Black Mountain Honey: Let's Talk Bees with Laurence Edwards - Episode 27

Okay, I think I'm live. Can someone confirm that they can hear me and the mic is working okay? Because I've been having a few technical difficulties. I think it's working though. Someone needs to give me the thumbs up to let me know it's working. Otherwise, I'm just going to be talking at the computer. So just one person needs to give it a thumbs up, but I will assume everything is okay. So first stream for quite a while, and a lot has happened since I did the last live stream. So first off, I'm absolutely shattered. I've had a really long couple of days, and I've been cutting wood in the garden with a chainsaw, and just like from kind of dawn till dusk, and I'm really, really tired. I will do my very best to answer as many questions as I possibly can tonight. Previous feedback from the last session was give us kind of like a heads up as to when we're actually going to do the live streams. I think people don't appreciate them just randomly turning up at maybe like, um, I don't know, 4 PM on a Friday afternoon. So I did my best, I planned it in. You might get a random child or dog running through the background, but you know, all is good. We will deal with any issues as they arise. So I think I've set up a Q&A. Um, I don't know if you can see it in the chat there. I'm doing it on different streaming software today. I normally use StreamYard, and today I am doing it directly on YouTube. So it's the first time I've done that, uh, and I've put a little Q&A up there so you can ask questions up there. And then I think I can put them on the screen. So I'm hoping that works, but if not, if that doesn't work, just stick them in the chat and I'll answer them in the chat. So I have a number of questions which I've just realized I've not even actually brought up here yet. So let me go into my inbox. A few questions have come up, uh, from a gentleman called Clinton who I was going to do a live stream with, but I just thought it'd be easier just to kind of bash through some of the questions on here. And they're specifically about nucs. So nucs that people are buying from us, and he's got loads of questions. So I will do my very best to go through all of his questions. I'll do my very best to go through as many comments in the chat as well, see if you can get them into the Q&A section. But just to start off, I'll go through Clinton's questions on the nucs that we send out. I'll do them pretty quickly. So his question, first question was, when my nucs arrive, do I open them up straight away or leave them to settle down first? And I love these questions because it seems like such a basic question that, but it's like a— it's a fundamental question that if you don't really have the answer in the back of your head, you might get that wrong and it could be really, really bad. So when any— when you get any nuke from anyone, obviously you're going to seal it up for the car and it arrives with you sealed. You're going to take that nuke, and this is what's really important, is you're going to go and place that nuke down in its final resting spot. So that means the final resting spot where you're going to transfer it over to your beehive. But you need to make sure you only get one chance at this. Take your nuc, go and put it on the hive stand, and I'd leave it for like a couple of minutes max, and then immediately open the entrance and let the bees fly. Whatever you do, do not open the nuc in terms of taking the roof off for a long time, at least 48 hours, I would say. 24 hours is an absolute minimum. That's the easiest way to lose the queen. If you just took that nuc, put it on a hive stand, opened it up in terms of the lid, the queen would just fly off. They hate it. So you need to let it settle down for a couple of minutes, then open the entrance, and then let the bees fly in and out of the entrance. Next question he asked was, do I need to feed them sugar water? If so, how long for? So in the nuc, no, they don't need feeding. Once they're transferred into the beehive and they've got drawn frames around them. Yes, you do need to feed them one-to-one, and you feed them until the bees fill 80% of the frames. So if you've got a 10-frame box, when you've got 8 frames of bees, you should stop feeding. His next question was, how long before I transfer the bees into a hive? So that one is not a straightforward question. So if the weather's perfect, you can do it within like 3 or 4 hours of letting the bees fly and orientate to that spot. Ideally, I would say at least 24 to 48 hours. But if it's really cold, like if you get a nuc early in the year, last week of March, and it's 9 degrees, I would say just leave them in the nuc for a couple of weeks. You can leave them in the nuc for definitely up to maybe 14 days. So that one's a little bit play it by ear. But when I do send the nucs out, I do give people kind of individual advice on emails for that. His next question, his next question was, when do I add the first super? So you add the first super as soon as you stop feeding, when the bees are filling 80% of the frames in the brood box. His next question was, when should I— when should the first inspection be carried out? So first inspection, I would say you don't need to be going in doing inspections straight away. I wouldn't start doing inspections of the colony until you put the first super on, and at the point you put the first super on, that's when I'd be going in doing the first inspections. How far from my hive should a swarm trap be and how high? So I wouldn't worry, I wouldn't worry too much about that, but a good few meters away and at least kind of like a meter off the ground. Is there anything special to look out for with new bees? So no, just enjoy them. And is the queen already marked? Yes, the queen is already marked. So there we go, I got through a few of Clinton's questions there, and I'm sure loads of people who are getting nucs for the first time this year are— I've got similar questions, so stick them in the chat. I'm going to end the Q&A here because I've clearly broken something there. I'll have to try that again next time. So let me go to the top and I will say hello to everyone as well. I want to try and work out how to pin things. I can't work the new software. I'm turning into like an old man. So hi, John. Hi, the 2 Johns at the top there, and hi, Mem. It's windy in Northern Ireland. It's supposed to be pouring down here today, and it was actually a really nice day. I see people got the time wrong, so that's probably my fault. I probably said somewhere that it was 8 o'clock. It was definitely supposed to be 8:30. Give me enough time to have some dinner and make a tea. I've got a chamomile tea today. Definitely an old man. Right, Michael Menino. Hi, Michael. How you doing? I've been having your honey, Michael. I met at the North American Honeybee Expo that I will talk about at some point this evening and he gave me some of his honey, and then I forgot to not put it in my hand luggage, and then they made me take it out of my hand luggage, but I'd already checked in my normal bags. So then I had to work out a way of getting it home, but I did get it home. It was quite a long-winded way. So Ed Walton says he's thinking of buying 12 poly nucs from Payne's. Do you think it is worth £150 more for the— more for the BS Honeybees ones? Um, so if I had a choice between the two, I would go with the BS Honeybees ones. They are— I used to much prefer the BS Honeybees ones. I do, I do still kind of just prefer them for nucs in terms of like once they're in the apiary. Payne's ones are loads better for sending through the post though. Um, but no, I probably don't— I probably wouldn't go with it being worth £150 more now unless you're getting the, the dividers in place. and then you've got to pay extra for the dividers as well. Don't, don't go for the Corex dividers because they are rubbish. I'm surprised they still sell the Corex dividers. I understand they're doing it at different price points, but the metal ones are so much better. Um, so no, I would say stick with the Panes, and I've probably changed my mind a little bit on that from previously. Um, so, so hello everyone who's saying, uh, hello in the chats. I won't, I won't name you all, but there's lots of people saying hello there from all over the place, it seems. So that's really nice. Oh, lots, lots of people. We've got Germany, Sweden, a few people in America. Really good. Right, I found a question though. Uh, so Stacy Richards, channel member— hi Stacy— says, evening Lawrence, are you going to the beekeeping show this year? She's going, it's her first year. So yes, I am going to the beekeeping show and I'm very excited about it, and I think it's going to be a very busy show. Very exciting. Liam G says, hi Lawrence, really thankful for you doing these live Q&As. Hopefully my 3 colonies of girls make it through the winter. My question is, do you think I need to add a protein patty to each next month? So protein patties, I'm really not a fan of anything protein patty in kind of winter or even early spring because I just don't think the bees need them. And what I find is anytime that I've added them previously, the bees will kind of like— they'll nibble them and they'll chew them a bit. And then do they make a massive amount of difference? Not really. Do I have loads of mess to clean up at the end when they leave them because they found loads of natural pollen from the crocus and the snowdrops? Yeah, I've got to clean it all up. So for me, it's just like a massive faff with not really that much benefit. Adding stores, you know, like making sure that they've got sufficient fondant, making sure that they've got sufficient stores, definitely. But giving protein supplements in the way of pollen, I don't think, I don't think it's needed, and it's certainly some— certainly not something that I, I do or would recommend doing. So save your money, but don't, don't take that as that you shouldn't feed. Definitely go out there, heft. If they're light, feed them. And if you feed them something that's got protein in. It's not the end of the world, but it's not something that I would do. Oh, John has got a really good one. So, favorite hat and product you took home from the expo? So I think you can guess my favorite hat. Look at that, Dirt Rooster 628. Dirt Rooster is my new hat, which is hiding my hair. Look at that shocking hair. It's going back to like perm levels. But, um, there we go, a bit tidier. But I just, I cannot believe it. I really struggle with hats. And it's weird I'm talking like on a live stream about the sizing of hats, but I, I just can't get hats like this to fit. But in America, all these kind of hats fit. And I remember I bought— I bought the— I bought 2 of these hats, and I bought one on one day, and I was so happy with it that when I got home to the hotel, I thought, I'm gonna go back there tomorrow, I'm gonna buy another hat, same hat in a different color. And I went back there the next day, and I was saying, you know, Amazing, hats fit for the first time. And they said, yeah, that is amazing because they're girls' hats as well. And I was like, I don't even care, they're the best hats ever. But it is— I've got the receipt— it's actually a girl's hat that I'm wearing. So without a doubt, this is my favorite hat. I've got 2 of these. Uh, I did get some caps as well. I was, I was going to give away some freebies tonight. Um, some of the guy on— if people watch the North American Honeybee Expo video, there was a guy there that had like a swarm pole and then these connectors to hold a frame, and then you can like put it up to really difficult to access swarms. And it was cool, and he gave me loads of them. He said, um, find me a stockist in the UK and you can just have some. So I was going to give some away tonight, and I said to Helen just before, I said, where are all those swarm trap clip things? And she doesn't know where they are, which is like entirely my fault because I should have unpacked for myself really, but I'm not very good at that. I just kind of like dumped my bags back and went straight to work, really, really jet-lagged. I was— yeah, I think I'm still like struggling a bit with the jet lag. I was only out there for 5 days, but I struggled. So I was going to give some of those away as freebies, and I couldn't work out how to do it. So what I was going to do is I'm going to give this hat away as a freebie, which is a Hilco hat, who were my sponsors for the event. I don't know what they had to do to be a sponsor, but they said they were my sponsor. So I'll have to think of like a competition for this hat that we can do. I'll wear it like this as well, and then someone can have this hat because I lost the other things that I was gonna give away. I'll try and find those as well. So let me think of a good way of doing this. Hmm, I can't do anything guessing-wise. Let me think. Well, if anyone's got a good idea as a competition that I can run in the comments to win this hat, Stick it in the comments. I'll continue to wear it so it's in your mind, and I'll start answering some questions and not just babbling on. So sorry, there was a second part of that question, wasn't there, John, which was the best piece of equipment? And the best piece of equipment by far was the one piece of equipment I was dead keen to go and find out there, which was the mobile grafting station, which is just like a bent piece of aluminium, but it sits on the car, on like the steering wheel of your car. So when you're grafting in your car, you've got something to rest the frame on for grafting, which I just think is a brilliant, brilliant idea and something that I need. So I've not got that with me here, but it is brilliant, and I'll be doing a video on that as well. Right, so let me find where I got to. Here we go. Okay, so Wildways Farm, Harry says, I'm thinking of increasing hive numbers. I've sold out of honey this year. Well done. Thinking of buying some queens from me and making splits early in the season. Any thoughts on how to do this successfully? So it's good, good that you're selling all your honey. Really good. I, I would just say making splits early on in the year is so much easier than making splits late on in the year. Like, early on in the year, you can literally take like one frame of brood, one frame of stores, shake loads of bees in, add a new queen, set them up in like a different apiary. And it's important to set them up in a different apiary and then feed them directly. And what that means is that you could just leave them and just like literally not do anything with them for like 2 months, and they'll just take down the feed, build up slowly into a really nice colony, and they'll probably build up to a point where you need to— I need to work that out— they'll build up to a point where they're probably strong enough to be rehomed in like a full-size hive later on in the year, and I know that sounds like really simple, but try doing that in July and you'll just get robbed, or the wasps will kill everything. But doing it really early in the year is so, so easy. So, so that's, that's what I would recommend, just try to find a separate site where you can take all of these splits. And the reason that I say a separate site is if you start doing it in the same site, like in the same apiary, it only takes like 1 or 2 bees to work out that there's feeding them there, and then they get robbed out. And I've had that loads of times. You have to start again completely. So whenever I'm doing that, making super small splits like that, I do it in a separate apiary, which means that I can just keep on going there, keep on feeding. You don't get any robbing, not any wasps around, and it's a really, really good way of making a number of nucs very quickly. I built a long hive this winter. I want to put a split in it this spring. How many frames of brood and stores would you recommend to start it out? So similar to the question, similar to the question above, the earlier in the year, the smaller you can make it. But it does help, like, if you, if you can afford to give it 2 or 3 frames of brood, a couple of frames of stores, and like a good shake of bees, that's like a really nice split to get it going. That's probably what I would say is like the optimum amount to go in there. Any more is probably a waste, any less and It's— it will still build up fine, it just takes quite a lot longer. If you think about that, for each frame of brood that you've got, like 3 weeks after you've got a frame of capped brood, you'll have 3 frames of bees. That's like the rough ratio that you're going to get. So if you've got 1 frame of brood, 1 frame of stores, and 2 frames of bees, that frame of brood will emerge to be 3 frames of bees. So you kind of have like between 4 and 5 frames of bees after 3 weeks, whereas if you have 3 frames of brood to start off with, 3 weeks later you're going to have like 9 frames of bees. So you can see like the difference in the expansion. The more brood you put in earlier, it kind of does pay dividends and gets them going really, really quickly. Are you putting Asian hornet traps out this coming season? So I, I will do, but only like on the off chance that we see one or two. I'm not expecting to get a huge amount in North Wales, but I think kind of UK-wide, the advice definitely would be put, put out some traps, or at least put out some monitoring stations, bait, and bait them up and see what happens. Like, I, I'm hoping that I'm not proved wrong and they're going to move straight up to North Wales, but we're— you've got like the east of the country and the south of the country that's being attacked, and we're like pretty much the northwesterly tip. I know you've got like Anglesey and the rest of North Wales is a bit further away, but we're quite far away from both of those fronts. So unless they hitch a ride on like a lorry or a train or something, I'm hoping it's probably a couple of years away, 2 or 3 years away, before we're gonna have to deal with what people are dealing with on the south coast. But I do think it's inevitable that that is coming, so I, I will be putting— I will put some traps out. some monitoring stations out. Um, so there is a— I think it's Ukrainian, um, comment, but I don't know what it says. So if you could translate it, please, that would be good. Sorry. Is it reasonable to take a day off to settle your first colonies? Oh yeah, definitely. Probably like a sick day as well, I would say. Uh, hello from Barcelona. It's nice. I bet it's nicer weather in Barcelona than it is over here. How many IBCs do you use in one season? I'm guessing you mean feed. Probably not as much as you think because we take the honey off very, very early, but we leave the bees quite a lot of honey, like late season honey. So I think we used like 2 and a half last year. I've still got a bit left in one of them. It does make feeding very easy having big like big massive tubs or IBCs of invert. Uh, Gary Wheeler says, how is your concrete hive doing? So it is not doing very well. Uh, it is in fact dead. Um, and I've not updated that yet. So I always feel bad when people give me stuff to do videos on and then like they don't do well. So this is a prime example here, and you might have noticed this. This is— you get benefits like this watching the live stream. So That was sent to me by TC View, Top Don, and they said, do you want to do, do you want to do a video on this? We'll send you a free like infrared camera and, um, just do a video and there you go, you can keep it. And I said, yeah, that's, that sounds like a fair deal. Um, so I got all my gear together and went, went to go and film some hives and went to go and like see how it worked, and it just didn't work. So it literally just didn't work. And anything that I did, like to try and change the settings, all I could see was just like the glare from the sun. Just couldn't see inside through poly at all. So I thought I'll try it out on some wooden hives instead, and exactly the same thing happened. And then I, I thought, right, it must just be too warm, so I'll do it on like a colder day. Did it on a colder day, and it was, it was, it was okay on the colder day, but it wasn't like— there's no way I could recommend, yeah, spend £300, this is gonna really help your beekeeping. So I just messaged them back and said, I can't, I can't do the video on this. Like, it's, um, give me your address, I'll just send it back. And they said, and they told me all these settings to use, and I said, seriously, I've tried everything, it definitely doesn't work. I can't, like, I can't accept it, so I'll send it back to you. And they said, just, just give it away to someone. So I've got to pick someone for that as well. And it is pretty cool, like, for taking videos of your daughter, it's cool. And looking at like pipes in the wall is good. So it's not like it's rubbish bit of kit. It's really good. It's just not very good for looking at bee colonies. So I need to I need to pick someone for that. Maybe that could be the prize. That's probably better than a Hilco hat. But sorry, I digress, Gary. Gary, so how's your concrete hive doing? So no, it's not doing very well. It it dwindled away. And it just didn't do very well at all. So I've got like 4 concrete hives now, and I'm going to give the concrete hives back to the guy that gave them to me because I feel bad. It's like he's given me these hives for free, done some videos on them, but I feel like really I should probably do a video now saying my bees died in them and what everybody told me about concrete hives was true in that the bees don't do well in them. And over the 2 or 18 months or 2 years that I had them in there, they definitely didn't do very well in them. Like, they took took a lot longer to build up because they weren't very well insulated and they struggled a lot more in winter. So I'm not going to do a video slating them because I kind of feel a bit bad for the guy, but you know, people who come onto the live stream, you get the inside scoop. I would not recommend buying concrete beehives. How many colonies of bees can you feed from one IBC of sugar syrup? And again, it completely depends how much you're feeding them. If you're, it's about 700 and something liters, I think it works out at, and we feed roughly like 10 liters per colony-ish. So maybe 70 colonies, something like that. But beware, like all of the IBCs, completely different sizes. I think they range from like 600 liters up to like 1,000 liters. John says BS Correx dividers he replaced with 5 mil scrap plastic and cut to size. It's very nice. That would work. And it's definitely an upgrade over the Correx. When did you start? So I kind of just like stumbled upon it, had a swarm land in my garden, uh, beekeeper came and collected it. Next week another swarm landed in my garden and I put it in a nuc and started, and then had 3 beehives and then moved to Wales with my 3 beehives, and then all hell broke loose, but it was good fun. Adam Golding says, hi Lawrence, I'm in the process of building a warming cabinet. My question is, do you prefer to warm at a lower temperature over a long period or a higher temperature for a short period? So that's a good question. You can definitely do both. I find a higher temperature— go as high as you possibly can for a shorter period— makes it a lot easier. Airflow though in a cabinet is like the big one. You need to make sure that the airflow works well. So I used to have— I built myself in my old, like, honey extraction room, I built myself a warming cabinet with, like, big sheets of insulation, and it was massive. It's absolutely huge. You could get— how did you get in there? 4 rows. So you get about 40 supers in there, in the one that I built, and it was really awkward. Like, I built it almost exactly the right size for supers, but it was really deep. So I kind of, you know, build stuff without trying to work out actually how I'm going to use it. But I used to get these supers, I couldn't get them in because the sizing wasn't right. But what was terrible with that one is that it was way too tall, and the ventilation, or the way that the air moved around inside it, was rubbish, which meant that you had to keep the honey in there for way longer than you really should be keeping the honey in there to make sure that it had all completely liquefied. So now that I've got the Abello ones like completely transformed, there's no way I would go back to a homemade one. But look, but that's me being like, I'm making the homemade one, you know, so I'm not very good at making stuff. But for somebody else, it's absolutely fine. And you see some of them, they make them with just like a, like a light bulb to, to kind of warm it up and get it up to temperature. So best of luck with it, but I would try and get, uh, that— what they call— I think they're called Hausen tubes. They were really good, Hausen tubes, and you can— they go super hot, like you can't keep your hand on them, they're that hot, which means that you can get the temperature up really, really quickly. Make sure you've got good fans in there as well, and then make sure it's not too tall, which is weird because the one that I've got now is really tall, but I think it's got heating elements in different places in it. But what I found is when you're making them homemade, don't make them too tall and kind of keep them a bit squat, and then they're a bit easier to keep the temperature kind of consistent across the board. Uh, Mem says, his 2-in-1 Polynuc has got lots of condensation. Should I open the other entrance to stop so much condensation, check them today and they're still going strong, or just leave them to get on with it? So definitely just leave them to get on with it. Like, I really wouldn't worry about condensation in the nuc like that. It's hardly any condensation, and like, the bees will just use that this time of the year. The bees will go out on a nice day to kind of go to the toilet and forage some water, bring the water back to break down their stores. So what you're giving them is just like some readily accessible water. And I see, like, I'll go inside and you see them, they're using the condensation that is on those crown boards. So it's no, it's no problem whatsoever. Oh, I jumped down loads and missed loads of people there. I've just seen a really cool question as well. Wow, okay, I'm gonna have to stop answering the questions in so much detail. There's loads of questions here. Um, right, so, hi from Jen and Ben from Shropshire, not too far from me. Heading into our second year, one of your videos you mentioned using a treatment in October, then instant wrapping in December. What did you treat with in October? So Probably, probably a bit old, that video now, because my advice will have slightly changed. I bring forward that treatment now to like middle to back end of August. There is Apivar or Apitraz, um, they're the same product, which is Amitraz, uh, but one of them is, one of them is quite a bit cheaper actually to get. Get your Apitraz from Abello, and it's quite a lot cheaper than the Apivar. But what a lot of people don't know as well is that you can actually treat and use Apitraz or Apivar in spring. And I think people are finding now like varroa becoming a little bit annoying. And if you're not going to do like instant, like oxalic acid vaping in December and you're just going to rely on Apivar, you can use Apivar or Apitraz in the spring. So it's an 8-week cycle. So all you need to do is if you, if you put like your Apivar strips into your beehives like middle of Feb, And you should— it should be like warm enough to go into your colonies just quickly in the middle of Feb just to slip a couple of Apivar strips in. Leave them for 8 weeks, which takes you through to like kind of like first or second week of April, and then you can take them out and then you can immediately put your supers on and you would have knocked down the varroa like really, really low. So that's what I would recommend doing if you've got a colony that you're slightly worried about, that treatment there, it was Apitraz or Apivar. Would you recommend removing drone brood to slow down the swarming impulse? So no, I really not a fan of removing any sort of brood, but definitely not drone brood. I'm not sure drone brood would slow down the swarming impulse either. Like, people remove drone brood as like a varroa trapping method, but no, I'm not a fan. I think we need as many drones in the air as we can possibly get. it, so I don't like removing it. John Hayes says he's only recently got an oxalic acid kit. Is it too late to treat now? He did Apivar treatment back in September. So it's not too late to treat now, but it won't be anywhere near as effective because there's more than likely going to be brood in there. But as long as you space it 5 days apart, you can do multiple treatments, and then the multiple treatments will knock it down. But even a single treatment now will kill the phoretic mites, the mites that are on the back of the bees. It just won't access the mites that are underneath the brood cappings. Oh, I'm firing through the questions and I'm gonna have to have a sip of tea. That was quite a lot of questions there. So David says, can you tell us about this top game-changing product that's coming out this year? Can you disclose anything? My lips, literally my lips are sealed. I'd love to tell you, not got long to wait. Uh, Where can we buy your surplus kit you mentioned in a previous video, Lawrence? I definitely need a fair bit for the future. So I, I've had so many inquiries about that kit. Well, I did not think that there was going to be that much interest in this kit. Um, there will be kit. What I'm going to do is I'm going to do an inventory. That's the fairest way of doing it. Anybody who I've said I'm I've reserved your kit, don't worry, your kit is reserved, but I'm going to do inventory for people and then we'll have a day where people can come up and just clear me out of all this kit. Um, but for the time being, yeah, I'm not, I'm not going to send out any more requests because it's quite difficult, um, getting back to everyone with prices. Um, Brad says hello from North Carolina. Hi, Brad. Good competition. Question, how much money did spend at the show? Oh, how much money did I spend at the show on America on stuff? So it's not that much. No, not that much at all. Like, I would have spent— surprising how expensive some of the stuff was. I think like the exchange rate for the pounds, I didn't think it was that bad, but I know it's not like historically very good or as good as it was historically. But I, I was— so this hat, it's like $20 or something, $22. And then I was going to, I was going to buy that grafting station, which was like $110. But he gave it to me, which was very kind. But I did say I'll do a video on it. And then basically everything else was free. They just give you everything. Everything's free. Brilliant. But one thing I will notice, and I didn't say this on the video, but this is an interesting observation for people on both sides of the Atlantic because you'll both kind of not be aware, maybe not be aware of how other people on the other side do stuff. But one thing that I really did notice out there there was the quality of the wooden beehives in the USA is nowhere near as good as the quality of the wooden beehives in the UK. Like, it's just a completely different level. So in, in the UK, we obviously use like everything cedar, like pretty much cedar, but you will get some pine stuff in the UK. But I recommend nobody to use pine in the UK because it's just a recipe for disaster because they're too heavy and it sucks up loads of moisture. Sucks up loads of water, too heavy, and then you've got to paint it all the time. And then in the UK, if you're buying like ready-assembled C2B hives, they're generally, generally glued together and like with nails going through, whereas in the US, I'm not, I'm not even sure the stuff was glued. Put like, put me right in the comments if the stuff is glued over there, but it just had these big massive staples going through it and everything was— I don't know if it was pine, but it was like either Douglas fir or pine, but the wood just didn't— it didn't seem— it didn't seem the same quality I was used to. But then it's not the same environment. Like, it— this was like kind of like quite south in the US where it's not— it's not quite as damp as it is in the UK. So I'm guessing it's fine. Like, if it's fit for purpose, it's fine. But that was one thing that I really noticed, which was all of the beehives just didn't look as nice, didn't look as like well made, and the material wasn't quite That was nice. But in terms of how much I spent, I didn't spend that much. I spent more money on food, I think, while I was out there eating pizzas and cake and stuff. Oh, okay, Liam G, right, think of a number between 1 and 100, user gets it or closest wins. Okay, that's a great idea. So what I'll do is I'll get a bit of paper. A bit of paper, yeah. So I'm gonna write down a number between 1 and 100. Closest gets the hat. What, what are the rules? Yeah, if you, if you get it, if you get the number, you get it. If not, closest person wins a hat. There we go, done. And I might think of one to do for that one as well because I do, I do need to give it away. I've still not worked out how to give it away. You obviously have to have liked and commented on the tweet or whatever it was as well. Right, I'm hoping that no one saw the number in the reflection there. Right, there is a number written down there, and when I'm closing out the video, remind me because I'll definitely forget that. Um, although Marie has a good option as well, which is the caption for the 2 hats as well. I like that. Maybe I'll think of a bonus prize. Okay, Stacy Richards, channel member, says, for my first full year of beekeeping, other than the obvious, are there Any essential pieces of equipment that I need? So my number one advice/tip on pieces of equipment is get yourself a poly Ashforth feeder that fits your beehive. So it doesn't matter if you're on like a standard wooden National or, or any of the poly variants, there will be a poly Ashforth feeder for you. And it means that you can just get rid of your crown board, you don't need that anymore, and it means that your bees are going to be really well insulated in over the winter. It means that you can feed a huge amount of syrup. It means you can upturn it and feed fondant. It is like the best multi-purpose piece of equipment that, that you can get that doesn't really come with any beehives. I know Abello do a variant with that one, but yeah, that's, that's what I would go for— Polly Ashworth feeder. Gundogs— we never say that first name— he says, I made splits in July and they really didn't build up. I'm worried they don't— won't make it through the winter. Should I have fed them more more to aid buildup. So I'm guessing, did you, did you add mated queens in there? So if you add mates, if you added mated queens in there, you're probably going to get some sort of robbing going on there, which would have been knocking them back. Also, the weather was shocking, absolutely shocking. Like, if you'd have made those splits at the back end of April, you would have had booming colonies by then that would have been starving because there wouldn't have been any food. So I just, I can't give advice on what was an anomaly. Like last year's rain, hoping it's an anomaly, shocking, but it, it's never rained that much for that long. So yeah, if you had that, if you had the chance again, definitely take them somewhere where you can, where you can feed them, where they're not going to get robbed. Keep the entrances nice and small, make sure there's no wasps going in. But yeah, I would have fed them. to get them going, assuming that there's a mated queen in there. If there wasn't a mated queen in there and you were trying to get queens mated, that, that could have been the issue. But I'm not— I'm guessing that's not the issue. I'm guessing you've got queens in there. Uh, Luke Dutton says, hi Lawrence, thanks for the videos, excited to get started, uh, this year. He's ordered an overwintered nuc from me. Hi Luke, thank you for the order. We've had a huge amount of orders this year, it really is of crazy how many nukes we've sold. So thank you everyone for your orders. Are you going to put the questions on the screen? So yeah, I would have— I would try and do that, but I'm using the YouTube version here and I've not worked out how to do it yet. So let's try this again. Yeah, so if I go start a Q&A and I write like Q&A there Yeah, so you should— I don't know if there's a lag. This is the thing, you should like, you should be able to see like Q&A or something like in the chat. Can you see anything at the top? Q&A. So then you should be able to go in there and like ask questions. And if you ask questions on the Q&A there, I can put them on the screen. But when I did that last time, no one did anything. So I'll leave it up there for a bit. If someone can just test that Q&A function and I can get the questions on the screen. People can read them because that's okay. So Steve's Honeybee says yes, he can see it right now. So try and ask a question in there and I'll put it on the screen and then we need to do questions in there. Um, but, and oh, loads of numbers! Wow, I'm just flicking through. I want to see if anyone's got my numbers right. Somebody's— what? Somebody's one away from my number there. Um, well, you know what, like, the competition is over because someone's guessed it. So is that back to front? It was 72. Stacy, you are the proud winner of a Hilco hat, which I got for free from the North American Honeybee Expo. So you'll have to email me, blackmountainhoney@gmail.com, send me your address, and I'll send you your free hat. All right, nobody has put any questions yet in the Q&A. Yeah, it's not working. That is it. I don't know what's going on with that one, Mike. Let's let's go back to the go back to the chat. We'll have a look. Sorry, technical difficulties not not going well. I'm going to end that Q and A. We need to work that out. Need to have like a test one, maybe just with channel members, and we'll see how we get that working next time. Oh, if there was one that I could put on here, I've just got. Dirt Rooster Bees, look at that, he's on here commenting. I'm wearing your hat. I'm just saying how amazingly well it fits and how it's actually a girl's hat, but it is the best hat ever, and it was my number one hat that I bought from the conference. So thank you for the hat, and also thanks for kind of making me feel very welcome. That was the nicest thing, you know, about being in the expo. So many nice people there. It was It really was the best. I've been getting advice from from Yappy the Bee Man telling me to stop uploading so many videos, but obviously like in the nicest way. But yeah, how great is that? I got 628 Dirt Rooster Randy McCaffrey in the comments just being friendly and stuff. Amazing. Well, I'm gonna go back to the top though. That just caught my eye. Oh, you know what? There's so many comments that are going through is that I'm. Genuinely missing people's questions here, so I, I am sorry about that. So if I've missed your question, feel free to put it on there again. I'm going to try and answer them super quick now, right? So Terry says, hi Lawrence, I hope you had a good trip. I'm looking forward to getting my nucs from you. Hope you're doing well. I'll send you my email next week. Okay, nice one. Thanks, Terry. Um, Andrew says, how many years do you keep your queens before requeening? So for us, maximum of 2 years. So then we'll requeen in the third year. That tends to be like a good way for us to do it. I wouldn't go any more than 3 years, but I think 2 years and then requeening in the third year is like, it's pretty average for queens. Hi Lawrence, do you think the Keepers Hive you saw at the Expo is a hive that is a good idea and could catch on in Europe? I love the Keepers Hive and What I want them to do is I want them to collaborate with Flow Hive, and I want, I want to see a keeper's Flow Hive. Because I was thinking this on the plane on the way back, the Flow Hive— I love, I love Flow Hives, I think they're really cool. If I was just going to have one hive in the back garden, it would be a Flow Hive, not for commercial beekeeping. But the nightmare thing on a Flow Hive is it's really, really difficult to manage swarms. Swarm management in a Flow Hive hive very, very difficult. So the Keeper's Hive gives you potentially an option to, to do something in a Flow Hive. So if you had the Keeper's Hive brood box, we'd say like, I want it, I want it wider, I don't want an 8-frame, like a 12-frame brood box Keeper's Hive with a 7-frame Flow super above it, and then above that another box to put recycled brood frames in from underneath, like, it would be perfection in terms of Flow Hive. So they need to collaborate with Flow Hive. I thought it was a really, really cool idea. For anybody who's not seen that video, it's basically a brood box that you can take brood frames out of without removing the supers, which is just like brilliant, especially if you've got tons and tons of supers on. So it's a really good idea. Uh, June Saddington said, what's your favorite food from your USA trip? Um, I liked it all. I'm an absolute food monster. Uh, I had, um, the first thing I ate when I was there was from a place called Chick-fil-A, I think it's pronounced, and it was just like southern fried chicken, gherkins and stuff. That was really nice, I enjoyed that. Channel member says, in terms of swarming, what is better, letting them requeen themselves or getting a mated one and requeen them yourself? Lost 4 due to unmated queens? I only have one colony heading into winter. I'm worried. So, you know, we sell queens, so I would say queens. But I genuinely think that it makes it just so much easier if you find— if you go into a colony and like there's tons of capped swarm cells and you can't find the queen, you've got a chance at that point, as long as none of the cells have emerged, you've got a chance at that point to take down every single cell and then you're hoping to see queenness. you've got— like, how easy is that? You just take down all the cells, put in a mated queen, let the queen eat through the fondant, and you're back to square one. Like, you're going. Whereas if you take down all the cells and leave one cell and then come back and that cell doesn't emerge, then okay, you've got an opportunity to add a mated queen in there. That's quite rare though. What generally happens is that you take down all of the cells, leave one cell, that cell emerges And then sometimes they don't mate. And especially like if it rained like it did last year, there's no way they're getting mated. So then in order to requeen with a mated queen at that point, you've got to find and kill the virgin or numerous virgins. So it's like risk management for me. Like, are you, are you competent in going in, finding virgins, and killing virgins? If you're definitely not competent in doing it, then I would say £40 for a mated queen is a relatively good insurance policy to make sure that colony gets through. If you are competent, then give it— I'd say give it a go. What have you got to lose other than a bit of honey and a few weeks of time? Um, but mated queen definitely makes it easier. Adam Goodall, hi Adam, how you doing? We've been chatting on WhatsApp. Adam has been blogging, uh, doing really good blogs, so great to see Adam on board. If anyone else wants to do some blogs, you're more than welcome. The the merrier. Like, I love reading Adam's blogs, and people love reading Adam's blogs as well. You've seen, Adam, really, really good feedback. So if anybody else wants to do that, again, drop me an email at blackmunsonhoney@gmail.com. So Adam says, good evening, I need to move some hives to a new apiary. Can it be too cold to move them? Is there a risk to the bees if they are in a tight cluster? Is there an ideal temp to move them? So you, you do hear that, you hear like people saying that it's too cold to move them because the cluster will drop off. But like, it— I just don't think you ever get that temperature in the UK. It has to be like mega, mega cold. So for me in the UK, colder the better. If you start doing it when it's like 10 degrees, they're going to buzz out and come and get you. Um, so just when you get a nice cold snap, that's when I would be moving them. Anything kind of like 3, 4 degrees, perfect. Just seal them up, move them around. And if you get like a prolonged cold snap, you get the added benefit that you don't have to wait, you don't have to use the 3-mile rule. So normally the rule is you've got a colony, you can't move it, you can't move it anything over 3 feet, you have to move it 3 miles and then bring it back after a certain amount of time. But if you get like a prolonged cold snap of like 3 or 4 weeks, you can just ignore that and you can just move a colony like 20 meters. and the bees don't come out, and they seem to find their way back to the new location. Saves a lot of— I was going to say something else— faffing around. Saves a lot of faffing around doing it that way. I want to expand my apiary as much as possible this season. Any tips on risk management? Risks in terms of like over-expansion? I would just say if you're looking to expand, just cut off honey, you just say, well, I'm not going to get any honey this year, and do as many splits as possible as early as possible. And then just kind of like, that's it, you do your splits early. Just makes life so much easier doing early splits, not having to worry about any wasps, any robbing. And then get them to a point where they're strong enough to defend themselves from robbing, strong enough to defend themselves from wasps, and then mitigates the risks a bit. Hi Lawrence, do you think it's worth using additives in syrup, amino acids and vitamins, etc.? So I don't really have much experience in using them. I don't think the bees do like honestly need them, but you do see some commercial beekeepers using like various different additives. The one that I do like, I do like Hive Alive. I do think Hive Alive is a good additive to use, not so much because of seaweed, but just that it it's like a legal way to get some thymol into your bees, and it means that the syrup never goes off. So I do, I do quite like Hive Alive, and I do find the bees like Hive Alive as well. They do well on it. Would 10 to 12 hives be a large enough amount for a beginner for honey, and as insurances for winter losses, queen deaths, etc.? So yeah, definitely. Like, if you've got 10 proper good production colonies 10 colonies, and you're in a good area that's got good arable crops, you could be looking at like 1,500 pounds of honey there. So if you use 8-ounce jars, that's like 3,000 jars, which is good. And you should be selling them for maybe like £8 a jar. Do the maths. I'm back down to the, the Dirt Rooster comments as well. So you were just about to hit the sack for an afternoon nap. I love it. I want to live, I want to live Randy's life. Afternoon naps. Um, I'm guessing, yeah, it's not, it's not even that late, is it, over in America at the moment? Uh, right. Hey from the Netherlands, thanks for your content. My question, are all Buckfast colonies friendly? That's a good question. So I would say at the first generation, definitely yes, as long as you're getting them from a reputable breeder and as long as they are genuinely like Buckfast. The further you go down in terms of generations, it's going to be completely dependent the area that you're in. So if you are— if you— if I took 20 Buckfast colonies to the middle of nowhere where there were no other colonies at all there, no other feral colonies, and then I started letting the Buckfast go down the generations in that isolated area, then you'd go down F2, F3, F4, you wouldn't have any issues, and they'd all be perfectly nice and calm. If you're in an area that's got tons of feral colonies of bees and tons of wild wild hives or other people, native black bees, and you get these mixes, then the mixes are just very unpredictable. I've just seen on here ads will run shortly for some viewers, and I have the chance to skip ads, so I'll skip ads for you this time. So I didn't realize that ads were coming up in the middle of these, so I've skipped that one, so you shouldn't see an ad. So, so no, not all Buckfast colonies of bees will be friendly, dependent on on the area that they're in, dependent on the drones that they're mating with, and dependent on the generation that they are. Do you paint the inside of your BS Honeybee nucs feeder with masonry paint? So yes, that is the best way to paint the inside of any feeder, and make sure you paint it before you get any syrup in there. Where can I buy a couple of your baseball caps? So I'm amazed how many people have asked that question. I never thought people would want to buy those. So, so those hats are not cheap. I've found one company called— it's like Design— you can, you can check the prices, so there you go, you know I'm not telling any fibs. It's called Design by Creative, and it's like a 3D hat printing thing, and I think they cost like £25, £26 each. Um, anybody who wants a hat, I will not make a penny profit on your hats, um, and It's probably a good way of doing it, actually. If you, if you send me an email, I'll just order some hats, and if you're coming to the beekeeping show, I'll bring it. I'll bring you a hat, and you can have it at what it costs me, which I think is about 25, 26 quid. But they are nice hats. They're pretty cool. I do like them. Andrew says, "Hi Lawrence, do you treat for wax moth in your hives?" So no, there's no real legal treatment for wax moth like on the frames. Used to have Certa. It's like B401, and then they withdrew it, and there's no, there's no legal spray that you can put on your frames anymore. But I find as long as you've got really big strong colonies, then they deal with wax moth inside the colonies like absolutely fine. Brood frames, if you're storing brood frames, you will be in trouble, but I don't really like to store brood frames anyway. If you're storing super frames that have never had any brood in, I find that you like wax moth few and far between. You're not going to get that many, so I don't treat at all now for them. Sean from Urban Bee says hello. Hi Sean, and greetings from the Caribbean. Very nice, Dominican beekeeper. Dry Cut Honey says, Lawrence, we put bees in literally anything. I think I'm— I think I've missed a bit of that. Oh, there we go. So we glue everything, but I don't know about how everything is pre-assembled, but the standard is glue. Okay, cool. So that's fine. I was looking at it, it just looked like someone had whacked them together with like a massive stapler. I just looked a bit— I think you should use a nail gun, it's a bit neater. Uh, and, and Randy said the same. So it was pine, glued or not depends on the supplier or whoever assembled. So I was having the conversation with, um, because, because I was really surprised by this because for like in the UK pine is like a massive like no-no and it's like we really inferior. So I kind of thought, well, like, we in the UK, we import all of the, the cedar from Canada. Like, it's western red cedar that comes over. You get some British cedar, but it's very knotty. So I was thinking, well, surely the US can import— like, it's a lot easier to import cedar from Canada than it is for us in the UK. And then I was talking, apparently it's like some trade agreement, and it's like, it's not a good thing because they were saying like the forests or like the woodland or something were owned in a certain way in the US, and that basically if you start importing cedar from Canada, someone in the US stands to lose like loads of money. And I thought, ah, right, the politics has come into it now. So that's why it's pine. But like I said, I don't think it makes a massive difference in the US because it's so like, it's like dry, it's dry the majority of the time, so you're not not going to have the problem with the pine deteriorating or getting too heavy. Um, and then yeah, glue is more important than the fasteners. I agree, good glue and I'm sure they're fine. Right, I'm going through all the numbers there. Um, it's worth saying at this point, uh, if you, if you enjoy the streams, I do appreciate it if you could give it a thumbs up, does help. Uh, thank you very much. Right, I'm running through all the numbers and Stacy won, so You got number 72. Hi Lawrence, 2 hives currently overwintering in Shropshire. Is it possible and what would be the best method to go into winter with 10 colonies? Hope to see you at the beekeeping show next month. So if that was me, I would literally get— first kind of couple of weeks of the season, I would just buy 8 queens and I would just split them down into 10 colonies in nucs. Or beehives. You can go straight into beehives and just dummy them down with like an insulated dummy frame and then add mated queens in and, and then go from there. And like, if you did that in the first week of— maybe, maybe second week of April— if you did that, I would say they'd probably be filling the box by like middle of July. And then if you get a good run on the back end of July, you'll probably get a super of honey off each one as well. That would be the way that I would do that. What smoker brand do you recommend? So I've got quite a lot of smokers, as people will know. I've got a Daden, I've got a Rouchboy, but definitely the Thorn Empire one that I saw being made. Like, I just can't believe that they make those in the UK. And I, like, I feel like a real passion for the guys. They were a bit miserable, the guys there, but what they were doing, it was really, really really impressive. And I do— I like my Thorn Empire smoker. It's very good. If you're going to get one, go for the largest one they do. Go for a stainless steel one. Get the cage around the outside, and it comes with like a drop-in cage on the inside. You get all of those things. Best smoker on the market. Um, next question from Paul. If a virgin queen needs to breed with approximately 14 drones, if around 4 of them are aggressive and the rest are calm, what does that mean with regard to the resulting mated queen temperament? That's a good question. I don't really know, like it's kind of a matter of the mix. I would say that you're just going to get a colony that's kind of like some of the bees are pretty chilled, some of the bees are really aggressive. Yeah, difficult one to answer that one. Shannon says, would you visit an April— sorry, Would you visit Wiltshire to do an apiary visit? So I am up for coming and visiting people's apiaries. Where is Wiltshire? That's like, I have to check where that is. My geography is not the best. Sounds far away. Yeah, it's really far away. So it's about 7 hours away, so probably a little bit far, but if I'm in the area, I'll definitely come down. Oh, I've just jumped absolutely loads. I keep on doing that on this new one and then I miss— oh, here we go, I found it. Right, so Matt says he's got a pop-up window with the Q&A. It's not working, that Q&A button, is it? He's saying he used the gas flap today on all my hives. He's very late, he knows. Would you vape again in 4 to 5 days, leave it, or something else? So yeah, definitely go in every— pardon me— every 5 days And you can, like, you can do it numerous times, doesn't hurt the bees, let's keep them going to it. Andrew says, plastic waxed or wax foundation, which, as you say, gives the better drawn frames, or the same? So interesting wording to that question. I would say once you get to the point where the frames are fully drawn out, I probably prefer plastic waxed. How long and and how much resource it takes to get to that point, I would go with wax, like wooden frames with wax foundation all day long. Like the difference in how long it takes to get from like a sheet of foundation to like a drawn-out frame with wax, like a waxed wooden frame, it's ridiculously quick. Whereas the plastic ones just like, they take so, so long. I can't believe how long they take. And they were good, they were really well waxed as well. This isn't an issue that there's not enough wax, They're just slow. So yeah, there we go. What is this supposed game-changing product and when will it be released? So sorry, Harry, my lips are sealed. Got 3 weeks to wait for that one, but it is cool. Hi, is there any way, is there any easy way to get a queen from a travel cage into a queen introduction cage? I would be worried the queen would fly off before I get Cage onto the comb. I'm really not a fan of people— sorry, not, not you— I'm not a fan of the method of swapping cages out. Like, we, we introduce hundreds of queens each year, each year, and I've like, over the course of the last 4 or 5 years, I've probably introduced like well over 1,000 queens using the travel cage, and, and I never, literally never lost one. The travel cage is perfectly fine for introducing them. Just that, that is what I would use. And then kind of coincidentally, when I have tried a queen introduction cage, like a pin-in cage, they just burrowed in around the side and killed the queen. And I know that that might have been user or operator error with that, and it might have not been a very good cage, but the travel cages just, they work perfectly well. So yeah, don't make it difficult, don't let the queen fly off, just, just use the introduct— just use the travel cage as your introduction cage. If you were starting with an overwintered nuc, how would you manage it to get a mix of some honey and a few more hives, or go double brood then split, or make more nucs up? So, um, I would, I would probably, I would probably— you just gotta temper your expectations a little bit from what you can do with a single nuc. So a single nuc, you could easily build it up to a point— this, this is what I would do, look, I'll build it up to a point I'd go to double brood and just build it up and build it up and build it up on double brood because it gives you the benefit that it'll probably get you past the point where they're going to swarm. And then once you get to that point where they're completely covering all the frames on double brood, you're likely going to have like 16, 17 frames of brood. And then at that point, which will probably be around like middle to back end of June maybe. At that point I would make a few splits, so take the, take the top brood box off, maybe make 3 splits, 3 nice size splits, and then take them to a separate apiary. And then at that point put a queen excluder on and put your supers on, and then you'll get some late season honey that way of doing it as well. And then you should go into the next year with 3 splits and your original colony and some honey. that'd be a good way of doing it. Which type of— which hive type overwinters better, a full poly hive or a nuc poly hive? Are the losses still the same? Yeah, I wouldn't say there's much in it at all. What I do like with the nucs, when you stack the nucs, if you get like a nuc and then a nuc extension box, it gives you like a nice like shaped configuration, so it's like a 6 over 6, and I do find the bees really do like that. kind of like tall narrow column style, but, but they overwinter fine just in a poly hive as well, so I don't think it makes a huge amount of difference in terms of losses. Mark, dunk the cage in the water and then transfer. Yeah, good advice. So Steve Jones says, queen rearing this year, planning double brood with a Miller cloak for starter finisher. Any reason not to split the finisher up into 2 or 3 frame mating nucs? Made some Maya— made Maya floors today. Cheers, bud. No, that's what— that's very often what people do with the starter finishers. If you make up a starter finisher, get your grafts in there, and then you've just got this big massive box full of resources that if you didn't do anything with, they'd almost certainly swarm. So yeah, break them up, make up some nucs, and then put your cells in. Really good way of doing it. Keep loading the videos. Yeah, I know. Yappy says no. That's, that's what I have to say. So I'm probably going to go down to one a week, I think, for the time being and see how it goes. But what that does mean, if I go down to one video a week, which will be Sunday at 8 PM, it means I'll do more live streams. So I'll probably do more Saturday night live streams. I rock the hat. Which hat? This? The double? The double? Or just my Dirt Rooster hat, which I love? Uh, Michael Menino says, how many hives do you run? So I'm trying to keep the numbers down. It's probably about 80, 80 or 90, I think, at the moment, plus a lot of nucs, huge amount of nucs. Uh, Mark Barrows, channel member, says, do you think the underfloor entrances will help against Asian hornets if they get fully established? Don't think they'll do well where I am up in Middle Square. I thought that about Wales as well. I do think like the whole of the UK is in for a serious Asian hornet shock. I know Middlesbrough can, can get quite cold, but no, I don't think the underfloor entrances will do anything because the problem with the Asian hornets is they just hawk. They just like hover in front of the entrances like that and then just wait for the bees to come and just go bash, take them. So I don't— The Asian hornets will go into beehives, but they'll only go into beehives when they've been completely overwhelmed by hawking in front of them first. So I just don't know what's going to happen. A very experienced beekeeper friend of mine places an empty super under the brood box for overwintering. Apparently it allows the cluster to live around the hive easier. Have you tried this? So no, like a lot of people do that. It's called like a nuc d'air, but I guess what you're saying there is slightly different, like he puts an empty super underneath it. But an idea is when you take like a partially drawn-out super, put that up underneath the brood box, and then they bring the stores up. But no, but I, I don't see it's causing any issues though, because you've got the heat in a beehive and then it goes up. So as long as you're well insulated upwards, it doesn't really matter what's going on downwards. And if anything, the more space you put between the bottom of the cluster and the floor The warmer that colony is going to remain. So I don't think it's—I don't think it's doing any any damage. I'm not sure what you said there. Apparently, it allows the cluster to live around the hive easier. I don't—I'm not 100% sure what that means. But yeah, like I said, I don't think it does. I don't think it's doing any damage to the hive, and I think it probably makes it like a little bit cozier for them. I've drunk about an inch. of my chamomile tea. There we go, we're getting good. Right, Lee Brotherton says, hi from West Yorkshire, looking forward to receiving your Langstroth nuc for the budget Flow Hive I bought as an experiment. He owns 2 national colonies of local bees. Thanks for all your no-nonsense advice. Cheers, Lee. Good luck with it, and good luck with the budget Flow Hive. It's really good, you'll enjoy it. Morning, Laurence. It must be Pretty early out there now, but good morning. Liam says, "Will you be releasing month by month job videos, Lawrence? It'd be really beneficial for amateur beekeepers." Oh, I've got really itchy nose. So, so no, I hadn't planned to do that at the moment, but I think I probably should do something like that. But what's difficult is that the way that I record the videos and then they get stacked up so quickly in the channel member section. Like, I try and release things at. relevant time. And if I did that, you'd be getting like the, oh, here's what to do in June, and it's like September. So I'll have a think about it. I do, I do need to do something like that. What I am doing though is I'm writing a lot of blog posts at the moment, as Adam will know. So I've got a blog post that comes out tomorrow which is like your first year in beekeeping, and it links to all of the videos that I've done previously but gives you like a little bit more of a structure in terms of what's actually going on at different points throughout the year. Not so much in like a calendar sense, but in a, right, your bees have got to here, do this next, or this is when you should be putting an excluder on, or this is when you should put a super on. So there will be more blog content. So I might do that month-by-month jobs video as a blog and link to previous videos that I've done. Uh, Bees and Things says, hey Lawrence, what of treatment will you use, if any, at this time of the year? So I mentioned that before, I would use apitraz or apivar, so anything amitraz miticide-based. And if you put it in middle of Feb, take it out middle of April, then you, then you can jump straight in and put your supers on after that. Oh, I'm nearly, I'm nearly to the bottom here, so right, I'm gonna, I'm gonna crack on, I'm gonna get to the bottom. Uh, I've lost where I am now. I was nowhere near the bottom. Right, start again. Right, Cub Rider says, I'm starting beekeeping again after a 4-year break. Should I go 14 by 12 for brood and deep brooder supers? Um, so, so no, I, I wouldn't, I wouldn't go with that. If you're going to go deep brooder supers, I would go deep brood all the way down. Just make it simple, keep everything standardized as one. But I'm kind of like maybe going off the idea as deep brooder supers. They do get a bit heavy, and no matter how well— I can't even think of the word— no matter how much you say to yourself you're not going to use your deep brood supers that you've got as brood boxes, you end up using them as brood boxes. So you end up getting brood in your supers, which means for storage it's nightmare. Um, it's just— I just think maybe it's best to have shallow supers and keep them for honey only, and then have deeper boxes for your brood, whether it's standard deep broods or 14x12 broods. Uh, Bees and Things says, bought a queen from you last year, going brilliantly, will be buying more. Excellent. We've got all of our queens on order, got loads coming in this year. Luke Dutton says, what gloves are you currently using and where do you buy them from? So I got a big pallet of gloves from— I can't even remember the place. I do this every time and then she messages me and says where it is again. But you, you can only buy them kind of like in a box of 12, and that's like a box of 12 boxes of 100 gloves or something. So I'll dig it out and work out where, uh, where you can get them from, but they are good. June has just said drink your tea, so there we go, drink my tea. Adam Goodall says, are polyashworth feeders top or bottom bee space? Good question. So the Sorrenti ones are top bee space, so if you put them on a bottom bee space national hive, you will kill all of the bees. So if you're buying the Sorrenti ones, which I wouldn't recommend, you need to put a rim around them, 8mm rim, just like glue it on. Probably best to glue on a plastic rim if you can get some like 8mm Perspex or something, offcuts, or just buy the proper one, buy the Abello one that's got the rim already built in, which is a bottom beespace poly ashwax feeder. Loads better. Aussie Beekeeping says all our boxes are pine, some local and some imported from China. That's why it's important to wax dip and paint here. So yeah, so this is the beauty of cedar is you just don't do anything to it. You just get your cedar and 40 years later, it's just still like fine. It's just like, yeah, whatever, UK weather, like water reproduces back. Great. I do like cedar boxes for that, for that reason, like no maintenance. Great. Says, this year I'm gluing and screwing the boxes I'm making. Seem to be better than glue and nails. So it definitely is glue and screw with stainless steel screws as well. If you do that, that, that is completely bombproof. Really good. Bob Bob says, I have a queen of yours in a nuc. Believe him, they are very calm. Nice one. I opened them in January and they didn't care. They are documented on my channel, Dragoon Honey. I like that. I'm— I, I— it's weird, I used to be— when I started off doing YouTube, I kind of thought, I don't want anyone else to— if anyone else has a YouTube channel, then like they shouldn't really be advertising it here. And like that was how I thought about it, and it was really bad. So I kind of completely take that back. I love supporting other people's YouTube channels. So I wasn't aware of that one, Drago and Honey. I'm gonna I'm gonna add that to my list. I'm actually gonna just Google it now, and I'm gonna subscribe. So feel feel free to use like my websites and stuff for. Promoting your bees. It's great, I love it. There you go, you've got another subscriber. Right, David says the propeller hive at the Expo looked and sounded like a great idea. Do you think it would be easy to score up the inside of a wooden box, cheaper, same idea? So yeah, definitely you could do it. I love the idea, like I think it's a brilliant, brilliant idea, but I'm just not like entirely sold on the disease control aspect of it, because you kind of try to keep everything as propolis-free. No, it's not even the propolis that I'm worried about. Like, a thin coating of propolis is fine, because when you scorch it, you could just like— you can definitely still sterilize it. But it'd be interesting to see how well the propolis hive would cope with the scorching treatment and how well it would reduce kind of like any contamination or infection inside it. Just think like you're making things more difficult for yourself by having the scores on the inside. But it was cool. I did like it. It was a good idea. Lindsay says, hi Lawrence and everyone. Hi Lindsay. So David says he bought a large Empire copper cage and dropping cage on the back of your great informative video. Love seeing the process of how the equipment we use, more of that content. So do you know, David, that was one of the worst performing performing videos of last year, like by a long way. So I thought, I thought it would do well. I like, I like watching how it's made. I just kind of like stuff like that, like watching things being made. And I loved watching it being made live, and I thought it would do well, and it was the worst performing video of the entire year. So I'm probably not going to do any more. I've got another video which is how do they make their cedar beehives, and I just can't even bring myself to edit because the other one took me like 5 hours to edit and like about 6 people watched it. But I'm with you, I thought it was cool. With the minus— with the current -8 degrees weather in an Abello 12-frame National 14x12, would you keep the monitoring tray in to help them keep the temp up and help with heat loss? So yeah, I'm, I'm genuinely— when I have any monitoring trays in, I just kind of leave them in. And if you take them out, take them out. as well. I don't think it makes a huge amount of difference, but yeah, I think with the cold weather, keeping them in definitely keeps them a little bit warmer. Oh, hi there. Uh, says cypress wood makes the best hives. Oh, that's my mum calling me on WhatsApp. I have to decline that. Uh, a bit rude. She should know that I'm doing a live stream. I should have probably answered and showed the screen. That would have been fun. My mum's absolutely bonkers. Cypresswood makes the best hives but quite expensive. Okay, that sounds— I've never seen cypresswood, but it sounds nice. Hi Lawrence, how would you go about transferring mini mating nuc frames into full national frames once they have reached capacity to be moved into a nuc hive? So difficult, it really is difficult. The only way I've seen it being done is to take You need like a purpose-made, basically like a super, and just hopefully your mini mating nuc frames fit into a super, they're not too deep, and then you just need to like build partitions in the side so that you can put numerous frames in all at once. Apart from that, the only other way of doing it is like zip tying them into a top bar and then just putting them in. Well, I've got the thing coming up saying that the adverts are coming coming on again, so I've skipped that. So no one should have to see any adverts on the live streams. Uh, I must have, I must have tweaked a setting, got a setting wrong. So sorry about that. You shouldn't, uh, the whole idea is that you don't have any adverts in between. Come on, you can watch one at the beginning. Um, what I would say with the mini mating nuc is that is why we use the BS Honeybees 2-in-1 to make queens in, because it just makes it so much easier. It's slightly resource intensive at the beginning, but then once you've got a queen mated, she's on the right frames, it's effectively a nuc as well. And it just— the efficiency for me far outweighs the kind of like additional expense of having those resources at the beginning. Uh, Harry says Wildways Farms— Harry, channel member— says, hi Lawrence, do you think the price difference between selective and non-selective Asian hornet traps is worth the spend just to Save a few flies and wasps? So be careful with my answer here. It— no, I don't think it is. And the reason I say that is that if you catch like 30 Asian hornets in one of those, and 30 wasps and 30 flies and a few moths, the Asian hornets that you catch would have eaten way more than what you've caught in there anyway. But we don't— you don't want to kill pollinators unnecessarily. But like, the Asian hornets are going to obliterate them. Like, they eat an incredible amount in terms of weight. But I just— I think it's almost a bit too late in terms of this fight against Asian hornets. Like, I think it's really sad to say, but I think like we had a chance last year to kind of eradicate them to the point where they weren't in the UK. And it's quite clear that we failed that fight, like, quite badly. And I have no doubt in my mind that there were plenty of nests that went into winter undetected, which means that there's going to be like thousands, if not tens of thousands, of overwintering Asian hornets in the country now. They're going to start off their own nests next year. Next year it's going to be carnage. It's going to be 20 times worse than it was this year, and I just don't know how they're gonna— or who's gonna fight them. Just feels like a real missed opportunity last year. Not to say that it's through lack of trying, like there's a huge amount of hard work and dedication to, to combat it, but I don't think they exhausted all avenues of approach. actually go out and obliterate the colonies that were there. And I think that's typical UK in that there's red tape and there's bureaucracy. Bureaucracy, easy for me to say. And, and it's interesting because it's this collateral damage thing here, which I, I'm pretty certain that there was a technique that was available that would have resulted in, yeah, probably some collateral damage and the killing of some other pollinator species. By indirect contact with some sort of chemical that they didn't use for that reason. And then the subsequent impact of that next year is that literally thousands of kilograms of insects are going to get killed by Asian hornets. So I, I would have definitely voted for something that had a bit of collateral damage, but I know that's not really your question, so hopefully I answered a bit of it. If you could set up a perfect apiary, how would it look? I love that question, and I've never had that question before. So perfect apiary would be— prerequisite for me would be incredible forage, because if there wasn't incredible forage there, then you're not getting any honey. Why would I be there? So the forage would have to be like plentiful in that I got bumper, bumper honey crops from it. also like really nice honey. So not just like oilseed rape or something like bog standard, but like a really nice beautiful mix of honey. Out of the way. So completely like, for me it would be something like, it'd be like a real pleasure to go to, something that I would look forward to going to. So somewhere like really idyllic, somewhere scenic. I'm kind of like picturing myself just in the middle of nowhere, maybe like on a hillside Heathermoor or something like that. But definitely out the way, out the way of people. I wouldn't want to see anybody there. And not because like I'm, I'm miserable and don't— I don't like talking to people, but there is that. But more because I just, I don't want the risk of any theft. So that's the big one, just completely out of the way, completely secure. So on someone's land, so not just on like public land, maybe in like an estate that's got like a big massive fence around it, something like that. Really good access by vehicle. I want to be able to like drive my truck along really nice tracks to get there. Uh, no rivers nearby, no risk of flooding. What would be nice is like some— like somewhere to like have a little bit of a break nearby. So like all of these places, they're incredibly remote, but somewhere somewhere that you could like fill up your water bottle and maybe like charge your phone. I know, how bad is that? That's so 21st century. But it's like somewhere with a little bit of like a rest place just for me, that would be nice. But I love that, it's a great question. Thanks, thanks, Bob. Brilliant question, I like that one. I'm going to refine that answer for next time, but I'm there, I'm kind of in that apiary. Uh, Harry says bought a queen fruit I bought a queen from you in 2022 and produced over 100 pounds of honey. Pleasure to work with and wouldn't even need a bee suit. Brilliant, love that. He also says, I've also— I've noticed that all of the bright orange Ginger Queen bees are seeming to be superior than the others. Any thoughts on why this is? Interesting, isn't it? Because a lot of people say that it's the dark black ones that are the best ones. No, it I think that's probably anecdotal because I've got some Buckfasts that are really, really dark and they are brilliant as well. But I do like, I do like the bright orange ginger ones. I find the bright orange ginger ones tend to be really calm as well. But yeah, I'm not, I'm not sure if there is any correlation between the two. Open mesh or solid floor for most of your hives? So all of my hives are on open mesh, but I don't think it makes a huge amount of difference, to be honest. What's more important is what's above the brood box, and for me, lots of insulation above the brood box, and then take your pick on the floor. Hi Lawrence, can you do an oxalic acid treatment on a shook swarm as you only have phoretic mites? Similarly, are you allowed to vape a swarm? So yeah, yes and yes, perfect time to do it. Give them a day or 2 days to settle, but definitely before any the eggs are preferably laid but definitely capped over, do a mite treatment. Brilliant way of getting it down. How do you recommend treating with OA when you have the underfloor entrance? So we, we do vape from the top. We just go along, we've got like an eek that just— we take the roof off, put the eek on, vape from the top. But you can, you can just drill a hole around the back and then vape up through the mesh. You get a bit condensing on the mesh, but not a huge amount. I keep on scrolling down and I miss loads. I've missed loads of questions again. I'm really sorry. I've missed so many questions. Sorry about this. I'm scrolling up and down. I keep on thinking, right, I'm down to the last 3 questions. Then it's like 70 questions, which is brilliant. I love answering your questions, but I need some more chamomile tea. Right, so John, our super moderator on the No Nonsense Beekeeping Facebook group— John does a brilliant job— John's questions were, what new lines of queens are you most looking forward to working with, and will they be on sale to buy? So no, no new lines, not got any new lines coming in, but like the Promorsky will be there, the Elgon, the SH Buckfast queens, but the The new lines I think that you're talking about there are the new lines for the breeder queens that I've got. So I've got about five or six completely different lines of breeder queens for this year. So they will be the overwintered nucs for 2025, and you will see them next year, and they are pretty special. But they are all Buckfast, all from Germany. But that's all the information we're getting from them. Grammy's Midwife Suburban Homestead Lisa says, "Hey Lawrence, nice." to catch the live stream. Uh, oh, you met— I met you at NABI. Hello, how you doing? Lynn says, hi Lawrence, just checking in from San Francisco. I also met Lynn, we had a good chat. Hi Lynn. Uh, Stacy Richards says, I have one hive at the moment, I would like to end 2024 with 4 hives. Is there a way I can split my hive and still get some honey? So yeah, I would do the same. I think it was to Ben I gave this advice before. Build up the colony on double brood Make sure you get past the point where the bees are going to swarm. Once you get to double brood, 16-ish frames of brood, take off the top box and then use that to make like 3 or 4 splits. And then on the bottom box, put the queen excluder back on and put your supers on, and then you should get some late season honey. I might do a video on that. 2 people have asked that same question, um, so it's kind of like a mini expansion and honey in the same I will try and do a regular video on that. Might do a series on that. It's a good idea. Uh, Brock Brockley says, "Do you have membership channel and how do we sign on?" So yes, I do. I record loads and loads of videos all like in a day, and then I upload them all at once, and then I filter them through kind of like to the general public. But channel members get to see all those videos immediately. So if you do want to become a channel member, it's like a plugged like a plugged this one. I didn't. Thanks for bringing it up though. You just go on to— go on to the home page, and then where it says subscribe, next to subscribe it says join, and then you can hit join. And the one that— the best membership level is early access videos, so £4.99 a month, you get early access to all those videos. So it's good value. Hi, just a hello from North Wales. Need to message you to come over and have a look at the apiary. Aha. North Wales, brilliant. We'll definitely do that one, that'll be fun. Let's do it in April at some point. Uh, Nicholas Stromberg, channel member, says, I will change frame size this year. How do I get most frames built with the wax? I think assigning one apiary to the task of building wax and then feed them all summer. Yeah, so if you're, if you're just looking to kind of get as many frames as possible, you could definitely do it that way around. What are you changing from? What what frame to which frame and what's the reason for it. Lynn says, I think the blog post idea is great. I'd say if you say here's what's coming up in the next 60 days, so they need to order something, I equate that to they can order it quick. That's a really good idea as well. I could tag that in, you could do like April and then in May this is coming up. That's a really good idea. Gundog says, hello, I'm Nick Bunker. I did one blog for you, and I'm hoping to send another to you tomorrow. Coincidentally, I was going to write another about my first year of beekeeping. That is very, very strange because, Nick, I, I know you as Nick Bunker because you— like, we've chatted and you've— I know, I know your name's Nick Bunker and you've done the blogs and you bought queens, and I know Gundogs, and I never put the two of you together. So now I know Gundogs is Nick Bunker. Brilliant. But great, that's really good. I'm looking forward to— Nick is another blogger, Nick— Nick, what is it? It's Bunkers Bee Blogs. There we go. Everyone has to have a catchy blog name. And Nick is going to retire early and work on 100 beehives, or work up to 100 beehives. So you should follow his journey because it's pretty cool. But I'm interested to see how your next blog goes on. So again, if anybody wants to blog, you can do it. It doesn't matter how many people want to blog, everyone is welcome. It's all good fun. So Ed Butler, another— got loads of channel members in tonight, this is brilliant. So Ed Butler says, hi Lawrence, what was the name of the company who produces the drone catcher that you came across on the Bee Expo? And lastly, what is your process to remove crystallized honey in supers to jar up? So I can't remember the name of the guy. Was it— it was called the Bee Wrangler. I'm gonna have to look on the video, but it's definitely, it's definitely on that video. I can't remember the name of it. And then the process to— sorry, I've just not answered either of your questions here. The process to remove crystallized honey in the supers to jar up? I just put it in the Happy Melter, like the Mellow Flow, and just melt it. It's the only way of doing it. It's a nightmare. Just don't let your honey crystallize in the supers. Sorry, sorry, Ed, that's 2 really rubbish rubbish answers. So, I'm just starting a beekeeping channel. So I saw this question absolutely ages ago. This— I missed this one completely. So he says, I'm just starting a beekeeping channel, do you have any advice? So my advice to anybody starting out a beekeeping channel or any YouTube channel is do it. Just do it. Your first video will be rubbish and your second video probably won't be much better, but until you start doing videos and like watching yourself and being really embarrassed and being like, oh my God, that's really embarrassing listening to myself. And I've got such a rubbish voice and like 4 chins. And until you get past that bit, you never get any better. And then you start getting like a tiny bit better and tiny bit better. And then like you get the occasional person like watching, and then you do like a live stream and there's like 3 of you. You're like, this is really awkward. But Unless you like— nobody starts a channel and then you've immediately got like 20,000 subscribers or a million subscribers or whatever. So you just got to do it, and it's good fun. Like, YouTube is the best. Like, it's the most enjoyable part of my beekeeping career. I love it. So just, just do it. Don't worry about the equipment. If you want to put your money in any equipment, just get good audio. You see here, got my mic. Good audio. Like, people will watch really poor quality video, but if the audio is bad and you've got like all that noise in the background, they just turn off. People can't handle poor audio. So go for like a Rode wireless mic or something like that, and then just use your phone. But just do it, have fun. Hi Lawrence, what is your best suggestion to build up plenty of drawn comb in spring after breaking Up most of them extracting heather. So somebody else asked me, asked me this the other day, like they're really like obsessed with like just building up as much drawn comb as possible to, to build up for kind of any scenario. And I don't know, I'm not, I'm not one for just building up drawn comb for the sake of drawn comb. Like I kind of, I quite like adding in frames of foundation into colonies to slow bees down. If you, if you Just give everything drawn comb. Like, they just sometimes move a little bit too fast, you can't keep up with them. So I quite like adding in frames of foundation. But I guess the easiest way to build up drawn comb is just constantly feed them. But then if you're kind of going down the route of exclusive drawn comb and not having any honey, because then you're going to contaminate kind of like the frames that you've got. So yeah, it's not really one for me, just building up drawn comb for the sake of it. but I guess, yeah, if you want to do it, just 1:1 sugar syrup, keep on feeding them. Are ivy honey frames a problem for bees through the winter? We had a big ivy flow and the bees packed it in but are also eating lots of fondant. I've heard the ivy stores can go hard, can go hard to use. So yeah, so ivy will kind of go— it goes like concrete, absolutely rock solid. But I've never in my life had a colony of bees that's got through the winter and not consumed the stores. And if they have, then all you need to do is you just bruise the frames. So just get a hive tool, bruise the cappings, like just bash them down a little bit, and just put it bang slap in the middle of the brood frame. And then 2 days later and it's gone. The bees do not like you separating the brood like that, so they just clear it all out and go eat it, put it somewhere else, and it's fine. Uh, Cup Rider says, where is this bee show? So it is in Telford, the UK. Andrew Rogers says, 75% Thorn smoker. It's a, like, um, it's a good smoker, good smoker. But to be fair, it doesn't, it doesn't resist being run over by a truck very well. Um, but it is nice, like, it's just the bellows is nice. Everything's nice. I like spending money on things. Uh, Andrew says marigold or nitrile gloves? Definitely nitriles, long cuffs for me. Are you happy with the Arsenal result today? Yeah, I am. 5-0. It's still a bit rubbish though. Uh, Joshua, yeah, best to answer. I can't believe she, she rang while I was doing a live stream. I've— this is— I'm turning into a proper old man. I've only just worked out how to get WhatsApp WhatsApp like on my desktop. It's brilliant. I love WhatsApp on the desktop. It's great. Um, Vaz says, how do you clean your polyhives? So I've got like these big massive 150-liter tubs, and I put soda, like washing soda, in them and then submerge them. Like, scrape them all down, submerge the polyhives in the washing soda. 24 hours later, 48 hours later, I give them a bit of a scrub, and then they get dipped in sodium hypochlorite for— so they say like 20 minutes dip, but I dip them 24 hours and then they are as good as new, completely sterile. Mark says, going back to my question on queens into cages, I'm experimenting with different races by introducing a couple of different queen races to my black bees, black bee splits in May. Any suggestions or videos on how to successfully change races via queen intro? So no, it's a good idea, but you do— I have anecdotally heard that black bees are more reluctant to accept like a ginger queen, and I do see it a little bit. I just find if you get your bees to hopelessly queenless, and I post the videos on this and people say, oh yeah, I just killed the queen and just chuck a new queen in there and everything's fine, but occasionally it goes wrong. I say I can't deal with it occasionally goes wrong because I want it to work 100% of the time. So I've replaced really dark colonies with ginger colonies and being fine. But what I always do is I kill the queen, I wait 8 days, all of the emergency cells come up, I shake every single frame off, I take down every single emergency cell, I add the queen in. Light feed at this point is helpful, so like a 1:1 sugar syrup feed. For 24 hours later, I come back, I pop the tab, and then I leave them for a week and don't go in and check. Don't be tempted to check. And like literally never fails. It's a very, very good— it's a long-winded method and it's probably maybe a bit longer than it needs to be, but it does work perfectly. Uh, Michael says, do you do Zoom guest speaking for bee clubs? If you do, do you have topics that you would be good for first and second year beekeepers? So I, I can, I can do that. I've not got like a repertoire of topics Uh, but I can do Zoom if you email me blacklansinhoney@gmail.com. I can do talks, but I do tend to rabbit on and I do tend to drink quite a lot of tea as well. So B Folk says, thanks for your previous answer on minis. Another question, we need to buy some poly feeders to go with our splits this year. Would you go for the BS feeders? So for, um, sorry, I'm just reading your question again. So for the BS Honeybees nucs you're talking about there, BS feeders. So I definitely go with— if you go— if you're buying feeders for BS Honeybees nucs, go with the BS feeders. Um, but I have a feeling that's not what the question is, so maybe— sorry to recycle the question if you wait for me to get back down to it. But yeah, I would, I would go with those. Beekeeping Gardening, I love it, says, in the South UK, my club makes orders for 1,000 traps, I believe that will be going next week. I'm guessing we're talking Asian hornets. Wow, have to keep us posted on that. Uh, Harry says, as you said, 2023 was a critical year, and completely agree with you. We missed our chance, and I bet we missed hundreds of nests. Bad, isn't it? Oh, I've jumped down again. I don't know how I keep on doing this. Here we go. Right, Beekeeping Gardening says spring trapping is very important for catching Asian hornet queens in the UK. Yeah, I guess that's, I guess that's where we are now. Stephen says definitely agree with your thoughts on Asian hornet destruction. Harry says on your website it says pre-order for 2024 on the queen section but no specific day of dispatch. Could I email and ask when I want them dispatched if I bought any. So yeah, so we always do that for pre-orders. We will email people who do pre-orders and we'll book them onto a day. It's no problem. We won't just send them out. That is something I need to do though, so well reminded. I will update the website with the days. Takes me ages to do. I have to go through like literally day by day typing them in because my website doesn't allow you to import multiple days for some reason. But we will fix that. Uh, Brookley says It is said that bees head for blue in preference to yellow. What are your thoughts? I've never noticed or thought about that. Sorry, I don't know. I'm getting, I'm getting tired. Uh, W. Jackson says, is demeray the quickest way to grow a colony in spring, and how early or what size should it be before the split? So no, I don't, I don't think, I don't think, I wouldn't say it's a good way of growing growing a colony, but like the rapid growth of a colony is a byproduct of the Demeray. Like I do a Demeray split to stop, to give the bees something to do during the swarming period and to make them think that they've swarmed. So I use it as like a swarm management technique. It doesn't like grow them very quick. In fact, it probably slows down their natural growth, but you just end up with monster colonies because you don't lose the swarm. swarms. So you'd end up with an equally sized colony, or an equal-sized colony, or like a slightly bigger colony if you didn't do the Demaray, but your bees are likely swarmed. So it's, it's a weird one, that, because yeah, like I said, I don't, I don't do them to build up the colonies or rapidly build up the colonies. I do stop swarming. But yeah, you don't want to— my rule for the Demaray is brood box should be full, 2 supers should be full of bees. So the brood box is full of bees and you've got 2 supers that are full of bees, and then that's my trigger for doing a demaree. If you don't have the 2 supers full of bees, you can really knock the colonies back quite a lot, and sometimes they don't recover at all. So that is— so it's not, it's not a case of when, it's a case of how big. And then when they get that big, you're good to go. Uh, Joy Harris says, hi Lawrence, I'm going to buy the lysine honey creaming and liquefying purifier machine, 50-liter from Abello. There are 2 models, standard and premium. Any advice on choice, please? So I, I have used both of those. I've used the standard and I have used the premium, and I would say for a 50-liter variant, I would go with standard because it's quite a lot cheaper, and I don't think the end result is justified. And I think for the premium, if you're going like 100-liter or 200 liters, I would definitely go with the premium one. But, um, my advice would be the liquefier bit is really important with the creamer. So as long as you're getting the heating mode on there, the difference between the standard and the premium, not a huge amount. It's like thicker material and slightly higher torque in the engine, but the 50-liter one, the torque's fine. So I would go standard and spend the money on something else. I'm going to skip ads for everyone again, not going to earn my 20p or whatever it was. Andrew Gorley says, straight lines for hives or staggered lines to avoid hive drift? Definitely staggered, as much as you possibly can. Stagger the hive, stagger the entrances and the way that they face as well. Abdul, should you keep— should you clip your queens? 100% yes, definitely. Biggest change I made in my beekeeping, clipping queens. It is brilliant. Everyone should clip their queens. James Noel says hi from MI 11F. Hi James, nice big pink wave, I like that. Damien Parsons, channel member, says hi mate, looking to get a new breeder queen, any suggestions into where to source? I don't— it's difficult because I can't recommend where I get mine from because they don't sell them. Um, and other places. I've— I might send you an email. I'll send you an email, Damien, or you send me an email, I'll reply back. Uh, Lynn says, Grammy Midwife Suburban, hello, how was Nabi? I'm looking forward to 2025. So sorry, I shouldn't have read that one. Hi, Lynn. Uh, Nicholas Stromberg, channel member, says, I will change from Swedish National frames to medium Langstroth for supers and dating for brood. Okay. that makes, that makes sense to do that change, I guess. Do you do preemptive demary on every hive, and when will you be doing yours this year? So yes, I do a preemptive demary on every hive, and it's not a case of when, it's a case of how big. So full, full brood area, so one brood box full, 2 supers full of bees, and then I go. And it's kind of like, I'll take that as like an average, so I won't say right, one colony that's ready for a demerare and the one next to it isn't, I'll just like roughly average up the apiary. And when I say, right, they're looking good, I'll do the whole apiary regardless. And because it's like economies of scale, there's quite a lot of prep in a demerare in terms of like bringing boxes and stuff. Oh, I'm hopefully getting through a lot of questions today. It's 5 past 10 and I've been going for an hour hour and 37 minutes, so I will do 10 more minutes, maybe 15. If you're enjoying it though, definitely give it a thumbs up because I am knackered. Right, so Ben— no, so Matt says, hi Lawrence, could you talk over the Demerara split and how it works? I'm using commercial and national mix. So Demerara, really, really simple. Easier to watch the video though. You've got a brood box full of bees, queen excluder, and 2 supers. What you do is you take the brood box from the bottom and you place it up on the top, and from that brood— and sorry, start again. Brood box full of bees, 2 supers and a queen excluder. You take the brood box from the bottom and you lift it up above the 2 supers. You put underneath a brand new brood box completely full of foundation, and then from the top brood box, you find the queen on a frame of brood, and you take that one frame of brood with the queen and you put that downstairs into the, like, into the bottom brood box. And then you just take that one frame of foundation and put it up at the top. Go back 8 days later, and in the top brood box there will— might be some emergency or some swarm cells. Take down all the swarm cells, and that's it, it's done. And then the idea is all of the brood from the top box emerges and gravitates back down to where the queen is, and then the top box becomes a super. The bees downstairs think they've swarmed because the queen's, the queen's there and they're on a box of foundation, and they're just like, this is our new home. And then the bees upstairs don't know any, don't know any better, they're just out gathering honey. So it's a brilliant swarm management technique. You trick the bees into thinking that they've swarmed whilst remaining in one colony, and it's one of the only few vertical swarm management techniques in that you're not splitting the bees. So you have horizontal swarm management techniques, which basically you turn one hive into 2 and you say, right, that's an artificial swarm, tricked you, you think you swarmed. But you can't do that indefinitely because you just go from 1 to 2 to 4 to 8. But doing it vertically, i.e., all under one roof, means that you can continually do it and keep just the same number of bees that you've got, and it's very good for honey production as well. Stacy says she's asked a couple of questions tonight. I just want to say thank you as you have been so helpful. Stacy, a series on splitting and still getting honey would be amazing. Feel free to do mine. Yeah, no, I think that's a really good idea. I'm going to add that to my list. Definitely a good one. Damien says, did you pick up a grafting frame rest for the truck looks so handy. So I did, and I was given it for free. It was brilliant. And I will be doing a video on it as well. It's really, really good. Uh, Brian B says, hey Lawrence, it was nice chatting to you at the expo. Yappy said remember to push the record button. Oh, it's just so embarrassing. Like that bit in the video, yeah, at the end of the— the beginning of the Yappy B bit in that video was Yappy saying, do you, uh, you want to push the record button next time? And it was— I'd been speaking to him, we'd recording for like recording for 15 minutes, and I hadn't pushed the record button. And then it was like, it was me turning the interview off and he saw that it came on. It was so embarrassing. And if it wasn't like— it wasn't even the first time that I'd made that mistake. It was like the fourth time that I'd done it at the conference. Really, really embarrassing. But he was very nice about it and gave me loads of good advice and did the interview again, which was brilliant. White Smoke Honey, I love that name. Hey Lawrence, how are you? I really wish you could ship to the United States. I would love to have one of your queens in my beehive. I live out in Miami, Florida. I'm going to see if my beekeepers— and you didn't finish it— Association Club, to see if we could come out, just to see if we could have you come out here. I would love that. I'll definitely, definitely come to Miami, Florida. That sounds amazing. I'll do whatever you want as long as, as long as there's some tea. Um, but yeah, I wish I could send the bees, my queens, to the US as well. We have loads of people inquiring about them, but I don't, I don't think there's a way of doing it, not, not as far as I'm aware. Um, but I'll definitely come to Miami. Hello, Lawrence, from California. I hope you're doing well. Oh, it's good, isn't it? I think the later I get, the more people from the USA coming on board. I, I, I love the fact that I've got like fans in the USA. It's brilliant. I had such a good time out there. Uh, John says, Ed Butler, Whiskey Trail Bees makes the EZ Drone Wrangler. Well done, John. You are— you sort out the admin side of things so well. You are a true asset. Thank you. Right, I'm getting closer, closer to the bottom here. I'm not— I don't know how this happens. No, I am getting closer, right? White Smoke Honey, are you planning on doing any giveaways of polyhide boxes or t-shirts on this channel? So I don't think I can send polyhide boxes to the USA, but I could do t-shirts. So what, like, I was truly inspired by, at Nabi, by the amount of free stuff, and I have been thinking I need to give away some more free stuff. So I've teamed up with Damien at Abello. We're going to give away some bags at the Telford Beekeeping Show, so head over to the Abello stand straight away and you can have a bag. I know it's not much, but it's, it's an Abello slash Black Mountain Honey branded bag. But I was thinking I could do more with, with giveaways. I need to do some more giveaways, but it's good doing it at the show. And I did think t-shirts, t-shirts could be good, but they cost quite a lot, the t-shirts. Like, you know, the t-shirts that I wear, they're like a tenner each. Even if you buy quite a lot, they're like a tenner each. So if I'm gonna get like a thou— I'm not sure I can afford like £10,000 worth of t-shirts to give away. And that's only 1,000. There's like 2,500 people going to be at the beekeeping show. So I was thinking like, what else can I do? I don't just want to give away like a sticker or something like really cheap. But I, I do, I do like the idea of giveaways. So if you think of a good cheap thing that I can give away that's not going to gonna bankrupt me, let me know. Lawrence, getting my first nuc this spring, any advice you can give me? Very much appreciated. Uh, so just make sure you don't let them swarm. That's probably the best advice to give, like get them through the swarming period. Go double brood first year. Double brood generally gets them through the swarming period without them swarming. Because they've just got loads of space. Restricting them in the brood nest and they can go. And I think avoiding swarming in the first year gives you like a good 18 months of learning how to keep bees without having to mess around with swarms. So do everything you possibly can to stop them swarming is my number one bit of advice. Oh, I'm really tired. So I've had such a long day today and, and like since I got back from America, it's literally been non-stop. And the last— well, I was at work yesterday, finished at about 1. We had like a half day on Friday, and then I was just like cutting wood the whole day, felling trees and cutting stuff. And then today I've been doing that all day today. And then tomorrow I've got 5,000 jars of honey to jar, so I'm just gonna be jarring honey all day and then straight back to work. So I'm knackered, but I intend I'm getting to the bottom of these questions on here, but I'm enjoying doing this. Don't, don't worry about me being tired, this is just me moaning. Another quick question, village location for bees or fields? I had them on beans last year and they didn't do very well, so moved into a village for next season. Do you have any preference? So for me, I just like them out the way of people, and in Wales we don't get bumper honey crops, but we get nice, really nice honey in North else. But yeah, not sure about how— like, I wouldn't want them just like around in a village where people could see them. Um, it's just, it's a real pain, I find, like having bees and doing inspections. Like, people just want to watch, and you're just like, you know, just not watch me keep bees because it's quite dangerous. Like, I'm in a big bee suit and you're just standing there with your kids taking pictures. So I just like being out of the way. Uh, Mark Barrow says contemplating going from 14x12 to standard national. I know you regret going to 14x12. Only thing stopping me is extra frames to inspect. Um, so it's, it's definitely— I much prefer standard nationals. The bigger thing for me, the standard nationals though, is, is the nucs, is the nuc sales and being able to combine like swarm management with nuc sales and If you took that element out of it, I think I would have persevered with 14x12s. But it's also the ability to do a Demaray. You just can't do it as easy on a 14x12. But I know a lot of people on double national broods and they don't inspect every single frame. So all they do throughout the season is they just open the 2 boxes, look underneath, and then they say, right, if there's no swarm cells in that gap underneath, I'll treat that as not going to swarm. And that is— that's— it's a good technique, it does work, and it might not be completely foolproof, but it certainly saves a lot of time. How much fondant would the nuc consume in the winter, and would you recommend nucs for honey production, or do you think they would swarm and be difficult to manage? So it, it depends how well they got fed going into winter, but I wouldn't expect a nuc to be taking more than like 2 or 3 kilograms Max, unless like they've not been fed very well. But it can also be deceiving with nucs, like they tend to— you could have loads of stores still left in the frames and they're just eating the fondant. But also, no, definitely wouldn't use nucs for honey production. It's just a faff. They get too tall. JK Photography says, hi Lawrence. Hi Jay. Any thoughts on electric smokers? Great videos from the Bee Expo. So thanks to you, I'm glad you enjoyed enjoyed it. Um, I like the Anel one, it is pretty cool. The other one, I love the smell, I'm like fully addicted to the smell. They do a pine like oil soaked thing that goes in it and it's just like the best smell ever. I do like that one. Right, we're getting to the bottom. Roll on Spring, gonna have— going into my second year with 2 colonies still, both have survived so far and both are still really, really heavy. When you take your first splits, as I want to grow to at least 4 hives. So you can take splits really, really early. I would say first week of May is a good time to take your first splits. Don't do it any earlier than that, but that's a good first time to do it. Is it worth having a top entrance during a nectar flow? Advantage being bees have less distance to cover to supers. Disadvantage would be robbing wasps. Have you noticed any difference in honey yield? I'm not a fan of top entrances and never have been. I just think it's just another thing that can go a little bit wrong, and I don't think you get a huge amount of benefit from it. Um, so no, I've not done lots of tests, but it's not one that I would recommend. I highly recommend the Demaray for swarm prevention and use it here in southern Ohio. This produces big populations, no swarming, and bigger honey production. I couldn't have put it myself. Hi Lawrence, any tips for a maximum honey production year? Last year I concentrated on splits and this year I'd like to do honey. Really enjoy the videos. Cheers, you in Highland Scotland. So I would, I would demarate your colonies. The, the trick, the trick to beekeeping to make honey is to stop swarming. Simple as that. If you, if you get every single colony that you've got, get a good queen in there that is proven to be able to create a decent amount of honey and stop them swarming, you'll get loads of honey. Simple as that. And the, the Demaray is the only, like, the only decent vertical method to keep all of the bees in the same box. So that's, that's the one I would recommend. Uh, Adam Goodall can, can look into shipping to America if you want. Yeah, Adam, that'd be great. There we go, we can— let's ship to America. I'm pretty sure it can't be done. I'm pretty sure there's like export certificates that need to be done, and I'm just, I'm just not sure you're allowed to import that many queens in there. If we do find a way to do it, we'll probably need a distributor. So if you want to be US distributor for Black Mountain Honey Queens, we need you. Thank you for answering all of the rough questions. Andrew in South Wales, my pleasure. Thank you for coming along and asking so many questions. Jean, thank you so much for your advice. Hi Lawrence, I have to go away for a wedding at the end of May for 2 weeks. What can I do to avoid swelling in that period? So the Demaray is perfect for that. Yeah, so you need to time it well. So if you're going away for 2 weeks, 9 days before you go away, do the Demaray. 8 days after the Demaray, go and take the swarm cells down, and that will give you 2 weeks like You'd be very, very unlucky. Don't just do the demeray and not take the swarm cells down eight days later, but do the demeray eight days later, take the swarm cells down, and then on that day go away for two weeks, come back. I'll be very surprised if your bees have swarmed. David McDowell says, "Picking up my adjustable galvanized hive stand in February from the Abello stand at the convention here in N.I. Any discount codes for me?" I think I think they already gave you a discount code for the. Convention, didn't they? If you've if you paid full price for it, then message me. I'll give you a discount code. But I'm pretty sure they've already they've already either discounted discounted it on the site or you've used the discount code. But there was one. There was it was like eleven percent I think for the for the convention in the night. But you'll like it. It's brilliant stand. Jim Martin. Hey, don't want the Yankees stealing our BMH Black Mountain Honey Bloody Colonial spray. I don't mind, there's enough to go around. Hey Lawrence, do you use invert syrup spring and fall, or do you use different feeds at different times of the year? Thanks for your videos, much appreciated. So yes, good question. I don't. I use 1:1 sugar syrup in spring, which I make myself. So 1 kilogram of sugar to 1 liter of water, do like a cold mix and use that in the spring. And then in the, in the like autumn, the fall, I use use invert sugar syrup, like a proprietary mix, which is great. Matt says, having bees in the garden, how do they react to grass cutting? I don't like bees in the garden, and some colonies are okay, like Buckfast's generally pretty decent. But yeah, just don't keep bees in the garden. I would not, uh, not like it. Yeah, I think Lynn's kind of put to bed any of that. 1920 or '21 that the US Agricultural Department banned importation of bees. I, I do think you're right. I'm pretty sure I read something though that someone was— there was something like ex— you can export stuff. I don't know, it's getting too late. I think you're right. JK's just absolutely wiped me out here with a £10 bonus. Thank you so much. Um, that's very generous, really appreciate it. You always give nice bonuses on here, it's very kind. Um, Anybody else, you can just hit the like button. I take likes as tips. That's brilliant, thank you so much. But yeah, JK, I really appreciate that. You've got a question in there as well. What's the earliest you can feed bee syrup? So you can feed bee syrup anything above like 12 degrees, and early syrup feeding really does make a massive difference to building up that colony. Make sure there's not like loads of stores left over. If you've got a colony full of stores and you're feeding them syrup, syrup, you're not going to do any— anything other than damage. But if, if you've got a colony full of bees and you're giving them like a nice light 1:1 sugar syrup feed early in the year and they've got space for it, then go for it. Anything above 12 degrees, I wouldn't be going and doing it in middle of February though. I would wait until kind of mid to back end of March at the absolute earliest, probably April, early April to be on the safe side. Um, but yeah, thank you, you're always very kind with your bonuses, it's great. Love the bee and comb light in the background, it's cool, isn't it? I like that, thank you very much. And yeah, we're going to finish the stream here. Yappy Beeman coming over. I do look a bit cold, I've got my Dirt Rooster hat on. We've been talking about my failed interview with you as well, um, but you're just stopping in for a minute to say hello, so thank you very much. Hello, um, and you've come at a brilliant time yet because we are done. We're an hour and 53 minutes in and everyone's finished and, and dying off and dropping like flies. But thank you so much. I love these live streams. I love everybody coming in, answering the questions, asking the questions even. And I've answered a lot of questions there, uh, probably not very good, but I hope you've enjoyed it. I will be back very soon. I'm trying to do these kind of at least once every 2 weeks, but regularly throughout the season. I'm going to go there though because I'm absolutely shattered. I really enjoyed it though. Best of luck for all of you in your beekeeping season. I'm going to finish my tea. I hope you all have a good night.