Black Mountain Honey: Let's Talk Bees with Laurence Edwards - Episode 52
Laurence Edwards answers beekeeping questions on winter management, varroa treatment, and honey extraction. He uses Apivar in August and oxalic acid in late November, prefers invert syrup for feeding, and is experimenting with Mini Plus mating hives.
Chapters
That was all. I did not know that the stream had started, but I am trying to make my camera work. Oh man! I'm going round and round and round in circles with this camera, so I do apologize. I think I've got it fixed now. I do think I've got it fixed now. So let me jump into the comments. Let's have a look. I don't think anyone's actually even here yet, so let's have a little. play around with the private chat and the comments. There we go. But can someone confirm that they can hear me? That would be good. And can someone else confirm— has to be someone different— that I'm not like jittery and that the feed is not freezing? That'd be really, really helpful. And then in the meantime, I'll just answer some beekeeping questions. So if anyone's got a question, you can ask it in the comments. I can see Paul from Denby Honey is there. I'm just trying to do this test. I need to get back into the swing of things doing my live streams every 2 weeks. I just want to make sure that the camera's working right. I've been going round and round and round in circles with it. I'm really struggling, but I think I've nailed it now. The problems, problems that I had before, definitely something to do with the USBs, definitely something to do with the cables, definitely something to do with the camera, definitely something to do with sending too high bitrate videos. But I'm not a technical person. It was working before, wasn't it? It was working fine with this camera, and I went to the other camera and it wasn't working. let's, let's just assume that it is working. So if it doesn't, if it starts freezing and I'm kind of like, and then you can still hear it in the background, definitely stick it in the comments and let me know. But I'm just doing this as a test. So if anyone has any questions, stick them in the comments. Let's talk about what we're doing bee-wise at the moment. It's, oh, it comes thick and fast at this time of the year. As soon as you get past Christmas, for me, I get very, very— not worried because I love it all, but just a little bit overwhelmed with everything that I haven't done. I'm And I kind of think like September, October, November, December. I think I've got plenty of time left. It's all right. Let's just get to Christmas. And then I get through Christmas. And sorry, this comment here has properly thrown me, Liam. Bloody freezing. Is it cold freezing or is the stream freezing? Let's hope that it is cold freezing. Um, but I get through, I get through Christmas and start up in January, and I just, I've not done everything that I need to do. And then I've not got enough time to do everything, to make frames, to clean boxes, to sterilize stuff, to get nucs all sorted. So I just have to prioritize what I'm doing. Aha, like Liam's saying, it is cold. So yeah, it's worthwhile having a shout out in terms of how cold it is at the moment. And I've realized as well, I love the cold. Like, I'm a big massive fan of very, very cold weather. I don't like slushy cold. I don't like 2 degrees cold and rain, definitely don't like that, but it was down to like -10 here the other night and I went out to let Jasper out at kind of 4 in the morning or whenever it was he barked. I quite enjoy that like real cold, dry cold, and a lot of places in the world get that and in Wales it just rains all the time, so I've really, really enjoyed it being like quite like a real brisk coldness. Right, here we go, let's answer some questions then. So Liam G says, hi Laurence, how often should I check my bees for fondant in winter, etc.? So for me, I don't feed my bees fondant if I can get away with it. So my plan is always feed them up with syrup. Last few feeds I use invert syrup, and then all I'm ever doing in the winter is just going and hefting the hive, and I know what good feels like in terms of weight, I know what bad feels like, so all I'm doing is just lifting them up to check. Now if you're feeding fondant, the first question I'd ask is, is there any reason for feed— is there any reason for feeding fondant? or is it like an insurance thing? And if it's an insurance thing, then all I would do is just every time you go there, just have they got any left? Take off the lid, is there any left? If not, put some more on. I don't do that anymore because I found it was making a bit of a mess. I think it tires the bees out trying to process it. They will prioritize it a lot of the time over their own feed, so kind of like it feels like you need to keep on feeding them because they keep on eating it, and then you go in in the spring and they've just got 10 frames full of stores, and it really constricts the growth because there's not enough space in there. So How often should you check your bees for fondant? I would say if they— like, the reason that I feed fondant is that it's an emergency feed. So if I go in, I lift up a box that I fed with syrup and they're dangerously light, then I will— I get like a little bit, a little bit worried about it. I've just noticed that Ian, Canadian Beekeepers Blog, is coming. Good morning! I always miss your comments, Ian, so thanks for stopping by. You are very, very close to 100,000 subscribers and I do love your videos, so there we go. Good to see you here. But what was I saying? If you're, if you're going in and feeding emergency feed for fondant, then it's an emergency. So I would say, how often do you need to go in and check them? I'd be checking them every week, every single week if it's an emergency, and I would just make sure there's always fondant on there. I wouldn't let them finish the piece of fondant that they've got. I'd wait until it gets down to like 10 or 20% of that fondant, just put another piece on, just keep on putting another piece on. If it's emergency feeding, then you need to do it. And Mem has just confirmed that I'm still freezing up. That's not good. I need to figure out another way. I really don't want to downgrade the camera. Oh, let's carry on for a bit, see how we're getting on. Can you do a video with the new Mini Plus mating hive showing queen rearing using a starter finisher hive as one? So 100%, I'm going to do that this year. I'm really excited to start using some of these Mini Plus. I'm not going to change out all my hives for it because I just think when you There's always like something better, something a little bit better, iteratively better than what you've got. And you can't just, you can't just swap everything out and change over to it. But I will start integrating some of those kind of clickable frames in there to give me the flexibility to use them. But I've got, you know, I've got a few of them now. Damien sent me some, so I will do some videos showing how cool they are. I'm very, very excited about that. Should be good. Right, let's see if we've got any other questions in there. Uh, Kerno says, hey dude, looking forward to receiving my Langstroth nuc from you. I followed your guidelines on early treatment in August. Recently I did my first sublimation. What would be a typical Varroa count? Hmm, I really don't get too caught up on the Varroa counts. If you want like guidelines, I'd go on the NBU website and they'll show you the, the specific Varroa counts that you should be achieving at certain times of the year, and then they'll give you thresholds for kind of how many Varroa per inch you should be seeing when you do a drop. But you know what, it's not accurate and it's not a perfect science. The only way to get a perfect understanding of how many varroa are in your colony is to do like an alcohol wash. So you're taking X amount of bees and putting them in an alcohol wash and shaking it, and like all the bees get killed, but then you get the exact amount of varroa that are on those bees. Wouldn't, wouldn't be confident giving you information on like varroa counts in terms of a drop. which I think most people would use, but you can use it as like a bit of an indication to see what's going on. So if you've got a colony that's never, that's never been, um, treated before and you go in and do like an OA drop or an OA vape and then you see like a huge drop, you know it's been effective. But that's kind of all the only reason I would be looking at it like that. Um, right, let's have a look here. Similarly, Ian, I love your logo. I do. Uh, I am very, very fond of my My neon light up there. It's pretty cool, isn't it? I'm thinking about getting another one as well. It looks nice. It looks nicer in the nighttime. I wonder what time it is in Canada. I swear it's like ridiculously early in Canada. What are you doing watching watching streams at this time, Ian? Or have I got my have I got my geography wrong? Maybe maybe it is just like Sunday morning chill in Canada. It is two p.m. in the UK time at the moment. Right, let's jump back up to here. So Mark Farmer says, "Hi mate, when do you start treating for mites?" So for me in the UK, my system—I say my system—not my system. The system that I use is. Honey harvest, middle of August. I then treat from the middle of August with Apivar, 8 weeks, and then when the final feed comes up around early to mid-October, take the strips out, and then I do an oxalic acid vape mid to back end of November. That's my— they're the 2 treatments that I use. If I have any colonies that are really struggling, I will do another Apivar round in early Feb to make sure that it's out before the supers, but like I can't remember the last time I had to do that. Once I've moved over to this early treatment in August, the bees seem to respond quite well to both of those. What kind of winter are you guys seeing across the UK this season so far? So it's like I couldn't get a worse person to kind of try and feel sorry for me here because it's the coldest winter I can remember maybe in the last like 6 or 7 years, and it's dipped down overnight to -10 degrees Celsius, which is probably like tropical for, for what you get in Canada. I've seen, I've seen your videos and it is just next level cold. But normally what we get in the UK— December was very warm, I think it was the warmest December on record. Very often going outside and it's, you know, 12, 13 degrees C, which I don't know what that is in Fahrenheit, maybe like 50 or 60. That is, I am trying to work that out in my head, but I'm not very good at the conversion. But then it has been very, very cold over winter and it's a much drier kind of fiercer cold than it normally is. Normally if we get snow, you'll get like a couple of days of snow and then the next day you'll get rain and it just washes it all away. But we have had a solid week of like real icy cold weather going down proper minus temperatures overnight and it's just not thawing. But we're at the end of it now, so it's, it's been a nice cold winter. But I do, I do think like a nice sharp cold winter that's not kind of like toing and froing and going up and down, it's probably better for the bees. I don't think the bees are too keen when it's just warm in December and then cold in January and then warm again in December. Ives, you okay? I'm just gonna get my skates. You can come up and get them, yeah, yeah, that's cool. My little girl has got her friend over and she's getting her skates. You come say hi? No. You do? Oh, okay, completely, completely let down by Ivy, she's not, not keen anymore. I want to know how cold it is where you are at the moment, Ian. I'm going to guess like— oh, hey, what are you doing? Uh, right, you're gonna go down now? Is everyone coming on the live stream? Right, Ellen, Ellen, can you just— I just need assistance, I need some urgent assistance. Right, this is not planned, this was not planned. Right, Clara, what are you doing? No, seriously, you've got to go down. Right, there we go. That was not planned. There we go, real life at Hendrafoyle. Right, let's get back to next question. So David says, watching Bob Binney and Fred Dunn talk about queen excluders, they say it definitely slows honey production. Do you think the lack of bee space on the plastic ones is an issue? I have to say, I've never, never experienced that. Chloe, you need to go down, you You need to go down. Yeah, she's coming now. You see people say that they're not kind of like honey excluders— no, sorry, yeah, not queen excluders, honey excluders, aren't they? But I've never, never experienced that myself, and I think if you've got a nice big strong colony of bees, then they work their way through the queen excluders. I have to say, you've got a good point there. She's telling everyone to leave the booth. I do think the ones with the bee space make it easier for the bees, and I do like the wire, the wire queen excluders as well. They're definitely my preference. They're quite a lot more expensive, but the wire-framed ones, so the wire ones with the frames, I think allow the bees to move around a little bit better. But I've never had any issue in terms of slowing down honey production, but it is on the list for a video this year. I'm going to do 2 colonies, I'm going to go single brood, I'm going to have one with the queen excluder, one without a queen excluder, same genetic queen, they're F1, but they'll be about as close as they can possibly be without me using artificially inseminated queens. And we'll do an experiment and we'll see which one gets more honey, and we'll see which one is more of a pain to extract. Because not putting queen excluders in, what I found is you just get this chimney effect where all of the bees just kind of do whatever they want, and they just seem to put the brood in the middle, like all the way up. And then when you come to do your extraction and you come to try and harvest your honey, it's a right old pain. So I'd probably prioritize easier harvests for slightly less honey, but I don't think it makes a huge, huge amount of difference. Very kind of you, John, he's linked the MBU Varroa page added to the No Nonsense Beekeeping page on Facebook. Good deal, that would be good for the bees, fingers crossed, they're looking, they're looking very good at the moment. A few people saying hi, so we've got John saying hello to Ivy, John Denham saying hi to me, hello John. Julian Bucknell saying, are those Varroa? I think I've missed, I've missed that bit, Julian. What are we talking about there? I'm sorry. Yeah, so bombarding my kids, it wasn't planned. I went and locked the door and said, I'm just gonna, just gonna do a quick, quick stream, quick 15-minute stream. We're 15 minutes in already, but yeah, bombarded. I used excluders for the first time this year and made the most honey I've ever made. Do you like metal better? I'm definitely gonna have to do the video on this. I do, I do like metal better. I, I I did some experiments before without using excluders because you do see it is a widely discussed topic of honey excluders, people saying don't use queen excluders because you exclude the honey, but I've just never experienced it myself and I don't know a single bee farmer in the UK that doesn't use a queen excluder. I think that the bigger one as well is that when you start factoring in the other stuff from not using a queen excluder, like the work that's involved on a larger scale, it becomes quite apparent that using a queen excluder gives you loads more benefits and advantages. So let's say you lose 10 or 20% of the honey, but then your comb in your supers can last for 20 or 30 years, as opposed to having to change it out every 3 years if you've had brood created in it, because then the wax moth get in, it starts going dark, you need to constantly replace it. You've got issues with Apivar if you're using kind of any Amitraz-based products, and you're tainting the wax that you've got. I just find a system of keeping separate, having supers for honey and brood boxes just for brood. I think it really does make things a lot easier when it's a little bit easier to manage. Kerno, I do apologize if I'm saying your name wrong, just you'll have to phonetically tell me in the comments how to say it. He says, I recently watched Gwyneth Griffiths' Wainwright video. He uses a New Zealand machine needling method to reduce wax loss. Are you considering this uncapping method in the future. So a lot of people use needlers. I did when I bought my uncapping machine. I thought maybe I'll just get a needler because we do, do like a reasonable amount of heather honey, not, not crazy amounts, but maybe, you know, 50 to 70 supers a year, something like that, which is quite— it's like a fair amount but nothing compared to the bee farmers. And I was struggling with the needler because I had like a manual needling machine and then a tangential cage basket extractor, and whilst it works, it's really laborious, like proper, proper difficult and time-consuming work to put it in each one, use the needler, put it into the cage basket, and then spin it. So I've moved back to pressing it now because I used to press it out in a hydro press, and the hydro press was brilliant. So that's what I'm doing going forward. So that was the reason I didn't buy the automatic needling machine. They're really expensive as well, I think about 15 grand, but they work very, very well. And then the other one is that we, we get through quite a lot. We quite like the wax cappings because then we'll just render them down and then exchange it in because we get through tons and tons of foundation. So for me, the wax, um, the wax is actually like a useful commodity that we used to trade in for our nucs. So I wouldn't want to go with just a needler without taking off that wax first. And then if you're taking off the wax first, you don't necessarily need the needler unless you're using New Zealand. Sorry, unless you're going for heather honey. I'm reading something and then just talking it there. Right, let's go next question. John has added the link to the live also in No-Nonsense Beekeeping. Thank you, John. Talking about using Apivar in February if needed, would you ever use OA instead as the cheaper option? Though yes, you need to do multiple blasts to get all the mites. So perfectly acceptable use for it. I would just say oxalic acid, even with multiple blasts, I don't think it's quite as effective as, as Amitraz, and it's a lot more work. That's all I would say is it really is a lot more work. But I know, I know a number of people that will do that. I do get a bit worried sometimes about oxalic acid. Do you know, it's one of those things where like you've got the proper mask on with the organic gas vapors and you're doing it and you just, you get a bit come to your face and go, oh, it's not, it's not nice stuff. And I, I sometimes worry about like the harm that it's doing, like not necessarily to the bees because they seem to be able to cope with it quite well, but to the humans, to the beekeepers. And I don't want to do multiple blasts because I just think, well, I'm upping the exposure. So I just, once a year I'm happy to do it, brand new organic gas vapors each time, make sure it's on nice and tight, gloves, eye protection, everything, and just go quickly go around blasting them all. I like to do it on a really windy day as well. Windy day is great because the bees generally don't fly, so you get a higher drop because most of the bees are in there. So you're going to get more of those phoretic mites. And then if you, if you line yourself up with the wind, I kind of like have the wind coming behind me and blowing back like that, then any vape just goes whoosh away from you as opposed to kind of lingering and then getting stuck in. Don't like OA, but I do use it. Like, it is, it is apibioxal, of course, just easier to say. oxalic acid for everybody else in the world who can use the right stuff. Sam here from Kenya, love your picture, very good, seen that picture before. John says, add a third, so this is for the series, add a third with a plastic excluder with no wooden frame, gives you 3 points of reference, nice idea. Daniel says, new beekeeper, spoke to you on Friday, keep up the great videos, Dan from Hampshire, cheers Dan, thank you very much. Richard R. Bryner Jr. says, bee happening, Hello to you too. Canadian Beekeeper says, I agree, when using the queen excluder properly, they're very useful. I quit using plastic because they warp and stick, but they are lighter weight. Yeah, I, I like, I, I like the plastic ones because they're very, very cheap, but I just think, like, in, in your kind of operation, you know the score. When you start getting things failing, you want to invest the money on something that's just going to be much, much easier to clean. And I do think With the wire-framed ones, so much easier to clean, 'cause you can get the scraper in there, scrape everything off, and then you can just give it a go over with the blowtorch and they don't warp at all. Whereas the plastic ones, if you're trying to dip them or do anything like that, they start to warp and they are a bit of a nightmare. But they are like, what, over here, 20% of the price? You probably pick them up in bulk for like £3 each. And then the wire-framed ones are like £12 to £15 each. So quite a lot more. Jay says, just popped in to say hi, back to work but home Tuesday. I hope your fish tank is back up and running. I look forward to seeing how that's going. Hi Lawrence, what would you do about dripping fondant? So dripping fondant, I always find dripping— I hate to say this, like give people bad news, but I do find dripping fondant is generally an indication that there is something wrong with your colony of bees, and the, the thing that is generally wrong is that it's a failing queen. And like, that's anecdotal evidence. You might not have a failing queen, but I find if you've got a big, you've got a nice healthy queen, big strong colony of bees, and you put fondant on there, the bees clear up the drips before you even ever see them. Whereas if you go in and you're seeing dripping fondant, it means that there's not enough bees to clear it up. And that's kind of like UK-based advice. If you're somewhere where it's freezing cold, the bees might not be moving, but then you wouldn't really get dripping fondant. So what I generally find is if you're going in, you're finding dripping fondant, you come to the spring and you find a drone laying queen 80 or 90% of the time. So what would I do about it? Absolutely nothing. Just kind of cross your fingers. I wouldn't be going and poking around. I wouldn't try and clear it up. But just, yeah, generally when I see dripping fondant, it's a sign that something is not good. Nice caps, cool cap in it, this one. Do you know what's even better than— it's better than my hair. Look at that, that's come out quite well actually. My hair at the moment is just— look at that. Proper, proper mess. So we wear a cap to hide the hair. Two Bee Brats Honey, any— was that Northeast Pennsylvania? Does that get that right? He says good morning. Good morning to you too. David says gonna do cut comb honey this year. What's best? Can't decide to go for sections, old school, or just the cut comb in plastic containers. Less faff with sections, surely. So I saw you posted that on one of the, one of the sites. Was it the Nonsense Beekeeping site? quite like the Ross Rounds when you get them to work, but I really, really don't like the Ross Rounds in terms of like the plastic that's there. When I went to the North American Honeybee Expo— I've got my cap— they had some different ones out there which have not made their way over here yet, some other kind of like square or rectangular plastic sections. I forget what they're called. Someone, someone from America will know them because I think they're pretty common out there, but I'd like to give those a go. But I've, I've moved I've moved completely away from doing any sections at all because I don't think the market's very good for them, especially in the UK. Like, if you take them to a farmer's market and you show people them, you get them to taste them, then you can maybe do quite well. But I just, I try and do everything to make my life as easy as possible, and making sections, difficult, difficult to get them all drawn out, even with kind of wooden English sections or Ross rounds. And then cut combs loads easier. Just use thin unwired foundation, and then you can kind of cut it up into plastic, plastic containers, or you can put it into jars. What I would say, if you don't like the plastic containers, that when we were looking at this, what we were going to use— they do aluminium, um, like little trays. Look, I think it's the Scottish Bee Company that does it. I've got like feedback coming through. Where's that come from there? Here we go. Yeah, there we go. I have my— we've got like CCTV in the house for the children and stuff, and it was on up there. That could have been awkward, couldn't it? Uh, where were we? Yeah, so I think it's a Scottish beer company. They have these aluminium, uh, trays with like a lid and a clear see-through lid, and then they're sprayed with this like food-grade lubricant or something, which I know sounds a bit like the food-grade lubricant, but it means that you're not getting— it's not being tainted by the aluminium. So I would go with something like that, and I think it would be, I think it would be pretty cool. That's what, that's what I would recommend, go with cut comb. And then the beauty of cut comb is that once you, you know, you can kind of extract the honey out as well, or you can press it out using like a hydropress, or you can press it out using a wax capping screw press. Kind of gives you a few options, but it's, yeah, it's the most tricky of all the honeys, I would say. Uh, Denny Rays B says, hey Lawrence. Hello to you too. Uh, Kernow is the Cornish name for Cornwall, by the way. Oh, and I'm pronouncing it correctly. Excellent. Okay, so Kernow, there we go. Kernow Physio. I got that one right. I won't forget, I won't forget the pronunciations. Um, my pleasure, happy to give advice. Hope— hopefully it's decent. Uh, says, oh, a new podcast. Unfortunately I'm at work, so we'll listen tomorrow when walking the dogs. Have a great afternoon. Oh, shout out for Nigel when you come back to listen. Hello, thanks for supporting us. Do you think your colonies are broodless or do they mostly brood all winter? So I've had loads of questions from people about this previously, saying like, when, when is best? So over here it used to say like, if you're going to do oxalic acid as a treatment, what people would say is do it around Christmas, around Christmas time, maybe into the new year, early January. And a couple of years ago I thought, I'm not sure that my bees are broodless at that point, so I went in a couple of years ago and did some tests and I say test, I just, I opened up some colonies because you wouldn't do this in Canada, but in the UK, like in December, it can be like 12, 13, 14 degrees C, like pretty warm. You can, you could do a full inspection at that point. So I went through some colonies at that point in the year and found loads of brood, kind of like around Christmas time. I would say 90% of the colonies around that time had a significant amount of brood in, maybe, you know, maybe just like a fist-sized on a couple of frames, and then a couple of frames, maybe like half a frame of brood. Not loads, but 2 or 3 frames with a good amount of capped brood on. So it got me thinking, why are we treating with oxalic acid when there's brood in there? Like, we're trying to target this broodless period. So I went back the following year and just started looking in the colonies from like October through to December to try and work out roughly when was, or if there was, a broodless period. And I found out for us in North Wales, and it will be like hyper-local, I guess, this, but it— for us in North Wales, it was around kind of like— it ranged from early to the end of November, which was when they went and had a real, like, hunkered down and didn't have any brood. So I started doing my oxalic acid treatment around then. So this year I did it mid to back end of November. So I do think, I do think we do still get a brood break, and you speak to other people and they're saying they get a brood break as well, but I think it's just, it's way shifted to the left now. And anytime kind of from December onwards, I do think they start to rear a little bit of brood. And especially as soon as you get like the longer days going, that's it, there's brood in all of the colonies. Because like my colonies that mostly in poly, it's 8, 9, 10 degrees outside, you know how warm they're going to keep it on the inside. And they're, yeah, they're firing away loads of brood by that point. By the way, I've just registered on the MBUB base. I feel all official now. I would highly recommend anybody who's not done that to do that as soon as possible. Very helpful. Mark B says, hi Lawrence, hope all is well with you. I have, uh, I have 2 of your queens from August in nucs. I'd like to build them up for the heather to get a good crop of honey this year. What's the best approach? So this is going to sound like the biggest upsell in the world, and I promise you it is not meant as an upsell. What I have found with, with going to the heather is you want to take the youngest possible queens to the header. You want queens that are 6 weeks old, 6 to 8 weeks old, something like that. You basically want the youngest possible queen in there and the most amount of bees in there. So I'd— what I would— like I say, this isn't an upsell, this is genuine advice. So if you've got bees there at the moment, you're overwintering them, I would make a split from them, like April, middle of April, back end of April, something like that. 6-frame split and put a new queen in. So buy a brand new queen and put that queen in and build that colony up. And there goes the signal. So that's, that's not worked. That was not supposed to happen. All right, so I think I'm still here. I'll carry on talking. I do not know what's going on. Oh, I think that might be the— I've actually just used all of the video up. Yeah, I've used my battery up. Sorry everyone, I'm gonna have to call it a day there. Or we could just go to the other camera. Let's try that. Yeah, let's do that. Oh, you saw the dirtiness behind it down here. Let's have a look. Where's that camera? You come, come for the beekeeping advice and stay for the poor technology and cameras. I can't find where the camera is. This is brilliant. This is brilliant. Right, here we go. I found it. That's upside down. It's not as glamorous, is it? It's just like it's just nowhere near as good that one. But we'll finish it off like this. There we go. Oh, sorry about that, everyone. That wasn't the camera going wrong. That was me not charging. the camera up. So it wouldn't, it wouldn't be a No Nonsense Beekeeping stream unless there was a technical glitch. So what I was saying is build, build the colonies up and then use those 2 splits to take them to the heather. The heather is notoriously difficult on the bees, really, really hard on them, and you want nice young queens that are incredibly prolific and can keep going and build up when you get any losses. Anyone wondering what that is? It's just a light. So yeah, that is what I would do, and I think that will work well. Well, I'm going to fire through the rest of these questions because I think I've got to go out in a little bit. All right, Ben Wood says, my bees have spent the last 3 weeks at -6 to -15 degrees, hive is a little light, due to get 10 degrees this week coming, can I feed invert bee syrup to them to help them out? So I wouldn't with it being so cold and the fact that it might go cold again. In, in that instance, if the hive is a little light, I would feed them fondant, upturned polyatypal feeder or a super, put the fondant directly on the frames and then insulate over the top, keep it nice and warm, and it should be good. Hey Lawrence, good day from New York. Good day to you too, hope all is well in New York. If we kill by treating 90% of the varroa, aren't we just leaving the strongest varroa and creating bees less able to tackle them on their own? P.S., I treat. It's like, I think the varroa will multiply like that anyway, that they'll always be able to kind of self-select for the strongest ones. And I would say you're looking at more what's the impact on the bees. Are they going to do well with 100% of the varroa there and trying to let the bees work out the best way to deal with it, or are they going to do better with just the 10% of the strongest varroa there? I'd always prefer to have just the 10% of the strongest varroa there. I don't think treatments like oxalic acid is, is something that the varroa can like evolve against. It's very harsh and it, you know, burns them, burns their hands off and stuff like that. They can't— you're not going to get varroa that magically don't have their hands and feet burnt off by, um, oxalic acid. So I don't know, I don't think it's, I don't think it's an issue. Hi Lawrence, do you get any oilseed rape where you are? I do, but this is my first year that I've ever had honey that has gone really, really solid and jar. Any tips as to what to do with it? So we do, we do get oilseed rape near us. I like oilseed rape honey. I like the benefits of oilseed rape on my bees as well in terms of rapid spring expansion. You just got to be careful with it. You've got to get it off early, you've got to get it off before they cap it, and you can just do the shake test. So you go in, I go in mid to back end of May, basically take all of the honey off, and as long as it doesn't shake out of the frames, you're good to go, you can take it. and then you keep it in the bucket and make soft-set honey out of it, either with a creamer or with like a drill bit, and then it shouldn't go too rock solid in the jars. Hi Lawrence, have you ever had a problem with farmers spraying crops near any of your apiaries? So luckily for us in North Wales, we don't have crops. We literally do not have a single crop apart from maybe a bit of oilseed rape, but so it's said that, which they don't really spray up here anyway, but no, so I've never had, I've never had the problem up here, but I know other people do, and it's not ideal. Some farmers are good and they'll alert people, but it's difficult to alert everyone, like within flying distance there might be hundreds of beehives there, so it's a difficult one. I'd hate to have my colonies wiped out by poisoning from insecticides, it'd be really, really bad. Hello, Danny's Bees, how you doing? I do have a cup of tea here, so I might have a quick sip of that. Trevor Moore says hello from North Leicestershire. Hi to you too, Trevor. Dunny's Bees says, I've tried one of the hive beats in one of my hives, a Christmas present. When it was -4, the edge of the cluster was showing 30 degrees. It's now 4 degrees and the cluster is registering at 24 degrees. I would, I would say there is some sort of anomaly there, or the cluster has moved away from where your sensor is. I like the idea of these kind of sensors and stuff, but they're they are expensive, and I've seen the high-beat ones, like, they're sold on the premise that they're gonna save you time and money and swarming and stuff like that. Like I say, I'd like to have one, and I think I will get one at some point just to take a look at it, but oh, I'd never like to put too much faith in one. I know, sorry. At least I've got a backup camera on this time, so we're good. Oh bro, I want to start beekeeping, but I'm from India and I want to buy bees. In which month should I buy, and should I buy a nuc? Difficult for me to give advice in terms of Indian beekeeping, I'm afraid, just because I don't fully understand, or understand at all, the seasons out there as to when it's the best to buy them, so I'll have to pass on that one, I'm afraid. It can hear you but blank screen, sorry. So we'll fix that, that was the battery that died this time. Do you know, I have to say, this test has gone quite well. The only thing I forgot to do was put a fresh battery in, and I need to put the USB in as well to make sure that it's It's still charging, but it's not freezing anymore. Hopefully we've got a way forward. Very happy. Steen. This is another guy who I've been mispronouncing his name for absolutely ages, but I remembered it's Steen. There we go. He says, hi Lawrence, I haven't treated my bees with oxalic acid yet. I know I'm very late. What would you do? I was thinking of treating now and again in 2 weeks' time. So it's a really good point, this one, because I'm saying you're too late now. You should have done it middle of November. But just because you're too late doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. Doing it, like, better late than never is what they say, isn't it? And it is very, very true when it comes to oxalic acid. So definitely get out there, do it as soon as you can. You don't want it too cold, you don't want to do it when it's like 0 or 1 degree, you want to do it when the bees are not flying but as active as possible. So like 8 or 9 degrees is very, very good. You want them moving, loose cluster but not flying, and then If you're going to do multiple vapes, though, you need to do it 5 days apart. If you do it anything less than that or anything more than that, then it's, it's not as good because you're trying to work with the reproductive cycle of the mites in terms of like going down underneath the cappings, reproducing, coming back up again. And if you, if you change it away from 5 days, you're not working with that reproductive cycle. So do it every 5 days and be quite, quite strict with that, and then it should be good. Uh, Twitch, I love it. I've got like 2 people now on Twitch smashing it over there. 2, maybe 3 people watching on Twitch. Brilliant. We can get to 4, I reckon, one day. Uh, Ian, Ian was enjoying that. It was not— that was not planned. Um, but there we go, my daughter and her friend coming in and taking over the stream. Right, says, what are your thoughts? Been dropping a degree every few hours. They have plenty of food. This is one of my strongest colonies. So I would just say I, I reckon they've just moved. They've moved away from where the sensor is, is what I'm saying. Definitely within that cluster is going to be more than 24 degrees, without a doubt. Rednificent says, gotta make fondant now, it's so damn cold. Gotta get on it. Julian says, what would, what would your next extraction equipment be after centrifugation and uncapping tray, 30 colonies? Oh, that's a good question. So got— you got your— you've got a nice big Extractor, you've got an uncapping tray. So I would say probably the next one for me would be a bottling machine, like a jarring machine, because I think it's either that or something to process the wax. But you can process the wax pretty easily without a big piece of kit, so I wouldn't, I wouldn't get an Appy Melter or a Mellow Flow because limited in what you can do. They're really, really useful. I think when you get to a big scale, you need some sort of way to melt that stuff down. But on a smaller scale, oh yeah, I love my bottling machine. I kind of think about it, I look in my honey extraction room, I think, what could I do without? And I sold loads of the stuff because I thought, I don't use that, I don't use that. I sold my sump, I sold my extra tank, I sold my pump because I didn't use them. I love my creaming machine because it doubles up as a bottling, like, tank as well. But I think I'd probably sell that before the bottling machine. The bottling machine would be the last one to go. It really does make a massive, massive difference, that one. And then, so, so what I definitely wouldn't buy is I wouldn't buy an uncapping machine, because uncapping machines are brilliant. I love my uncapping machine, but if I was just on, on 30 colonies, I'd just use a knife. And you probably spend a few extra hours doing it, it doesn't make a huge amount of difference. at that level. But then when it comes to jarring, like 30 colonies is a decent amount of honey, and I just found jarring took so long. I just— oh, trying to jar out of like a tank like that, it was just not good fun, and I wasn't very good at it. And you had to try and kind of like calibrate your hand to get the weights correct, and then you'd always be a little bit under, and then you're trying to put a little bit more in, and then you get the drip on it, and it was just a nightmare. Whereas a bottling machine does away with all of that, and it's just Very, very good. So that would probably be that would probably be my next one. Yeah, bottling machine. Rednificent says, "Yeah, oxalic acid leaves behind the ten luckiest mites, not the strongest." That's a very good point as well. When you're doing oxalic acid, it's just the mites that are inside underneath the cappings that are the the ones that are not going to die. The rest of them, the phoretic mites that are living on the bees, they're all going to die. So the selection isn't necessarily the selection against the ones that are able to withstand. oxalic acid. It's just the luck of the draw in terms of the ones that are under the cappings at the time. I agree, Lawrence. Oilseed rape canola in Canada is best to have harvested on time, then prepared as a creamed product. Your customers will rave about it. It's, it's, you know, a couple of points there. So I love oilseed rape honey. It's what is definitely one of my favorites. It's very sweet. I love that texture. And if you can get it right, I don't think it's something that I've fully mastered just yet. But if you can get the texture right, then I think that texture is the best of all honeys. And whenever we do like farmers markets and we get people to taste the creamed all-seed honey, they really, really like it. So I think you're right on that. What's really interesting though is when I went— I've got my hat on again— when I went to Narby, they had— have you seen the pressurized ones? You've probably got one of these, Ian. That it's, um, so instead of just having like a churning machine like that, it was flipped on its side and then it was It was churned at like a really high pressure, and I bought a jar of the honey and I use it as my seed as well. So it's like perfectly, perfectly fine seed. But I was getting chatting to the guy and he gave me the demo and stuff, and I tasted it and I said that that is by far and away the best creamed honey I've ever had. It was the consistency of yogurt, it was that good. And I was like, right, I need one of these, definitely need one. And he told me how much it was and it was 35,000 like British pounds, so it's like 40— I don't know, whatever the US or Canadian, uh, conversion is now. And I could— I just couldn't believe how expensive it was. But I think on that, on that commercial scale, it— I would 100% buy it. Like, the one that I bought was 7 or 8 grand, and it doesn't produce anywhere near as good creamed honey as that. And I think there's— I wonder if they've got like a patent on it. I wonder if there's a, a UK patent. I swear it's Pretty simple. It was just like a pressurized container with a corkscrew— like a— not a corkscrew, whatever you call it— like a— we've got like a capping screw, but it's not— but some sort of like screw propeller thing that just mixes the honey. And then you add seed in, so it's not like a grinding. It was still just a seed, like the dice method, but that pressure— pressured vessel made it so smooth. So I'm still jealous. I want that. It was so cool. Thomas Brown says, hi mate, it's now my 4th year beekeeping and it's all down to you. Love watching all your videos, thank you very much for all your help. Oh, thanks Thomas, that's very good to hear. I'm glad it's going well and I wish you many more years of success. Fabelman's Highland Honey says, hey Laurence, hope you're well. Dan here from Fabelman's, starting up this year with one of your nucs, hoping to sign up for some one-to-one help as well and order some more nucs shortly. Excellent, I like your brand there, Fabelman's Highland Honey with a bear, that is properly cool. Um, always, always happy to help. Just give me a shout, uh, either on kind of email or WhatsApp or whichever suits you best. Give me a shout. Uh, Why do I struggle with saying that every time? 2 weeks in a row you went live while waiting to get into Rangers. I'll catch up later. Press the like button. They did, they did well the other week, didn't they? Did they draw? Was it a draw, Hibernian? I can't remember. I seem to remember thinking back, oh, they did, they did well. But maybe I've got that wrong. Have you ever done the oxalic acid when it's super cold like now though? So, so there's been a number of people show how it's nowhere near as beneficial to do oxalic acid when it gets like super, super cold, and it's all to do with the dispersal of the oxalic acid sublimate through the cluster. And it makes sense if you've got a box that's like boom, super cold, mega cluster, they're so close and tight together that the, the sublimate can't permeate to the bees on the inside, so you don't get anywhere near as good a drop. You, like I said, the best temperature is the warmest possible temperature that you can get without the bees flying. That is perfect for oxalic acid. Thomas Brown says, have we done that one? Same again, Thomas. James says, good morning from Central Indiana, USA. Good morning to you too, James. Najjar says, why most of the swarms die in winter? Probably because they've not got good quality mated queens in there. I said to say good quality, probably like just, it's swarms that have been sent out with virgins, put inside, they build the colony out, and then they die. But you're always going to get bees die in winter. I think if you've got anything less than 10%, you're doing well. 15 to 10%, you're doing well. You can keep it under 5%, you're doing very, very well. If, if you've got 0%, you're lying. Everyone loses some bees in winter. Arturo says, best regards from Rotterdam. I don't treat my bees, I've got VSH for 3 years now. I'm a happy beekeeper and the bees are also happy and healthier. Good to hear. We're selling a lot of VSH queens at the moment, and I still say to people, you need to monitor for varroa and you need to treat if necessary, but let me know, you know, if you— if they're doing well without treatments, and they should do because they've got that varroa-sensitive hygiene trait in them, then that's good. Less chemicals going around. As long as the bees are happy and they're thriving, then you can't ask for more. James is answering the question there. I think what you've hit there, old or poorly mated queens, is probably the one that takes most of them down. How does oxalic acid not affect bees' feet and lungs? One-time whiff and it will floor me. Yeah, I never understand that. It's because it's pretty toxic stuff, and I hate to think of the damage that it would do to people who breathe it in. And why does it not do that to bees? Rednificent says, I'll try and wait for a day above freezing then, at least. There we go, we got to the end of the video, the end of the stream. So thank you to everyone, thank you to Ian. Good, good to see Ian here as well, I love it. Uh, but that was very useful to see whether it was cutting out for me. Um, I am gonna move back over to doing streams every 2 weeks, and I'm gonna fix a date and a time to do them as well. So if you— you can put it, put it in the comments as well if you want after the stream, if there's like a specific time that you think would be a good time for me to do my live stream every other week. You know the one that lasts for three hours or whatever it is. Let me know, and we will do that. But there we go. I hope that I hope that was useful for anyone who answered questions. But good to see so many people coming on. I am going to go out, and I'm going to watch Arsenal play Man United now. And check on the team, and I'm going to go and walk my dog first before it gets too late. So I am actually going to go now. So see you all later. Have a good weekend, and I'll catch up with you.
