at this point in the year because the only thing you can do is squish your queen. So just much better off working it out in September, finding that you've got a good, good colony. Um, you've got your mite strips in, the queen's good, she's laying, and then you just have to trust that she is going to continue laying all the way through the year, all the way through the winter, that is. And you will get colonies that fail over winter, but there's nothing you can do about them, and trying to mitigate it will just end up killing more queens. So don't go into your colonies this time of year. Good evening, Laurence. Hope you and your family are well. There's a ton of ivy still flowering here in Warwickshire. How is it where you are? Great, really good weather at the moment there, and it's nice. I quite like this time of year. I like the time of year because you kind of feel like everything's done and you can just— the pace of life at this point in the year is nicer than the pace of life in the bee season. It's not. I like it being busy, and I'm still Ridiculously busy, but I just like knowing that all of the hard work with the beekeeping season is done. But it's the weather's great, and the and the bees have really benefited from the ivy over the past two or three weeks. It's been great flying weather. Just just every day they've been going out getting loads of ivy. You can feel them coming. You can see them coming back in, but you can feel the weight coming back in really really heavy. So I think it's it saved quite a lot of money for a lot of people. I think on feed, and the next couple of weeks look really nice as well, and it will keep going. You'll still get like Himalayan balsam. going at the moment before you get the first frost. So, um, nice end to the year. Uh, John says don't put cheese in your tea, saves you choking. Good, good tip. Thanks, John. Uh, says hey, Laurence. Hello to you too. Uh, Karen Evan— Karen Evans, sorry, on Facebook says hi, Laurence. First-year beekeepers had a phenomenal year for the first one with over 100 pounds of honey harvested from 2 of our 4 hives. We experimented by whipping some of the honey as per your video, but it looks more aerated than thick and creamy. Have we done it wrong? Um, so you're not gonna get soft-set honey, you're not gonna get creamed soft-set honey by whipping it like that. It's, it's, it's more of like an aesthetic, I think, with the whipping it like that. But it does change depending on the different honey that you use, and it also changes depending on like the temperature of the honey. So if you use like really fresh warm honey and whip it really quickly at the beginning, you'll just get like a thick frothy layer. But if you choose kind of— if you do it on like a colder day, and if you choose honey that's, that's not— you don't want granulated honey, but honey that's, you know, when it's like starts just before it starts to granulate, it goes like really thick. And then you do like a real slow whip, you will— you'll get it, you'll get it to a reasonable texture, but only temporarily. Like if you put it back in the fridge, it will just set back down again. So you don't want to— I would never recommend doing 10 or 15 jars of it. Just do Do a couple of jars of it and eat it as soon as possible. But the but the best way, if you if you want to if you want to just kind of do it on a small scale to make like really really good soft set honey, it's so so easy to do. Like on a really small scale, I do it. This sounds terrible. I do it in gherkin jars. Just just just like for my my own consumption. Don't think I'm selling honey in gherkin jars. But I get prime example. We just like whenever we get like gherkins or pickles or whatever, I just use them as I use them as like water glasses because I like to be. Thrifty and recycle things. But all I'll do is I'll just get a jar like that, still got some water in it, and then I'll just put like an inch of good, good quality seed honey. So you can buy the, the best seed honey that you can get is just the— I don't want to say like the cheap Polish stuff, but the, the cheap Eastern European seed honey that you'll get like in Lidl. And don't worry about if it's— it probably is, it probably is real honey, but don't worry about where it comes from. You just want some really nice like perfectly creamy and no granulated texture on your tongue at all. And just put like an inch of it at the bottom, and then just get your honey. You do need to heat your honey up first. I know, I know people don't like heating up honey. Heat it up to about 40 degrees, make sure it's fully liquid and it's been reset. You might want to go like 42, 43. You've got to do it for this method. And then all you do is just, um, you've got your inch of seed at the bottom, and then just like fill it up like halfway and just like stir it, leave it for a few days, keep on stirring it, and then just keep on topping it up with runny honey and keep on stirring it. Keep it about 14-15°C and it will— and it'll just all turn into the same crystallized structure as the seed that you put in, and it works really well. So that's what I would do if you want to do it on a slightly bigger scale like that. That, that is the dice method that I have just explained, but on a much smaller scale. Here we go. Uh, Seren Corbett says, is active behavior in polyhives usual for this time of year? 100%, yeah, definitely. They'll be out on the ivy, they'll be out orientating, all of those winter bees coming out. If there's any extended periods when they're inside and then it gets a bit warm again, they'll be out on cleansing flights. So yeah, perfectly normal. Even through kind of like mid to end of November, I would say you still see like a bit of activity. It's not until the daytime temperatures drop to like 8 or 9 that you'll stop to see— you'll stop seeing any activity, but in double figures they'll be very busy indeed. Hi Lawrence, would it be advisable to make a split in the first year with one of your nucs? Cheers, Lee. Definitely, yeah. I say it to loads of people that the best thing that you can do in your first year is learn how to make a split, but the best thing that you can do in terms of the ease of management of bees in the first year is to make a split, because what a lot of people do is they'll get an overwintered nuc, 6 frames, put it in, say middle of April, and it builds up and builds up. And come, come the middle of May, like, it's full, and people think, oh, what do I do now? And like the textbook says, put a queen excluder on, put your supers on, and then the bees are building up. And then come— if you put 10 hives in a row doing that, you just put the queen excluder on and put the supers on, I reckon you'd get 1 or 2 of them that would swarm prematurely. So you might be lucky and might get one that won't swarm, but some colonies will just kind of not want to go through the queen excluder and go up into the supers and they just decide to swarm. So it doesn't happen on all of them, and it is maybe like 10 or 20% of them. But if you push it further and you kind of go into the, the beginning of June or the end of June and they're up to like 2 or 3 supers, like the chances of a swarm leaving at some point in that first year become relatively high. Like these are overwintered queens, so these are not first-year queens. These are queens that have already had kind of like a season or half a season behind them, so they're going to be thinking at some point about swarming. So if you're, if you're like a new beekeeper and you're not 100% sure what's going on, you can easily mitigate that by just taking a split out of the colony. And then the way that I would probably do it is take the split out. What would I do? Would I take the queen out or not? I think I would. I think I would take the queen out in the split. So make a split, 2-frame split, 2 frames of brood, 1 frame of stores with the queen. Preferably take it to a new apiary. If not, it's not the end of the world, but keep them confined for a good few hours. Do it in the evening and then leave it 8 days. Knock down all of the queen cells, shake the frames off, definitely shake the frames off, knock down all of the queen cells, and then add in a new mated queen. And that should extend kind of the bees to just about get through the point where they're a lot more likely to swarm. So it it's value for money because you pay £40 and you've basically got 2 colonies for the price of one for the cost of a mated queen. But also it gives you a much, much better chance, I would say, of getting a decent crop from your original colony of bees because the new mated queen that you're putting in is going to be this year's queen or 2025 queen, much, much less likely to swarm because she's so young, she's in her first year. The colony as a whole is less likely to swarm, but then the split that you've taken as well, you'd be amazed how much that could build up. Like a 2-frame split at that time of the year, you could probably get another super of honey off them. And at the point that they're reaching kind of like critical mass in order to be able to produce some honey, they're not going to be swarming at that point in the year. So I think it's a really good— I think it's good advice to make that split early in the year. And I think kind of strangely enough, you'd end up with more honey by making that split than if you just let them let them run without making any splits. So that was— I would— that is what I would do. David McDowell, channel member, says, how many grams of OA do you use in the Instant Vat for hives and also nucs? So I use api-bioxal, and I use what is supposed to be used on the packet for api-bioxal. In America, what most people do is they use 4 grams of oxalic acid for hives and 2 grams for nucs. They're kind of like the standard figures Naomi Robertson says, hi from Melbourne, Australia. Love all your content, Lawrence. Thank you, thank you very much, Naomi. Good to, good to see people from the other side of the world. It's crazy, isn't it? Melbourne, Australia. I bet you it's nice and warm in Melbourne today. It was, you know what, it was— I quite like this time of year, it's quite pleasant. It was a, it was a toasty 13 degrees C here today, and, uh, I wore my gilet, which was very nice. PJ Morgan says, big congrats to Ben Wong, he won first prize at the Honey Show for his beeswax entry. Excellent news. Well done, Ben. I know Ben. That's that's really really tough. National Honey Show is the the best of the best when it comes to honey shows, and to win first prize is very impressive. So well done, Ben. I just skipped down all the way to the bottom and missed missed all of those comments. There we go. John John Sylvester says feels a long time of no live shows. I know it does, doesn't it? I was thinking that today. I was thinking I'm not going to show like for five weeks, and it does feel. It does feel quite strange. I'm not going to say it feels nice. I like doing these chats, and I think it's a good thing to engage with all of the people who have supported me so much. So I do enjoy doing them, and I like the different people that come from all around the world and the array of different questions that I get as well. It's all good fun. I'm going to drink some of my mint tea though before I go on. I wonder how many people are going to sign up with my Eon Next thing. It is absolutely brilliant, the Eon Next thing. What I'm amazed at— this is the last time I say it, I promise— is that you sign up and then what they always do is they lower the prices. And you know what happens with an energy company. You sign up and you think they book you in for 12 months, 12 months fix, and then they lower the prices and you say, can I, can I go on to that new contract? And they always say, no, you signed up for 12 months, you can't change. And E.ON just say, yeah, that's it, cool, just free, sign up to the new one. So I'm a massive fan of E.ON and and they are way better than Octopus in terms of their pricing at the moment. So if you're with Octopus Go, you should sign up on the £50 link which is at the very top of the chat. Last time I'll say it. Hi Lawrence, I have 3 really strong hives. If all goes well over winter with them, I'm planning on taking early splits off each hive in the spring. Will this affect honey production with them? So taking splits off will affect honey production if, if you kind of assume that everything is perfect. So if you, if you assume that your colonies will not swarm in the year ever, then splitting them will knock down the honey production a little bit. But what I always think, and what I was saying before, is that by taking the splits at the right time, it means that the colony that you're taking that split from is much less likely to swarm. I would say that you will end up with more honey overall because making bumper— getting bumper honey crops is about one simple thing. And that is about creating as many bees as you possibly can and timing that peak density of bees with the flows that you get. It is as simple as that. Like, you need, you need healthy bees, obviously, but the more bees you have, the more honey you will get if the weather plays ball. Taking a split out of them means that there's going to be slightly less bees, but by having slightly less bees, they're less likely to swarm, which means you're more likely to get a bit more honey. And I do think that logic works kind of on all levels, on commercial levels of beekeeping, but especially at the beginner end of beekeeping where a lot of people do lose swarms. And for most people, if you lose a prime swarm, like the big first swarm that leaves a hive and it's a big one, you're not going to get much honey that year. Like, you might be able to salvage a super. I've been very, very happy this year because loads of people have emailed me or WhatsApp'd me saying, look at this picture, and it's a picture of like a double brood hive that's been demarayed 2 or 3 times with 8 supers on. And then they're like, I'll send you, I'll send you a video, and then it's just 8 supers full of honey, absolutely full. And it is as simple as that. Keep all of the bees there, do multiple demarays, convince them that they've already swarmed but just in a kind of vertical fashion as opposed to a horizontal fashion, and you get crazy, crazy honey crops. I've had a couple of people, there's 2 people actually, say, I'm never doing a demerare again, never doing a demerare again. And I said, why not? They said, it's just too— it's too much honey, too much honey and too much bees, and it's like they're just too tall for me to manage. So it's a great idea, I can't believe quite how well they worked, but it's not for me. Like, I just want a couple of supers of honey, I don't want to process all this honey. And I love it. I was like, that's the best review I could ever get for my bees, that it's just too much, too much honey. Love it. Wildways Farm Harry says, hey Lawrence. Hello to you too, Harry, hope you're well. Says, evening Lawrence, I have what appears to be a very late supersedure, no sign of the original queen but an emerged queen cell. Mating is unlikely, so assuming I can find the virgin queen, is it too late to merge with a nuc? So definitely not too late to merge with a nuc. I would say that with a supersedure, like, I wouldn't be touching any colonies at this point in the year, so I wouldn't find out about that until the spring anyway. But if it is like a genuine supersedure, is they will say, we're not keen on that queen for X, Y, or Z, so we're going to create a single or 2 supersedure cells, and they'll let that queen emerge. So you'll have your normal queen still in the hive, and then the supersedure queen, or the virgin supersedure queen, running around. And they'll— it's basically like a free bet for them. And then if the supersedure queen goes out and gets mated and comes back, and they're like, Sweet. Yeah, she's good. They generally let, let the 2 queens overwinter together just in case something goes wrong with the new one, and then in the spring, like, they'll kill the old queen. I've had loads of colonies like that where you go in in the spring and there's 2 queens in there. So I would— if, if it was me, I wouldn't do anything. I know you say there's no sign of the original queen, but she could still be in there. Um, I don't like merging. I don't like doing anything at this point in the year just because— oh God, I got loads of stick about that video, didn't I, about, uh, not saving the bees. Wow, that was not gonna do— not gonna do a video like that one again. But that was trying to demonstrate the perception of value, and, and people didn't like that at all. But what I was saying was, if, if you've got a colony that's like just— it's like a handful of drones and a couple of worker bees in there, I'm not going to save it because there's no value in there. If I've got a big 6-frame, like if you've got a big 10 or 12-frame colony that's full to the brim with bees and you are 100% sure that you've not got a mated queen in there and it's just a virgin, then I'd be saying yeah, I'd probably merge that with a nuc and make sure that the merger is successful because you've got a very valuable bundle of bees there. People didn't, people didn't get that on the video for some reason. They just said, you, you devil, you have— that's horrific, how can you kill bees? And I said, well, I'm not actually, I'm not actually killing, I'm actually killing these bees, I'm just, I'm just waiting for them to die. And they said, that's just even worse. And I said, well, that's just kind of what would happen in, in nature. And then somebody else commented and said, ah, well, it's just a lack of, lack of forethought because I've got 20, uh, Apideas or Mini Plus waiting there with queens ready to go for a situation like that. And I said, well, what would happen to the bees that are in the Mini Plus box that you take the queen out of? And they said— he said, I'll just merge them with another colony. I said, well, that's exactly what I was saying that I wouldn't do, is just merge them, because there's no value in saving that anyway. So anyway, I'll, um, I'll stop moaning. Perception of videos is fun, but as long as people comment on them, I'm quite happy. Carrie-Anne Redmond says, love your socials. Thank you very much, Carrie-Anne. Redmond. She says, natural beekeeper here. Oh, very nice. I hope that's going well. Always interesting when people do it, kind of like go down the natural beekeeping route, and love to see how it progresses, how many years they can get out of that, and if they can turn it into a successful kind of continual natural thing, or there's any decline. Not, not saying that— like, my understanding of the living with varroa without any sort of intervention is that they'll do all right for a couple of years, and then after like 3 or 4 years you'll start to get like this, this bit of trajectory downwards. You might lose some colonies, and then you breed from what you've got. But I've never, I've never, I've never really seen it work, um, on a, on a larger scale. But I'm always very— I, I admire people doing it, and I'm very interested to see how how it works, because I think it would, it would be brilliant if none of us had to treat with varroa. So I think it's, I think it's a good, a good thing that people are trying to do stuff like that, and I would love to see it work. Uh, well, says nice to see the live streams again. I'm enjoying it, I'm enjoying it. Lots of comments coming in, that's good. Uh, John Denham says I've also ordered one of your Langstroth nucs, I'm moving over to Langstroth. Thank you very much, John. Uh, a lot— I can't believe the demand for the Langstroth nucs. Shouldn't, shouldn't be giving it all out to all of my competitors faces on here. Artem, I'm looking at you. But, uh, I mean, I'm only joking. Uh, but yeah, sold out of those already, so we will do more Langstroth nucs next year. Thank you, David Beckham. Good evening, Lawrence. Good evening to you too, David. Going into winter, what's your top 3 tips to get our hives ready for winter? Oh, I love this question because— and, and this is such an annoying, an annoying answer, so I do apologize in advance— but You're about 4 months too late for it, I would say, going into winter. What's your top 3 tips to get the hives ready for winter? But you want to start that about 4 months ago, and I know you, I know you would have done, but there's not much you can do for a struggling colony now. You can't, you can't add Apivar strips in now because way too late. You can't feed up— you could probably just about feed up a colony, but you'd be racing against time to get them up to weight for winter. You definitely can't fix any, any Poor queen issues. If you've got any structural issues in your hives, the wasps will have already found them. So it's kind of rewind to middle of August. That's that's when I always go in middle of August. Take the honey off, apivar strips in, checking my hives, making sure they're all like well fully sealed up. Got my feeders on, checking the colonies to make sure that the queens are okay. Any colony that's not looking right, I'll mark. And I'll kind of go back and have another look at. And you do, you see people who are channel members, you'll see if I've gone on to the videos, you can identify where the drone layers come in. So between the middle of August and say back end of September when I do like final checks, and, and taking it even up to like middle of, middle of October when you're taking out the Apivar strips, you'll see the ones where they just— that's no good, that's drone layer. So you've got to try and kind of keep on top of that. And I'll shake some of them out if there's value in them, and the ones that don't have value in them, I'll just mark them, and then as soon as it gets cold, I'll close them in and clean them all out over winter. But I do think like the, the 3 top tips are condensed within that information there. Don't go too late with your honey crops. I know some people disagree with that. Middle of August for me, anything else the bees get to keep. Apivar strips in really, really early, as soon as your honey crop is off. of August is very, very good, and it is early compared to what a lot of people do. Your bees will pay you back double in the spring. Getting your feeders on nice and early in the position where if you need to feed your bees, you can, but you don't have to feed them if they've got incoming nectar. You don't want to block that brood box up too early to stop the winter bees forming. But then the one that some people might miss is making sure, like, the structural integrity of the hive at that point is bang on, because if you've got any little gaps or or you've not got your entrances set up right and you've got big gaping entrances, the wasps will get in. And, and I've seen loads of people— wasps were the easiest to deal with this year in the world, but come back end of August, early September, middle of September, like even now, the wasps are, are pretty bad. They've built up to some nice big strong colonies. So I would say that they are my tips, and if you follow all of those tips, you've not got to do anything now because you've done it and you can just sit back knowing, like, safe in the knowledge that you are, that you've done everything for your bees. And I'm really, really looking forward to seeing what, how people get on in the spring. I gave people the advice early on in the year about if you've got a single brood box, when to put the next brood box on to go to double brood, and people were saying that you put it on top, and I was telling people why early on in the spring that's a really that's a really bad idea to do that. I know the bees like to go up, but it's a bad idea. Put it underneath. And I explained why, and the reasons why were so the cluster is always in contact with the feeder, means that you can feed them. So if it gets cold, there's no big air voids in there, and they've not got to heat up as much space because all of the heat is kept up at the top. But if they need to expand, they can expand downwards. And I remember giving that— giving that advice to people and having lots of discussions about whether it was a good thing or a bad thing, and a lot of people thought it was a bad thing. And I had so many people come back to me said, I did that and I've like, I can't believe how well it worked. I got through to kind of back end of April and the bees had just filled both of those boxes, and if I hadn't put the box on, I think they'd have swarmed. And if I'd have put the box on top, I don't think they would have grown to the same extent because we had a really like real cold snap at the beginning of April. And it's good advice. So if the same thing happens again next year and you want to double brood early on in the season, stick it underneath because it is good advice. But what I was going to say is I'm hoping to see if people who would normally start treating with Apivar kind of back end of September, or God forbid early October, if they brought that right forward and started treating middle of August, I'm really looking forward to seeing how they get on with their bees next year because the difference is stark and you'll be very, very happy. What's your advice on how to keep colony numbers down in the summer? I keep Mongols and they are naturally swarm me. So I've seen your comments on Facebook, so I won't give you the buckfast spiel. What I would say is, trying to keep it non-political for you, you're trying to keep the numbers down because the bees are naturally swarmy, but what I think's happening is if the bees are swarming, then by keeping those bees, you are like inherently breeding in that swarmy genetic. So even, even if I said, well, if you've got one colony and it swarms into 2, just stick them back together again, you've still— they've still swarmed and they're still kind of like— for the bees, that's worked well. So I would, I would say to change the genetics. And like I say, I won't, I won't give you the— I won't give you the hard sell because I know it won't work, but maybe try maybe try somebody else's mongrels. Maybe if somebody's kind of got like a particularly nice line of AMM and they say that they're, they're kind of like quite small, um, and they're— they don't swarm as much, then maybe try and kind of see if you can get some, some queens or some cells or some virgins from someone like that, and then see if you can somehow make them less swarmy. I just think by doing that with your own mongrels, they've already shown you that we're really swarmy. And I speak from personal experience because it really annoyed me when I kept mongrels, which was you'd like catch a swarm and you'd be like, oh, it's a nice swarm, love that swarm, and it's on like 6 or 7 frames and they're building up and you think, oh, these are nice bees, like they look good and there's brood, beautiful brood pattern, and then they get to like 8 frames and you're thinking, yeah, a couple more weeks, you know, one more hatch of brood and we're going to be into the supers here, and then you go there all happy with your supers thinking, right, today's supers, then you go in and they swarmed and you just think You'd not even filled the brood box yet. And for me, that's just an instant, well, I don't want your genetics in my apiary because I keep bees to get honey and kind of like for my own enjoyment, and I've got no enjoyment from just keeping swarmy bees that just swarmed before they could get the supers on. So I'm not— I'll rewind a little bit, sorry, I won't go on. But the options that you have are to continually just condense them back together again, and I think they'll just continue to swarm, or go and try and get some different genetics in there. And, and different genetics will help, I think, if they are specifically selected to be a bit less swarmy. There we go, tried to keep it as, as non-Buckfast as I possibly could there. Uh, right, from Twitch says, is it after 1 week and you have killed all the queen cells, is that when you add your queen cage and then then wait 1 week. Is that how it's done? So I can, I can see why there's confusion here. I've done it a few different ways. So if you said to me you can only have 1 way of doing it, this is the way that I would do it. I would kill my queen, I would wait 8 days. On the 8th day, once I've taken down all of the queen cells— cannot miss a queen cell, shake every frame, make sure you kill everyone, even if one kind of doesn't really look like a queen cell and you, you're 99% sure it's a drone. Take that one down as well because that's the one that will emerge as a virgin. At the same time that you take down all of the queen cells, you then put the queen in, leave her for 48 hours, but you can do it for 24 hours. If I had to, if I had to pick a number, I'd go with 48. 48, safer. But you can do it after 24, pop the tab, and then I leave it for a week. So that's, that's my, that's my method. And I can see why people get a little bit confused because I've done it before where I'll kill the queen, I'll put the new queen in, then leave it 8 days, and then take down all the tabs. So the queen is in there a lot longer. Both ways are valid, but if I could only pick one way of doing it, that is the way I would do it. Kill the queen, 8 days, take down all the cells, put the queen in, 48 hours later pop the tab, leave it a week, come back and check. That is my method, method that I use. Bees have got dysentery from what I suspect was thick syrup that fermented before it crystallized. I put fondant on it to try and rectify it. What do you think? Worth Well or not. It's not good. Yeah, bees with dysentery at this time of the year is not a good sign at all because if they've got dysentery when they're kind of like out and they're able to fly now but they're still like struggling, then that's like a really bad case of dysentery. So you might want to you might want to have a look and see if there's any kind of nasema issues there as well because nasema can cause dysentery like that. You can you can do it just from the kind of spores on a mic— I can't say the word— on a microscope. You can have a look on the microscope. But yeah, thick syrup that fermented before it was crystallized didn't sound good, but then putting on fondant to try and rectify it, what do you think, worthwhile or not? So if they need, if they need some food, I would have probably just cleaned out the thick syrup and given them some, um, thymolated syrup. Thymolated syrup would have been good. Not to treat the dysentery because you're not allowed to do that, and not to treat the nasema because you're not allowed to do that. I would have just put some Hivalive in there to stop the syrup from fermenting. But anecdotally, it also does help with nasema and dysentery as well. So that's probably what I would have done. And I think, I think that's what I would do now. I'd still give that a go. I'd take, I'd take the fondant off and I would give them some, some uh, invert syrup with some Hive Alive in it, and that should, that should fix it. Do you have any idea when Abella will be having a sale? Should have bought more last year. Started with cedar but now moving to poly, just seems easier all round. Yeah, they normally do have a sale by now, don't they? I'll speak— there will be one coming up. They do like what's good, like they do like the Great Poly Hive Sale or something like that. Um, but yeah, it's coming up. I think it's November. So yeah, keep your ear to the ground. It will be soon. Harry says, thanks for your feeding advice by WhatsApp. I bought some syrup and the nucs are now really heavy. I'll be buying invert more often in bulk. I've started sterilizing a few nucs. Very good. It's it's it's quite expensive invert at the moment. Like it's it's gone up loads. I do like feeding invert, but there's no doubt that it is way more expensive. So I think I'm going to probably go back to. a lot of 2-to-1 late on in the season. It was brilliant. The, uh, the video that I did, which some people thought was calling out David Burns, got loads of, got loads of hassle about that one as well. But it's not, it's not calling out someone, is it, to say that— like I said, massive respect for David Burns, brilliant beekeeper, brilliant YouTuber— but the, the advice that he gave for, for what I can only assume was from Americans wasn't the best advice for the UK. So all I said was I kind of agree with like 95% of his advice, but then just for the last couple of feeds, like, don't feed them 1:1. So his advice was feed bees 1:1 syrup all the way through the year, even all the way through kind of building them up for winter. And I said, I don't think that's particularly good advice in the UK. I think you should, um, I, I, on the middle of August, I'll feed 1:1, and kind of like for the first few feeds, I'll feed 1:1 going into winter. but then as we get— as it gets cold, I'll feed 2:1 because it— you'll get real like moisture issues in the hive in the UK feeding 1:1 that late. But, um, some people didn't see it that way, got very angry. Uh, Gary Justin, who's been a member for 2 months, thank you Gary. He says, good evening Lawrence, I've ordered 2 nuc boxes for next year. Where can I get the solid panes roof for further use of the nuc boxes in the future? So when the panes molds are sold you'll be able to get them from them, and I'm sure they'll be available relatively soon. Um, but all, all I do with mine is just put a bit of like board over the top, and they're, they're perfectly usable. So let's give it like insulation board, just pop it directly on top of the mesh, and then it's fine. You can use it just as a normal roof. It doesn't look, it doesn't look quite as pretty, but if you wanted to, you could, you could use like, um, you could get a bit of plastic plastic sheet and like some, you know, like the building insulation foam gun. You could like fashion something out of that if you wanted to go for like a slightly more permanent option. But I like— I've overwintered loads of them on ventilated roofs with just a piece of insulation board over the top, and it works fine. Ben Taylor, channel member, says, good evening, Lawrence. It's my first season of keeping. I have been advised to keep supers on with old honey as Food. Is this okay? Oh yeah. So I had to read. I had to double read it. You know, I never say to anyone, "Oh, that's really bad beekeeping practice. Don't do that. That's terrible. Who told you that?" I personally don't do it because I don't think that there's any requirement to do it, and I keep bees so I can have the honey. I also think that taking the honey away and feeding the bees stimulates the colony to become nice and big and strong going into winter, which I think is a good thing. I think that giving them invert syrup is is absolutely fine for them to overwinter on. on in my personal experience of how it's— how the bees have performed with that. I don't see that they perform any better with honey, and if they do, like, it's marginal, really, really marginal. You eliminate any issues with bees traveling through different boxes, having to take queen excluders out, but the biggest issue that you have, unless you've nadired the supers already, is that you end up getting loads of brood in your super frames, which means that they become— they don't become like tainted with brood, but you have struggle with Apivar as well. So if you've not treated, then you're okay, but if you treated using Apivar, then all of those supers are tainted and they can never be harvested with honey again. But if you— you'll end up the season with brood upstairs in the supers, which means that the super frames don't last anywhere near as long. So you see, like, there's loads— there's like one benefit, which is the bees get to overwinter on the honey, but there's lots and lots of negatives with that approach as well. But I've done that. Everyone gets that advice at the beginning, Ben, and I just, I don't think it's the best advice that you've got. But I wouldn't worry about it. The bees will come through the winter fine, and you might have to do a few tweaks next year just to ensure you kind of get longevity out of those frames, or you might have to cycle out some frames just if you have treated Apivar and they're tainted, it's tainted the wax. But then the following year you can do something different, so You can tell that I've not been speaking that long. Wow. Um, so yeah, I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't do it next year. Um, but I think for this year it's fine, and I certainly wouldn't change anything now. Uh, Had to remove some frames today to get the Apivar strips out of 2 of the 5 colonies I visited today. No sign of brood on the ones I had to remove, but resisted going through the rest. Well done for resisting. I, I put the Apivar strips in 2 ways. So one where you kind of like get the prong bit out and force it in so the top of it sits flush with the top of the frame. Oh, I learned quickly that year to never do that again. That was a pain, that was. So all I do now, and you'll slightly lower the efficacy of it by doing this, but all I do now is just like balance it on the top, and I love it when I come around to take them all out because I'm just like, oh my God, this is so much easier and so much less disruptive for the bees. But yeah, I feel your pain, John. Hi Laurence, what do you look for when you are deciding where to locate your apiaries? Oh, that's a good question. I'm doing a video similar, similar to this at the moment. So there's a few, there's a few red lines that I have in terms of places that I just will not go. So anywhere that they're in sight, anywhere where there's kind of like walkers going through, anywhere that there's a floodplain— I'm not going anywhere near to a floodplain. Um, anywhere that I can't get my truck like reasonably close— I like to get my truck within 5 meters of the bees now. But you, you kind of like set that parameter as you, as you like. But I've had some where they're like 100 meters away from where the truck can get to, and I don't, I don't do that anymore. Um, and then good forage is another one. So good, good forage, I tend to— you can't really tell too much in terms of the soil, but this is a good tip from Richard. He, he gives you— he gives brilliant tips, Richard. But he says like the, the yield that you get is generally dependent on kind of what's planted there, but also the soil. that's there as well. And he was saying that the clay soils just yield really, really bad, and they just get so cold and they don't heat up properly early on in the year. But when you get the more kind of like earthy ones— I forget what they're called— he says they're the ones that yield really well. And it's not that you can kind of go in and see, but it, it's something that you potentially could see in the winter when the, when the ground's getting churned up, you know. If you're looking at it and it's all like red, then he doesn't go— he doesn't like going for ones like that. Not to say that an apiary is not going to yield on like a clay soil, but that's just, that's just Richard's tip. He says no, anything that's like super clay, he doesn't like it, um, and he doesn't like getting stuck in the clay as well, was another reason that he said. So, so good, good forage is a good one, but then the, the thing that I'd caveat the flood advice with, the best, the best yielding site that I ever had was close to a river, and I think being close to a river is a really, a really good one, especially in the UK where we tend to get It does. It rains a lot in the UK, but the best yields that I've ever had is when there's been like severe drought. That's when I've got the best honey yields. And down south, they didn't get it anywhere near as much. But in Wales— and this would be very much dependent on the area that you're in— um, we have a lot of, a lot of trees that just have like quite deep roots. So if you're near a river, that the ground is naturally wetter anyway because it's got a, I guess, a higher water table because of the river, but you're high up and out of the floodplain. That was exactly what the, the kind of combination that I had, and it was brilliant. And they did so well there. Really, really big mature trees close to woodland and close to a river, but high up out of the floodplain. And that was the best yields I've ever had. And then other things that I'm looking for, I'm looking for security. Security is a big one, you know. If you can, if you can find like an estate or something that's got some natural security there anyway. One of my apiaries has got 3 Rottweilers there. And there is like you couldn't get a more secure site because there's just three massive Rottweilers that just like stroll around and they know me now and they they did not like me at the beginning and they they are big dogs and they're like really scary dogs but it's great now because they they know me and I got like I got some treats in the car so I feed them as I get out but that even that didn't work at the beginning if you come if you're thinking of coming and stealing my bees that didn't didn't work at the beginning either. They were just intent on chasing me. So security is a really big thing that I would look for. The thing that I would say as well is don't be afraid to change it up. So if something's not working, just pack up your bees and go and say to the farmer or whatever, like, it's just not working, I need to go. Leave it in a really nice respectful way, tidy everything up, and then try something new. Give it a few years to see if it works though, because it might just be an off-season. Uh, but yeah, there we go, a few tips. Uh, Harry says the ivy has just started in Devon and crazy amount of pollen coming in, loving it. That's, that's strange that it started so late. That's weird. I'm, I find that, um, amazing, the difference. The ivy's been going for weeks up here, like weeks. It's, it's nearly finished, I would say. I see a lot of ivy at the moment and it's just, it's, it's kind of, you see like the berries forming, you think, ah, it's nearly, nearly finished. So I would have thought it'd have been going for a good while. Down south, but interesting. Maybe it's having like a second second go. John Sylvester says, "Yeah, I might need a queen because I think I missed a queen sale back in late August when I bought a third queen off you and the queen died in the cage. Not sure they killed her." No, that's annoying. Well, I hope you get sorted. I I I need to work out how to say your name. I'm really sorry. I'm gonna say I'm gonna say Ian. I'm gonna call you Ian because it's kind of close to Ian. He says, "Which are your favorite queens? Carniolan, Italian, Caucasian, Buckfast, and." Why? So I'm a massive fan of Buckfast, you know. I've got most of my bees are Buckfast. All of the nucs that we sell are Buckfast. Our best sellers are Buckfast. I've been really impressed with the Caucasian queens. Really, really impressed. I've done— I did a video about 2 months ago and it's been on the channel members section for ages and I've still not posted it. I need to get around to it. I did one on the Carpathian queen and one of the Caucasian queen. But I love the look of the Caucasian queens. I love how much propolis they use. Great. I, I wouldn't want all of my colonies to create this much propolis because it would get, I think, a bit sticky. But I love seeing it in the Caucasians and just thinking, oh my God, like, the smell coming off this colony is amazing. But I love the coloring of them as well, like, very gray, very dark. Um, I'll see how they get on next year in terms of honey, but the buildup was fantastic from them this year as well. Not, not quite as strong as the Buckfast, but not, not far off. So I would say, yeah, they're my 2 favorite out of that list there. Uh, Seren says, thanks for answering. We transferred my bees from a cedar hive to a poly hive in September and they are very busy, so reassuring to know that's normal. Yeah, perfectly normal. Good evening, sorry I'm late to the party. Uh, I apologize for starting early. I should have only started 21 minutes ago. Wow, we've done 51 minutes already. Let me have a sip of my drink. Shall I check if a queen is there? It's mostly 15 degrees in North London. I see a lot lot of bees coming in and out the hive is from my own swarm? It's diff— it's a difficult one to say because it— if you go in and you can't find a queen and there's no eggs and no brood, you'll probably come to the conclusion that there's no queen. But there could be a queen and she could just not be laying because it's the kind of time of the year where they naturally take a brood break. So it's, it's not, it's not conclusive. The only conclusive way of doing it is to add a frame of eggs, but even then they might not raise queen cells at this time of the year because it's just getting a bit cold. Might just have to— might just have to sit on it and see. Cross your fingers. Good evening, Lawrence. I treated for varroa in August. I have read people treat in December with oxalic acid. Would you do this, or can I just put 2 strips in if we get some warm weather? So, so it's true, people do try and treat in December with oxalic acid. I did a channel member video on this giving people the heads up. I'll give you the heads up on here as well. I think December's too late, especially for where I am in North Wales, definitely too late. There's always like, whenever I've looked into colonies at that point in the year, there's always been a bit of brood. But middle of November is when I would go in and do it. I wouldn't use, I wouldn't put Apivar in at that point in the year. You could, I guess, you could put Apivar in at that point in the year, but oxalic acid, if you time it with a broodless period, apibioxal, you'll get a really, really good knockdown. And it's good to have the 2 different, um, miticides— I know oxalic acid isn't a miticide— but 2 different treatments to just to kind of like impact the mites in a different way, just so you're not building up any sort of resistance towards amitraz. So I would, I would mix it up a little bit. An interesting one though is using Apivar in the spring. So what— this is a perfectly viable thing to do— is that you go in of like early Feb, and you just quickly open up the colony, and the colony's there clustering up. You just pop your Apivar strips into the cluster, the bees are clustering around them, and then leave them like that. And then when you get to mid, like early April, you take the strips out, and then you can immediately put the supers on. And that's a really good way to get the colony mite load incredibly low starting early on in the year. I'd only do it if you need to do it, but that is proper, proper belt and braces. And there's no risk of contaminating any of the honey doing that, or the supers as well. Uh, Harry says, any advice for selling equipment you thought you needed but don't? Mine is a gas vap, etc., and a queen mating nucs and dummy boards. I'm guessing eBay. I've got all those things that need to be sold as well, but yeah, I'd go eBay. Well, I think there's like a beekeeping, uh, like a Beekeeping Sellers UK thing or something on Facebook. That's pretty good for that as well. Uh, be a lot of gas vaps on there. think you'll get much for a gas vat, if, if anything, because they're only like £40 new. So used, probably like £10 or £15 or something. Might get something for the queen mating nucs depending on which ones. And again, dummy boards, maybe. Not sure you get a huge amount for dummy boards because they're kind of like quite, quite easy to make from new. But the queen mating nucs, you probably get someone there. Um, good time of the year to sell though is like March April, start of the year, and people will be on it. But gas vapour would be a good gas vapour. Stick it on now. It's a good time of the year to sell that. Flower Street Farm Bee says hello from Colorado. I think he says hey Bob to someone else as well. Hello. He's been in four grams today on his oxalic acid treatments. I think his four grams is yeah pretty standard for full hive. Hope that's going well. Vermin Go says when a swarm leaves, how do the bees decide who goes and who stays? Oh, that's way out of my league, that question. It's a good question though. I don't know, I'll be perfectly honest, I have no idea how they decide who stays and who goes. It's, it's an interesting one whether there is some sort of like age demographic or an age demographic which says, right, you need to like split it down the middle, or if it's just completely not planned and like potluck. I'm just going to give you all of the permutations that I can think of. But no basis for any evidence on any of them because I honestly don't know. But it's also interesting, like, when a swarm leaves, like when a prime swarm leaves, like how many of them go? And is it always the same in terms of like a number, or is it always the same in terms of like a percentage? Again, I don't know. That's a really— it's a really good question. I don't even know how we would go about finding that out. Because I don't— how could you, how could you ever prove it? But I'm gonna give the award to the best question ever, that one is. But yeah, like I say, no idea how to answer it, but good question. Bob Bob says, I'm planning on switching to jumbo Langstroth hives for honey production next year. What would you suggest is the most efficient way of switching some national colonies over to the new format? I think the most efficient way of doing it— oh wait, you've got continued, won't there? Um, you've got, you've got 20 colonies and we'll keep some national nucs for sale. Okay, easiest way of doing it then is just to make a, like, a transfer board. So if you go on to— I'm just going to quickly do it as I'm talking. Generally very, very bad at doing this. So what I'm doing at the moment is I'm going on to my blog and there is— here we go— there is a, a link here from Adam who did something very, very similar to this. So I'll post it in the— oh my God, what have I done there? There we go. I posted that in the chat across Twitch, YouTube, and Facebook, and those will find out where I was. But basically what that is is like a conversion board. Uh, let me just find where it was. All right, here we go. Uh, conversion board. And then you can just keep, um, your new Jumbo Langstroth box conversion board, new national box or old national box on top and then you just put a queen excluder in when you're ready to put the queen excluder in and make sure that the queen's downstairs in your jumbo box. I won't go into loads of detail because it's all in that link, but then you can just make nucs out of what's left. That's a really, really— that's by far and away the most efficient way of doing it, especially if you're gonna sell the nucs. Great way of doing it. Uh, right, I'm back to it. There we go. Wainwright's Bee Farm starts each season with 4 supers on early, then left alone with little if any intervention. What do you think of this? As I might just try it next year. So, uh, huge respect for David as a bee farmer, like massive, massive respect. Brilliant bee farmer, knows his beekeeping inside out. I think that's a bit lazy. I think that's quite lazy beekeeping personally. I think it's a little bit irresponsible as well because you think of the amount of swarms that could be going in. There's no disease management or control or worry about colonies being robbed out, or I just I understand why he does it. I appreciate the logic. I think if I was in his position, I'd possibly do the same thing, but I can't support it as good beekeeping practice. I know the MVU wouldn't support it as good beekeeping practice as well, because if you've got colonies there that have got disease and you're just happy for them to swarm and you're happy to collect new swarms coming back in, Then you're just, you're just happy with potential disease to be within your, within your colonies. And for people who are just like purely focused on honey, I don't think it's a massive, massive issue for them. So I don't want people coming and saying, oh my God, Lawrence is slagging you off, because I do— I have the most amount of respect for David, his operation, like his honey business. The man, he's like a really good man. He knows his stuff and he's really nice as well. But I'm not a fan of that, and I wouldn't recommend doing it. Just do your inspections. Here we go. Hey Lawrence, here in PT at this time we should get some eucalyptus honey. Unfortunately, I realize my bees have a super high mite count. What do you recommend to quickly knock them down? Thanks. So it's difficult to know in terms of like the timings of the year out there, but I would say like quick knockdown, you Always best to go with oxalic acid, multiple treatments, like 4 grams if it's a full-size hive, split 5 days apart. And you can do it like 4 or 5 times in a row, and you'll see, like, the first time you do it, you get a massive drop. Second time, you'll get a massive drop. Just keep on doing it, and then as the mite drop comes down, it means that you're getting more and more of the mites as they emerge out of the— kind of like the reproductive mites as they emerge out of the cells. So that would be what I would do. Stuart Wood, good evening. I'm very excited that you've come on to say hi, and I'm very excited about our project for next year. I won't give— I won't give it away though, what it is, but if anyone clicks on Stuart's link and sees kind of what, what he is an absolute expert in, then, um, it'll give it away. But definitely go and go and click on Stuart's profile, big YouTuber there. Uh, Scout About says, evening all, I'm looking forward to raising around 30 queens next year. We have 10 Apidaires and 5 2-in-1 nucs. What strategy would you use? Would you do all at once or spread throughout the year? Um, I would do all at once. Definitely go all at once because it's so much easier just setting up a colony, setting up a starter colony, grafting 30. Like, you can graft 30 on like a single frame almost, and then, um, putting them, putting them out all into the Apidaires and into your 2-in-1 nucs, seeing how you get on, seeing what your take's like. And then what I would just immediately do is just get that colony set up again. So you can like use your 10 over 10 method but start to build it up again 10 over 10, and then just go straight in and do another round. And then any of the ones that didn't take, you could just add another cell in. You'd probably get away doing that with the Apidaias, but you'll definitely get away doing that with the 2-in-1 nucs. And then you just— I find with queen rearing, you just have to like throw everything at it at the point in the year that you think it's going to stick. And then you're just like, right, okay, a lot of that stuck or a lot of that failed. Whereas if you think I'm just going to do like a little bit dribs and drabs throughout the year, you'll just get a couple of weeks where it works well, and the rest of the time you you'll get like average results. So you always kind of think I wish I just I wish I put all the effort in when it was good weather. So I would definitely just go go for it as many times as you need to, and that would be that should work well. Dirt rooster, that's brilliant. I love it. I love it when Rooster comes on and says hi. Good evening to you too, Andy. I hope you're well. I'm very good. I still, I still got your hats knocking around, you know. I always wear your hats. It's— I loved coming to America, obviously meeting all the people, but my personal highlight was finding hats that fit, because in the UK, like, the hats just don't fit my head. To get special ones made. And but your hats, your hats fit really well. Do you think any of the varroa treatments affect the queen's fertility levels? I I've heard a few beekeepers mention these theories. Um, so I'm not so sure about like fertility. Max and Formic Pro definitely kills queens. I don't care what anybody says. I've seen evidence time and time again, and I've seen it in my own bees as well. Formic Pro kills old queens all the time and causes major brood mortality as well. So I don't know why anyone would use it. Um, but not, not Like apivar, I wouldn't have thought miticides are issue in queens' fertility levels, but you never know. Like they could be. It's it's one of those things until somebody puts significant amounts of money into study something like that, you're never really gonna know. And I don't see why anyone would put the money into to kind of study it. But it's it it could it could be. Yeah, but I think they. They are just theories until someone proves it. Hi, greetings from Tripoli, Libya. I won't say your first name because I will just get it wrong, but Hamza. I can get Hamza. I'm a beekeeper with 20 colonies. My best are of those F1 Buckfast. How to import some F0 queens from you? Well, I would love. I would love to sell our queens far and wide, but we can't even get them kind of to Ireland. So I think we will struggle to get them to Libya, I'm afraid. But, um, yeah, I'm sorry about that. I was going to say, even direct from Melitta Bees, I don't think they'd send— they'd be able to send them to Libya. I'm not sure what the kind of export regulations are out of Europe and into Africa. But, um, I hope you— I hope you managed to find some, and I wish you best of luck with your colonies. Evening all, late to the party, said 8:30 on Facebook. I, I do apologize, uh, I came in early because I kind of got the timings I kind of got the timings a bit wrong. Paul Lewis says take a swig. Always welcome to take a swig. We like this. There we go. Right, Stuart Wood says he's looking forward to next year. I'm going to give it away because I'm really excited about this. So I, I wanted— I tried last year to get some like cool close-up images of my queens because I thought, well, I want to update my images on the website and I want like— I want good images. And I went out there with my camera and I realized that I wasn't very good at taking, taking like close-up pictures of bees. So what I thought, I thought I'm gonna be very clever here. What I'm going to do is I'm going to film them 4K, 120 frames per second with a really high shutter speed, because then I can just like screen grab. And it worked to a certain extent, but then I just couldn't do anything with the images because they were just screen grabs, so you couldn't really like make them look good. So both attempts at getting good quality close-up pictures of, um, of the queens just— in fact, they failed miserably. But I really want these pictures, and I, I followed Stuart for a while. So Stuart is, uh, um, an incredible macro photographer. And like, believe me, just click on Stuart's link, and if, if there is no link there, just Google Stuart Wood macro photography, go to his YouTube page, and look at the images that Stuart can miraculously create with a camera. It is phenomenal. So Stuart has kindly agreed to come up and do a collaboration. He is also gonna hopefully impart some of his wonderful knowledge into my I got all the gear but no idea philosophy, um, but— or mentality, I should say. But at the end of it, we're gonna hopefully get some really cool close-up images of every single one of my queens and some brood and stuff like that. So they will be going on social media and obviously onto my website as well, but I'm very, very excited about that. So good to see that you're on, Stuart. I am looking forward to it too. Hey Lawrence, seen a few wasps only. Bastards went to the sugar feeder all the way through and bees went meh. Kind of funny. So I do apologize there. I just— yeah, I did, but sorry about that. I was laughing, laughing inside. Oh, I'm only human, sorry. Oh, that's annoying. Yeah, there's nothing worse than when they go, go through like that. Not good. When would you double brood, and what are the signs to look out for that indicate that's what's needed? So, so double brood is more of like a choice of the beekeeper, and people say, if I double brood my colony, will I impact my honey crop? And I say, well, yeah, you will get less honey if you double brood. And they say, what's the benefit in double brooding then? And I say, well, it's much easier to manage your bees, they are less likely to swarm, and it means you've got like resilience built into the brood area in the case of drought, or in the case of kind of like famine, or what's the word that I'm looking for? You know the word, when there's no forage about. Dearth. There we go, dearth. I got there at the end. Um, so, so if you're, if you're interested in kind of like double brooding to mitigate against any of those, then that's, that's a good way of doing it. You'll lose a bit of honey in the supers, but it gives you a lot more flexibility. So if— so, so I, I really like double brood. I think double brood's good. And this is going back to like what David Wainwright does, like with a single brood, lots of space, let them if they need to swarm, comes back and hopes that there's lots of honey there. And lots of times there will be honey there. What I prefer to do is double brood, give them a lot more flexibility in the brood area, reduce the honey crop down a little bit in the hope that it's going to mean that they're not going to swarm. And then I'll still do my inspections and still try and get a honey crop. So I do like double brood. So your question, when would you double brood? I would double brood early on in the season. And I would do what I said previously, which is Normally with a double brood, what you would do is you'd have your bees in a brood box and then you'd get another brood box full of foundation and you put it on top. That's the normal way bees will move up like that. But if you know you want to move on to double brood, much, much easier and safer and kind of like smarter way to do it in the spring is you can go in, you can do this kind of like from early March, middle of March onwards when it's still quite cold, is, um, just put the brood box underneath So you've got your brood box there full of bees, and then you put your new brood box underneath. And for the bees, like, you can imagine the bees, they're looking at you doing that. What are you doing putting all that space down there? And then they're just like, yeah, we don't, we don't really care. Like, it makes no difference to us. Our heat's going up, we're insulated above, so we're still nice and warm. If anything, it's kind of like a little bit less drafty now, so thanks. We're still comfortable. Oh, we need to get to the feeder. Oh, the feeder's still there because it's directly above our head. Okay, great, we can still be fed. And then Oh, days are getting a bit longer, the queen's pumping out the eggs, right? We're getting a bit big, we've not actually got that much space in here anymore, right? We'll try and go up, right? We can't go up, right? Oh, we've got loads of space down below us, we'll go down. So it means that if you have like weird springs where it gets hot and then cold, you've got the best of both worlds in that you've got lots of space for your colony to expand, no risk of early season swarming, but you don't lose any of that heat, so you don't lose, uh, the, the speed in which the colony builds up. So when would you double brood? I would just go for it middle of March, stick the brood box underneath, and then in terms of looking out for the signs, I wouldn't really— there's no like signs for me doing it that method. It's more of a timing thing and putting the box on. You could put the box on in January, you could put the box on in February, it doesn't really matter, but you're putting it on at a point where you know it's going to give the bees the absolute maximum benefit without any kind of detrimental factors coming in. If you were to put the box above in the middle of March, you would, you would cause real issues to that colony. They wouldn't be able to get to the feeder, they'd have a lot more space to be trying to heat up, and all that heat was just going up into the empty space. So there we go, that's what I would do. I keep reading about oxalic acid treatment while the colony is broodless but wondering how to tell when it is. So you don't tell when it is. So this is why I do a little bit of a service to people. I'll Open up some colonies middle of November and I'll show you how much brood is in them so you don't have to. Um, but you, you don't know when it is, and, and it's a false economy. I said this to channel members, it's a false economy trying to work out when it is because you'll do more damage trying to work it out than you will just by guessing. And if you say, if you're thinking, well, I want them to be broodless when it happens, then just do multiple treatments, and multiple treatments will not harm the bees in any way. Keep them 5 days apart because then you're working really against the mite's reproductive cycle. And if you do it 3 or 4 times over 5 days, you're probably spreading it out over 3 weeks. If you did 4 treatments over 5 days, you're probably going to hit a cold— sorry, a broodless period. But don't leave it too late. That's the big one. Don't do it Christmas Day. Christmas Day is bad advice. Early December is still I think it needs to be a little bit earlier than that, middle of November. Even now, a lot of people's colonies are broodless. Um, so there we go. Hi, how would you recommend getting the bees out of a Nibello feeder to put fondant on for winter? So do you know what, this is probably my number one, um, question that I've had recently, and loads of people doing this. They say what date do you think I should switch from feeding syrup to feeding fondant? And my answer is always, there's no date. You don't switch. Like, you just, you feed your bees up for winter using syrup, and then you just cross your fingers that there's enough in there, and then you're hefting them. And like, you should be able to feed your bees up with syrup to get them through until like January, February at least. And like, the majority of the colonies, you won't need to feed any fondant at all. But you might get to like January, February, March and be like, you know what, that is a bit light, I'm gonna put some fondant on. But you definitely don't, you definitely don't like feed the bees up kind of like until the middle, middle of end of October and then say, right, I'm gonna put my fondant on, because it doesn't really— like, I, I, I certainly wouldn't do that. I think it's a waste, and I think you could cause issues for the bees, like overwintering in that configuration. It becomes a bit of like a heat sink, especially if they're like in contact with it. So I wouldn't preemptively feed any fondant. I would just take the metal off. Like, I like putting hay in the feeder, so I take the plastic or the metal off anyway so that there's no kind of— they can just all get back in. And then when it's cold, they just all go back down. And then, you know, when you're putting your fondant on, it's cold again, so there shouldn't be any bees in there. If you want to get them all out though, just take the lid off, just tap them all back out. But I honestly, I would just continue feeding syrup until they're super, super heavy and then not worry about fondant until February, March, or whenever they need it. JK Photography, good to see you too, hope you're well. Uh, BBBB says, saw a big beak YouTuber mentioning that you need a minimum of 40,000 bees. Yeah, I know a queen breeder who overwinters them in Mini Pluses, um, 30 centimeters or so climate difference. Oh yeah, I'm not sure, I'm not sure who said that. Who said that? It's completely dependent on the size of box. You think like a nuc, you— we overwinter a lot of nucs, and I reckon there's what, like 5,000 bees or something in a nuc, national nuc, maybe, maybe a few more in a Langstroth one. Um, that must be, that must be a climate-specific thing, you know, if you're doing it in like the northern reaches of Canada or something, I don't think you'd get away doing little nucs. Maybe not, maybe you would, I don't know. But yeah, 40,000 bees, like there's some, some Mongols don't have 40,000 bees at the height of summer. Sorry, I shouldn't, I shouldn't slag off Mongols. Sorry, get told off. I think it's pronounced. He says, have you ever used 1 milliliter ampoules of B12 vitamins? What ratio sugar syrup. So no, so it, it's, um, it's illegal doing stuff like that. I know, I know it's crazy, like we live in this crazy country where everything's illegal, but it is like any, any sort of stimulative feeding like that is you're not allowed to do. But it, but it is interesting, you see a lot of this stuff in America and they do a lot more, a lot more of this kind of stuff, but do a lot more research into this. There seems to be money for it. And I think that speaking to Richard the other day, it's interesting because this is exactly what he was saying. He said we should start feeding the bees vitamins, like specific vitamins. And I said, I don't know. And he, and he was talking about like these studies in America talking about that, and whether it's B12 or other mixtures of vitamins. And he was saying that there's, there's studies showing that it could, it could prove beneficial feeding your bees kind of stuff over winter. Um, so I, I honestly don't know that one. Sorry, I've not got any experience of it, and at the moment it's not something that I would, I would give advice about because you can't do it over here. Um, but also I've not got the experience with it, but I'm interested to see if you do it, and I'm going to keep my ear to the ground on that one. Uh, this was, this was Ben's response to my, uh, um, answer about swarmy bees, so I, I realized that I did just say about mongrel bees again, so I retracted my previous statement. I'm sorry, Ben, but at least, at least I knew it was you, eh? Take, take that, um, small piece of comfort, right? Yellow jacket destroyed most of my nucs. It's the first time I saw a wasp like that. Nucs now on 1 or 2 frames. Do you think there's a possibility they can pass in the winter? Um, Possibly, but I would condense them as best as possible. So kind of like combine them up to get them, get them a bit stronger. What, 1 or 2 frames? It depends, it depends where you are. Like in the UK, 1 or 2 frames is going to be, it's going to be touch or touch and go. Um, so I'd look at combining them, maybe take 3 or 4 of them, combine them together. I think that's probably a good idea. Uh, we did that one. Hi, have you seen the video with Gwyneth and Wainwright's Honey, and what do you think of the beekeeping method? Thank you. Yeah, so we answered that one as well. Evening, Laurence. I can see bees are flying daily in big numbers in all 5 of my colonies. By removing Apivar strips, I have seen they have good stores. Should I feed them or wait until November? I'm based in Buckinghamshire, it's warm enough. So if they have good stores and they're hefting and they're nice and heavy, I wouldn't feed them. But you kind of learn when you need to feed and when you don't need to feed. But what I just would say is that it's the last day of October, like in a couple days, and the bees will still take down invert syrup now, no problem whatsoever. So you've still got like a week or so, a couple of weeks I would say, of good feeding weather. But even towards the end of November, if it's like 12, 13 degrees, they'll still take down syrup, especially if you use like some straw. I always get it wrong when I say— I don't know why I always do it— it's straw, not hay. Use straw, not hay. But just, you can't overfeed So that's what I always think is. Let me rephrase that: you can't overfeed in November. Could definitely overfeed earlier on, but in November you can't overfeed. So there we go. Bbb says, "Oh, I love watching David Burns. Seems like a decent, kind, and knowledgeable man." Responding to the one from Mark, 100% agree. He's really good. I like watching David Burns. Got a huge following. Very, very well respected. Great beekeeper. But I had a number of people say, oh, you can, you can do this. So I just, I just felt I had to kind of clear it up for UK viewers, just to say I didn't, I didn't think it was good UK advice. But that was it, nothing less. I'm sure David looks at some of my videos and says, what's this, what's this guy talking about? He hasn't got a clue what he's talking about. But we, we do it in, we do it in a nice respectful way, David. So if, if someone, if someone messages you, I do, I do have respect for you. I'm not just slagging you off. Uh, Booja, he's done that one as well. Right, Nigel Lavender says, evening Lawrence, late to the party tonight, I'll have to rewatch from the start later. Ordered a Nuke from you to start my own bee journey next year, can't wait. Oh, thanks Nigel, sorry for coming on a little bit early, um, but thank you for your support. And if you've got any questions about your Nuke, you know where to find me, drop me an email, I'll get straight back. Um, Ed says, hi, what is your favorite language, Nuke? Oh, now that you can't get the Pains Poly Nuke. Um, so I bought when, when they went under. Roger did message me, like, phone me up, and I did buy enough stock to see me through until 2026. So we're okay until 2026. Um, and I think kind of this time next year you'll be able to buy Payne's boxes again. Pretty certain of that. I'd be very surprised if you weren't, actually, considering the amount of money sloshing around on those Payne's molds. Uh, so the Payne's nuke was never really my favorite nuke though. It was just—it's just the best nuke to go through the post. That's—that's all it is. Really, really good to go through the post. Itching my nose. I've not itched my nose for weeks, and then I come back on here. I've definitely come to the conclusion it is just the vibration of me talking too much. Itches my nose. Um, I—you know—I do the social media for Abello, but I do think the best nuke is the Abello nuke. I've come to that conclusion now. I used to really like the BS Honeybees nuke. But the— there's a couple of things that I'm not keen after using, having used it for a few years now. It's just a nightmare to clean, like to dip it and sterilize the BS Honeybees nuc is really, really difficult, really time-consuming. And that's— and I just find I don't really use the 2-in-1 function of it that much. I just kind of set it up as a nuc and run it as a nuc, even with queen rearing. Don't really use 2-in-1 function. And, uh, and Richard's had quite a few issues with it as well because he, he, um, puts a lot of his stuff through like caustic soda, and the caustic soda just wrecked loads of the, the dividers and all of the, the plastic on it as well. So Richard's, Richard's not a fan. But the Abello ones just go through the cleaning really, really nice, and they're all simple single molds, so they're just very easy to take apart, very easy to clean. And I just, I, I do— I'm a really big fan of the Abello kit. So that's my favorite nuc, official. Um, but it, but it's really not very good for sending through the post. So the, the Payne's one's loads better for sending through the post. That's good. Uh, BBB says, your remark a long time ago about bees seeming to prefer dirty water, even water with chlorides, saw that confirmed by Bob Binney. People were complaining about bees in at their pool. Yeah, they do love, love dirty water. It's definitely a salt thing, definitely a salt thing, because like the chloride is like the sodium chloride word, isn't it? So I think they're getting salts of some sort. Ben Taylor says, I have plans to renew most of the hives in the new year and have made your budget floors to start with some new second brood boxes, hoping that the bees thrive from sad mess that I took over. I will— the best, best of luck, Ben. There'd be nothing better than to see them thrive considering how bad they were when you took them over, so you're doing your very best for them. I just realized that I put up my board to read out at the beginning, and we are an hour and 21 minutes in, and I've just realized to take it down now, and it feels like a lot brighter in here. So there we go. If you were treating with Apivar in August, what do you do with the supers that contain uncapped honey so can't be harvested? So I basically take everything off. There are no supers that contain uncapped honey that can't be harvested because I've got so many supers that contain capped honey That if I've got supers that like shake out like that, I'll just literally shake it into the brood box and then I've just got an empty frame that can be stored. And then if I've got uncapped super frames that shake but don't come out, then I'm just— I'm harvesting that because it's going to get mixed in with all of the rest of the honey that's completely capped and at really low moisture content. So the odd, the odd few frames that are like that, um, when they get mixed in with all the rest of the honey it doesn't bring the moisture content up by kind of anything, like maybe 0.1%, so it just goes in and I don't have any issues with contamination. The other option is you get all of those frames, all of those supers, and put them just onto your strongest colony and then give them another week or two with the hope that they'll cap them over, but I just, I take them and I've never ever had any issues with buckets fermenting or jars fermenting, so it does work. You need the majority of them to be capped over though. Good evening, good to see the bees are busy on the ivy. Hi Lawrence, great streams always. I used Apivar late August as you advised. I only have 2 hives, so no vaporizer. Should I treat again in spring with Apivar? So I spoke about that earlier, so it's, it's not, not the worst thing in the world to do. I wouldn't say it's necessary, But if you want belt and braces, and if you're, you know, if you, you can, you can take a look on the board. If you're pulling out the board, you're seeing like a lot of mites there, you might think maybe, maybe I will do that. I wouldn't have thought you'd see loads and loads of mites at that point in the year. But if you do do it, go in 1st of Feb, pop your strips in, take them out 1st of April. You can add the supers on the next day, you should be good. Oh, it's Kronos Titan, there we go, Twitch. We've got 2 people on Twitch tonight, but very, very welcome. He says, I'm curious how much you would sell raw honey for, as I jar mine in 500 grams, 17 ounces. And also here in New Zealand, we had an early build up and have a full super on already. Very nice. Uh, so, so over here, it's, it's like very dependent on where you live. Over here, you could have like my village where you sell it for something, and then like the next village along will be half the price. It's super localized over here. You just— or the only advice that I give to everyone is just, just start really high, really, really high. That's always a good starting place, and see how well it sells. And also, I, I see people like congratulating themselves in September. They're like, sold out of all my honey already in September. You just think, you sold out and said that's not good, that's not a good thing, that's a really bad thing selling out in September. And they're like, yeah, but sold it all out. and it was only sold it for £4 a pound, you just think you're mad. You're absolutely mad. Like, you're congratulating yourself on like really bad business practice. What are you doing? You want to— you'd be much better off selling it at like £10 for half a pound and selling out in like April. Surely that's better. And you've just like quadrupled your profits or whatever it is, and people are still getting nice honey. So that was the other part of the advice, sorry, before I was just going off on one. Price it so that you sell out just before you've got your next batch of honey, or there or thereabouts, and then that's like a really good way if you're doing it on a small scale. Just don't think you want to sell it all out, because what generally happens is September, August, September, October, there's loads of honey sloshing around, and then people sell it really cheap to kind of recoup the costs. And then come January, February, there's no honey. Nobody's got any honey. And then they come back to the people who price it a bit more, not reasonably, but a bit more expensive, I guess, because they've got nowhere else to get it. But, you know, I'm not like a marketing expert on honey. We don't sell that much honey. People who do honey loads better than us, so I'm not the one to give the best advice for that. But what I would say, I'll tell you how much we sell our honey for. I don't know, shall I tell you how much? It's, it's, it's open knowledge and everyone knows it. I sell wholesale price £4.50 for 8 ounces, so that works out about £9 a pound wholesale. Um, so for you, kind of like double the size of that, but I don't know what the exchange rate is over to New Zealand. I don't even know what the currency is in New Zealand. What's the currency out there? I reckon it's got to be New Zealand pounds. No, be something like that. Um, so yeah, there we go. Right, BBBB says, simple one perhaps, when does one stop feeding? Um, when the colony is heavy enough. Simple answer, but that is, that is about as simple as it, as I need to answer it, I think, with when the colony is heavy enough. And at this point in the year, you can't overfeed, so I would just feed them until they're like Oh my God, that's heavy! Right, we'll stop feeding now. Yeah, pre-winter. BBBE says the same queen breeder has Caucasian now also. He's also very impressed. Interesting. Yeah, I've been really liking the Caucasian ones that I've got. Elsadak says, what do you think about Brazilian stingless bees? Do you think we can live in the UK? Possibly, but I wouldn't have thought they'd be allowed. Um, no, but cool though. Bob Bob says the dysentery was not on the inside of the hives and not on the frames. Would Hive Alive still be your option? So where was the dysentery? On the outside? Um, yeah, I'd still, I'd still use Hive Alive if it was on the outside. You shouldn't be seeing it, shouldn't be seeing any sort of dysentery at this point in the year. You sure it's not just, they've just, it's just a bit cold and they've just gone out to relieve themselves? Because it kind of look, it can look a bit streaky like that if it's like light blondie color. It might not be dysentery. If it's like dark brown, probably is dysentery. Uh, the UK Honey Marketing Boy says, good evening, Lawrence, do you know if Varrocan ox strips are in the UK yet or plans to? And I've not, I've not seen them. Um, I have heard of them previously, but it's, it's all about, uh, legislation. I'm not sure if they're, if they're over here or when they're going to be. Don't forget to hit the like button. Thank you very much. Got 7 likes. Um, so yeah, be good if you could hit the like button. Uh, that was the link that I put on there about the, the swap over. Uh, says, Lawrence, are you going to the beekeeping show in Telford next year? At the moment, I'm not planning to go to the beekeeping show. I've got something else on that day that I might try and get out of, but as it stands, I'm, I'm not going this year. John Sylvester also says smash the likes. Thank you very much, John. John Begri says subscribe to Stuart Wood and looking forward to seeing the content to come, you'll be very impressed. That question about the swarming, the book Honeybee Democracy by Seeley answers it and even how they worked out which bees. Amazing, I need to do some more homework on that. Go on, you didn't tell us the answer though, Paul. Do you know the answer or do I have to go and find it in the book? It's brilliant. Bob Bob says Johan. Johan is how you say his name. Okay. Oh wow! The I I I O A N is Johan. Wow. Okay. I learned that. I've been calling someone Stein for ages, and he said it's not Stein; it's Steen. And I said, "Oh, you should have just corrected me earlier." So I feel really bad now. But I'll never forget it. Steen, if you're listening, I've remembered. Harry Reynolds says, "Evening Lawrence. Do you think there is a difference in efficacy of apibioxol when drizzling versus?" investing in a vaporizer? Um, I, I don't think there is much of a difference in terms of efficacy. I think there is a big difference in terms of the disruption that it causes to the bees though, because doing it is quite like the bees are like, oh my God, what are you doing? So it's, it's a big, it's a big expense, a vaporizer. Drizzling does work well, and I think doing drizzling of middle of November is if they're broodless at that point. I'd say the bees can tolerate it a lot better than doing it around Christmas time, so I think that's, I think that's a good way of doing it. It was either an audiobook by Tom Seeley or one called Hive Mind that discussed swarming and who leaves and how many decide they go with. What is really fascinating is how they decide with caste swarms. Great, I'm glad, I'm glad someone here, or multiple people here, know what is actually going on. Bob Bob says, "How was your season gone? Has it been good? Did Richard do well?" So brilliant season post-June. Before June was shocking, really, really bad, just because it was so cold and the bees did not like it being that cold. But after that, it's been very, very good. So we've been quite happy with the season in terms of kind of nucs and queens and good, good honey crop at the end of the season as well. And Richard, Richard's been. Very, very happy. Richard's kind of like switched his model around a lot. Like, Richard was normally producing like 10, 12 tons of honey a year, and he's really like— he's completely changed that around. I think he only got like 2 or 3 tons. I don't want to paraphrase you there, Richard, um, but nowhere near the levels that he usually got because he'd been making so many splits and making nucs and doing queen rearing. So he's kind of like changed his focus a bit, and what a blinding Time to do it because the honey price has plummeted and people are sitting on stacks of honey, bulk honey that they can't sell. And Richard wouldn't sell at the price that they're selling it for now. So you don't want to be sitting on ten ton of honey that you're not going to sell because you can't achieve the price that you want. So so it's good, good season. Hope for hope for more of the same next year. Paranomax, I think something like that, says hello Lawrence. Sorry, I'm getting people's names shocking today. Says hello Lawrence. in July, I watched Becoming a Beekeeper from Just Alex. I was instantly hooked, and now I'm just consuming beekeeping content. Your videos have definitely taught me the most about bees. I want to become a beekeeper myself when I'm done studying. Keep up the great work, and thank you for teaching me so much. Oh, thank you, that's a very kind comment. Thank you for coming on and supporting me on Twitch. Not many people who watch on Twitch, so I'm always very, very grateful. Thank you. Hi Lawrence, only have a couple of hives, so not yet in a position to buy an Instant Vap. Would you still go with the trickle method, and when if they had Apitraz strips in the middle of August for 8 weeks. So yeah, I would go with trickle method, and I would still go at the time where you're trying to get the least amount of brood, preferably no brood. So I would go from kind of like between mid-November to back end of November. Hi Lawrence, when you use Apivar in late summer, do you do any other treatments at all the following year? So yeah, we use Apibioxyl kind of mid to late November, single blast. Elsadek says, what's the difference between borage and spring honey, and why do people avoid buying borage honey? Really interesting that I just bought a pallet load of borage honey today. It's one of the ones that we buy in. Borage honey is my favorite honey, absolute favorite honey. I love it. It's like the nicest taste. It's just so— it's weird, you don't want to describe it as sweet, but it's so light and floral and just I love the taste of it. Not many people are that keen on borage honey, but I really, really do like it. Whereas spring honey is predominantly in the UK, like oilseed rape. And oilseed rape for me is not the nicest tasting honey. Like, it's overly sweet. It's just a bit like monotonous or like single tasting and a bit like acrid. And there's got a bit like a bit socky as well. But I don't— it's still nice, still nice honey. But like, when I compare it to borage, I'm like, Oh man, I much prefer borage. But that's, that's generally the difference in the UK. But borage is borage, and spring honey is generally all seed rape mixed with like a bit of dandelion, a bit of apple, that kind of thing. I'll never do a bee course, but your info and my common sense give me great knowledge on my bees. Excellent. Common sense is always, always a good one to use. Is it feed syrup in September, then do nothing until February, and if needed to feed fondant. That sounds a good plan. Says also, maybe a bit of a noob question, but how do you remove Apivar strips without risking killing the queen? So when you put them in, you can put them in 2 ways. One, you take out the frame and you kind of like hook it in— don't do it that way. And the other one is you just like drop them down in between the gaps at the top. And the way that, the way that I like to do it, you— there's always going to be a little bit of risk there, but the one where you drop it in from the top I'll go in and I'll just like pull it up a tiny bit and I'll like wiggle it, and then I'll just leave it for like 5 seconds. And I'm just hoping that that wiggle just kind of gave the queen a bit of, bit of a heads up that I'm coming in. And then, and then I just kind of like really slowly pull it out. Don't just yank it out like that, just like slowly pull it out. And then, uh, to my knowledge, I've never killed a queen doing that, but I appreciate the heads up for some tea. I'm I'm barely 5/8 of the way through. It's a ridiculous fraction to use, 5/8. I could have just said nearly halfway, but I used 5/8. What are you doing in the UK when it comes to beekeeping? Um, so, so at the moment, nothing. It's, it's literally done. We just— final feeding, maybe a little bit of mite treatments. So, uh, Hive Then Honey also, have you seen my video ideas? I have, so they are on my list. Um, I particularly like the one of the, the honey extraction, like from the bees to the jar, so we'll be doing that next year. Good idea, thank you. Washing up is what makes my nose itch as soon as I get my hands wet. It's weird. It's definitely talking for me. I never— I'm not an itchy nose kind of person, but whenever I do my streams, I get an itchy nose. Looking at swapping out all my frames next season as they're 3 years old and give my bees a fresh start. best method and time of year to complete? So if you're going for— I would just go shook swarm, shook swarm nice and early, probably like early May, middle of May. And the shook swarm will significantly impact on your honey yield that year, but it will pay you back in further years. The other possible way of doing it though is to double brood them. And you might, might be a better way of doing it actually, is build them up on, build them up on a single brood, um, queen excluder on top. No, build them up and build them up on a single brood, another brood box on, build them up so they're, they're double brood like that. And then just trying to think the best way of doing it. The ultimate aim is going to be to take the bottom box away, but you want All of the brood to emerge. Yeah, no, it would work. Okay, so do it like that. So, so single brood and then put another brood on top, double brood. Let them build everything up. Queen excluder in the middle, queen at the top, and then all of the brood at the bottom should emerge. They're all your dirty frames, and then just remove that box. That would be the way to do it. That'd be a really good way to do it. You shouldn't lose that much honey doing it that way. That is what I would recommend. Less disruptive for the bees as well, less risk that something can go wrong. Chrissy says, evening Lawrence, my Black Mountain honeybees are doing well. Do you need to have any food certificates to sell honey, to sell in the UK? I'm hoping to sell honey next year along with my soaps. You, if you, yeah, you do. You need a Level 2 in food and hygiene. I think it's food and hygiene or food, they do like a manufacturing one as well, but it's like a Level 2 food hygiene course, which is like an online course for like a tenner, and then you just go and get your local people to come and do the inspection to give you your certificate. We had ours, we had ours done again the other day. You will see as a channel member I did my HACCP review, um, but we got ours again, so we got our 5 stars, which is very good. Uh, and then Chrissy says, or is it just labeling and water content that we need to ensure is right? So you need to ensure that both of those are right. But you do, you do need that certificate if you want to sell. I'm on brood and a half, and when I lifted the shallow box off, I could barely lift it. Definitely not feeding them at the moment. That's good to hear, they should be well set. So no, not planning to be at Telford this year, but that might change. I might— I'm not committing to it at the moment. I'll do my best to be there, but the plan is at the moment I'm not going to be there. Paul Lewis says, of course, of course, you know, there we go. I'm sure you do. Chrono Stan says, don't forget your cheese. Brilliant. I'll drink some cheese. There we go. Angus Rowe says, hi from Croatia, join the chat. What are your thoughts on oxalic acid pads, Randy Oliver, for treating varroa mites? So again, completely illegal to use that in the UK. From what I've seen from Randy's many different iterations of that, it is very, very effective. and good and cheap, so I'm a fan, but we can't use it. Hi Lawrence, your bees are the best and they have produced well for my apiary. From the 2 hives I got from the bee and the queen, I finished with 7 hives all doing well. Excellent, that's good to hear, David. I remember our phone call, remember it well, but I'm glad to hear that the bees, the bees are doing well. Hopefully they overwinter and you get a good season next year. Hi, how much honey did you get Uh, 2024, my first year, I got 25 kilograms total from my 2 hives. I hope to get more next year as I've done to— I've gone to double brood. Interesting that I, I think you get a bit less on double brood, but I think it's a really, it's a really difficult one because if the double brood works to make them not swarm as much, then you might get more. But if you just assume that all of your bees never swarm, you definitely don't get as much honey on double brood. We did really good, we did really good this year in terms of honey because the spring round here, like, you get an okay spring crop but it's never like massive if you get a good crop here. It's always the late summer crop that was good and we got a good, very above average summer crop this year which was great. My pleasure, Chrissie. It's the last question, hour and 40 minutes in, we're done. BBBB says, any chance of getting a video on cleaning non-wooden hives? How'd you do it if doesn't exist yet. How— what cleaning liquids of sorts? Um, so I've done that video, I've done that one, it is on there. Um, John's always pretty good at doing that. So it's, it's just kind of like cleaning a polyhive. So we use sodium hypochlorite— hydrochlorite, what's it called? I always get that wrong. Hydrochlorite, there we go. Sodium hydrochlorite, uh, which is horrible, horrible high-strength bleach but very, very effective. But I will— I kind of like, I put everything in, wash it with soda, just like standard washing soda, get all the propolis off, soak it, scrape it down, rinse that off. Because that is— I always get it wrong. One's acid, one's alkali. You put them together, they, uh, like, like I did in the video, they neutralize each other, which you shouldn't do. So I will redo the video. But then you dip, and they're only supposed to dip it for 20 minutes, but I like to dip it overnight, and it comes out nice and bleached. Um, so there we go, we are done. I got to the end of the video, hour and 40 in, and we are done for questions. So I won't leave it as long next time, we'll leave it just 4 weeks. Um, if you— I said I wouldn't say it again, but I will just do it one more time. If you want a really blinding deal from E.ON, click the link at the top of the chat where you get £50 credit for signing up for the best tariff, the cheapest tariff for overnight electricity. Will save you hundreds and hundreds of pounds. Uh, but there we go, that's it, another live stream done. I really enjoyed it. Good to see and hear from so many regular faces. I appreciate your support. Um, I'll be back again soon, maybe 4 weeks' time, and we can talk a little bit more about some