Black Mountain Honey: Let's Talk Bees with Laurence Edwards - Episode 37

Good evening everyone and welcome to a very last minute episode of Let's Talk Bees. And I say it's last minute because you will not believe the journey that I have had to get here. Uh, and okay, I'm 1 or 2 minutes late, but it looked like I was going to be at least an hour late because I was playing golf and it was a very, very slow round of golf. But I am here now. I have skipped my dinner, so no dinner for me whatsoever. The last time I ate was at lunch. I'm very hungry. And I'm forgoing a delicious roast dinner to be here to talk about bees. So I'm not at all hungry, but I am, I'm starving. But I do have a delicious cup of herbal tea. What a rush trying to get everything sorted there, that was, that was really, really crazy. But I am here, uh, and I think everything's working well. A bit sweaty, you can see I've got a sweaty brow. So as always, we will do lots of talking about bees. Let's talk bees. And I've not really got anything specific to talk to you about this evening because I've not done a huge amount of beekeeping this week because it's just winter. I'm getting really depressed with the weather. If you are a beekeeper in this country, you will suffer from a mild case of checking the weather every day-itis, and I'm really, really bad for it. Not, not only looking outside and seeing how miserable it is, but checking the next few days and seeing how bad the weather is, and then looking at the medium and the long-term forecasts and It's just shocking. And is it me looking at the weather and thinking, "I wish the weather was better"? Why can't it be better? Or is it genuinely not as good as it usually is? I don't know. But enough of me moaning about the weather. I'm just gonna have a sip of a sip of some water, and then we will get straight into answering some questions. Right, we'll answer them all. I'll do every single question here tonight. We won't let any of them go. go unanswered. So let's jump straight into it. So I see a lot of good evenings from people on there. Good evening, everyone. I won't jump into all of those, but I'll go first to John, which is a good shout. Hit the like button like that, John. Thank you very much. Uh, Claire, I think that is a, a slight note on me being late, so I do apologize. I'm not normally late. With the first question, he says, hey, if I'm on double brood, both boxes have been treated. Once I move them to the top And they get filled with honey, I can move them back down and bruise the frame so they move the honey into the supers. So I suspect you're talking about the Demaray manipulation, and that is correct. It's a really simple way of thinking about it is that if the frames have been treated for Apivar, you can't extract honey out of them, but you can get the bees to move the honey out of those frames into new boxes, and there's loads of different ways of doing that, but that is correct. John Hayes, channel member, says, I like, I like John's picture. It's got a cool dog in that picture as well. He says, hi Lawrence, so warm way or cold way, do you change it at all? Really, really simple one for me. I'm always on the warm way, and it's a very specific reason why I like the warm way, and that is that I like to manage my colonies from behind. I like to do my inspections from behind the colony. One reason for that might be that I film a lot of the vid— film a lot of them. So it works better if I'm behind. And then the way that I set my colonies up, they're generally on, you know, like the Abello stand, so they're all in a row. So if you do— if you have them the cold way, then you can't inspect them without twisting. And it's all down to beekeeper preference, but I do not like twisting my back. I don't think the bees care. Genuinely don't think the bees care either way. And you see in a lot of natural beehives, they they kind of do both ways. They just sort it out whatever they want. So you have some that are the warm way, some that are the cold way, some that are at like 45-degree angles. I don't think the bees really mind that much at all. Channel member says, hi Lawrence, what is the best way to sterilize an NL beehive? It will be the same as poly hive. So you want to get the— get like a hive tool, scrape it down, get as much of the gunk and the propolis off as you possibly can, dip it in a dipping tank with like washing soda, just like straightforward washing soda to clean it, and then you need to dip it in a bleach solution. Now I saw— I'm not sure where I saw this, it was on one of the Facebook groups— someone saying you don't need to dip and you can just use like Cillit Bang bleach. And not, not a massive fan of that advice, definitely not the MBU's advice as well, because with Cillit Bang bleach, it's nowhere near the correct concentration for getting it up to that level that the NBU says 20-minute submersion will kill the EFB bacteria. So although it will clean, it's quite good for cleaning, it's definitely not the correct concentration for getting the EFB to die. But also it's difficult to submerge it because it's just going to fall off due to gravity. So good for cleaning, Cillit Bang bleach, but not good for sterilization. I would still dip them. A few people from all over the world. We've got Kevin from Spain. Hi Kevin! Got Chris from Canada. Hello Chris! And we've got EJ Arctic Beekeeping from northern Norway. So hello everyone. Hi, just got out today after the awful weather to discover lots of queen cells, some of them capped, attempting my first Demerest split. So I, I always like to say things in the nicest possible way, Neil. And I love that you've had a go with the Demaray split there, but it— I'm not a massive fan of using the Demaray split reactively like that. Not to say that it won't work, but it might not work. So the way that I always do the Demaray is that I do it before the bees even think about swarming. So the colony needs to be brood box full, 2 supers full, full of bees, and then I'll think about doing a Demaray. But if I go into any colony and I find them preparing like swarm cells, if they're uncapped or capped swarm cells, I do a split. I split them in one way or another, or I take out a nuc, or I do an artificial swarm, I do a Pacton, I do something else, not a Demaray, because I just find when you do the Demaray with cells, the bees have already made up their mind that they just swarm. So when you put the queen downstairs in the bottom box, all that happens is that the— all that, like, she clusters her forces together. gathers them together and they just go. So let me know. I do, I do a live stream every 2 weeks. I'd be interested to hear what happens after 2 weeks. Um, and fingers crossed the queen will still be there. Um, but it's not, it's not really what, what I would do if I found swarm cells. So I don't sound like harsh that you've done anything wrong, and it's, it's an easy mistake to make, but not, not something that I would do. Hi Richard. Right, next question from Ed, channel member. He says, hi Lawrence, do you know anything about the Anal Beehive and how its insulation values compare to an Abello or another poly hive? So it is— I, I don't know, I'm not going to be able to give you like insulation or U-values or anything like that, but it is a very different construction. So, um, a poly hive is polystyrene hive, and it has— the Abello has a density of like 160 grams per liter, and then the like Pains and Maysmore have 120 grams per liter. So So actually, the lower the density, the higher the air content, so the higher the insulation value. So out of all of them, the Abello actually has the lowest insulation value, but then you have the benefits of the high density, which means you don't get little nicks in it and it's a lot more resilient to bangs and scrapes. But there's not much in it in terms of the insulation values between the polystyrene. The Anilhive is different, it's polyurethane, so it's the kind of stuff that you get in— it's like basically like Gorilla Glue, but the kind of stuff that you'll get in— I'm pretty sure it's like Celotex insulation as well, but it's injection molded plastic and then they put a polyurethane, uh, insulation in between the two of it. So the only, the only difference that you'd get with the Ano— and like I say, I've not used it a lot at all. I've got one, so I've seen it in the flesh, but I've not used it— is that you might have it like— you might see a lot more condensation in there. In a polystyrene hive, you'll see more condensation than you would in a wooden hive, and I think in an Anal hive or the injection moulded plastic hives, you'll see more condensation on the walls again. But I don't think there's a huge difference in terms of the insulation values, and I think the bees will be very cozy and warm in any of them. I'm out of breath, can you hear I'm out of breath? I played golf, played quite well, I was quite happy, but a lot of walking. and, uh, straight back into this. So let's have some water. Right, John says, video idea, had someone on Discord asking about spacing out frames for cut combs, some guides would be ideal. Okay, so that's a good idea, we'll add that one onto the list, John. Good shout. Another question from Ed, great firing in the questions, Ed. He says, hi Lawrence, when is the best time to break up the brood cluster? Do I have to wait temperature or weather-wise? Um, in, in terms of Going in and doing things, it's, it's a bit cold at the moment to be just going in and doing stuff willy-nilly. But if you've got to go in and do stuff, you've got to go in and do stuff. So if you need to put supers on, you need to get in and put supers on. If your bees need feeding, you need to get in there and feed. If you're planning to make splits, get in there and make splits. I was speaking to Adam, who's on here earlier, and I don't think there's any reason to not make splits at this point in the year because It just doesn't take that long to make the split. And okay, you're taking out frames in 9 or 10 degrees, but a frame of eggs and a frame of brood can handle 10 seconds out in the cold. And then all you're going to do is make your splits, take them somewhere else, and feed them. So it doesn't really matter that the weather's not that great. All I would say is if you are making splits at this point in the year, put a lot of capped brood in. Give as much capped brood to the splits as you possibly can because they will retain way more heat than if you don't give them any capped brood or if you give them open brood. So as much capped brood as you can get away with. Channel member says, used your methods today to shake through a queen excluder to find queen and it worked fantastic. For anybody who doesn't know how that method works, imagine you've got a complete brood box full of bees, full of brood, full of a queen, queen in there somewhere, and you don't know where she is. What you need is an additional queen excluder and you need an additional box. It can be a shallow box, it can be a deep box, but you just need like an empty box. And the idea is you take the entire brood box away and shake some bees off, and then you want to put all of the brood back downstairs into your new box, and then you put a queen excluder over the top of it, and then you put an empty box on the top of that. So you probably need 2 extra boxes actually, and then you go through systematically shaking off every single bee off all of the remaining frames. And the idea is that they're attracted to go down to get to where the brood is, and then the only queen— the only bee that can't get through is the queen bee. Uh, it's, it's like, uh, great bedlam when it goes on, but it does work. Very effective. Sometimes you find more than one queen. It's quite funny. James says, how do you let the drones get out when doing the demaray? So I've changed— I, I have slightly changed my method. So I don't use the queen excluder up top anymore because all I found was that it was just— I was just getting loads of drones stuck in it. So luckily with the boxes that I use, the Abello boxes, you have an upstairs entrance. So the upstairs entrance works very, very well for that. If not, you can add in— there's plenty of boards that you can get that have entrances on them. And if you've not got any of those specific boards, you can just cut an 8mm entrance onto a crown board. That works really well. Or you can just drill a hole. I know some people don't like drilling holes in boxes, but just drill a hole, like a 20mm hole in your super, and then put an entrance block on it, and then you can also get queens mated from that top box if you do that as well, if you want to run them, run them out that way. But if you just want to let the drones out, uh, I would give them, give them somewhere to escape. Evening, Laurence. I see Griff has some Anel Hyos reasonably priced too. He does indeed. He is the main or the exclusive UK supplier, I'm led to believe. Fellow beekeepers in the area have reported swarms. Seems like beekeepers have been put off by the weather, but bees have carried on regardless. I think that's going to be my comment of the night so far, Neil. Absolutely spot on. The bees, they respond to the length of the day and they respond to the pollen coming in, and they're always kind of like 2 or 3 weeks behind. So you'll get, you know, when it was nice— it was a couple of weeks ago, it was, it was 18, 19 degrees here for the whole weekend, and the dandelions were out and the blossom was out, and loads of pollen would have been going in, and the queens would have just been going wild laying up tons and tons of eggs. And then 3 weeks later, shocking weather, but all of the brood that she laid during that time is now emerging. And because it's been so cold, people haven't been putting their supers on. I know some people have been, but I'd say the majority of people have not really given a huge amount of space or done that much beekeeping yet for reasons, you know, for the weather. And there'll be a lot of swarms going, and I think the first nice bit of weather we get, if you get like a day or 2 days of nice weather, there'll be a lot of swarms that go. And I think a lot of people will see starvation. There could be really bad starvation this year. So get out, start your beekeeping, forget about the weather, just do it quickly. Got to get out there and check now. Hi Lawrence, with the bleak weather and the bees not getting out as much as they should this time of year, brood boxes are filling. Is this a perfect storm for mass swarming when the warm weather shows? So it's almost like I answered that question before I read it. So yes, definitely, and I think even before that, I think you'll find the swarms going out when it's like 13 or 14 degrees and a little bit of 3 PM sunshine and they'll just be gone. Keep an eye on them. Thomas, another channel member who I think has got a Chelsea picture as his profile picture— oh good— he says, hi Lawrence, I have 2 brood boxes on my 2 hives. I've had them on since September. They are full of stores and, and bees. Should I keep them on or remove them? Um, so just, is it you've got like a brood box and an additional 2 brood boxes, or is it Just 2 brood boxes, one that's full of brood. I'd be tempted to keep them on. And if they are, if they're genuinely full of stores, as in it's just honey, then I'd be tempted to just bruise it all and put the supers on and then get the bees to move all of that up and then have a nice honey crop. Or you could just extract, if you've not treated the frames, you could just extract the honey as it is. If it stores, I would be tempted to make up lots of splits. and to use those frames. That's like a really valuable resource, having 2 brood boxes full of stores, because you can make, make up loads of splits when the, when the bees start creating the brood to go with it. So I'd break it all up, make lots of splits would be my plan. Say hello to Jay. Hi, Jay. Says, going in tomorrow rain or shine, should I use a towel over the brood box and move across for each frame to keep dry, or just be super quick? I don't want to rush and squish the royalty. So I wouldn't use a towel, no need to use the towel. A little bit of moisture in the hive, really not the end of the world. The bees will have to go out to forage water anyway, so a little bit of moisture on them, they'll just clean themselves up. Definitely take your time, but if it's not raining, I think— I don't know what it's like in the rest of the UK, it's forecast to be really nice here tomorrow, like 11 or 12 degrees, but beautiful sunshine, and I swear it's warmer than that when I'm outside. I think the bees tomorrow will be flying really, really well. And I don't think you need to rush it. I think you can take your time, go through, and all you're looking for is swarm cells. You might want to see the queen, you might want to see some eggs, but yeah, don't worry about a towel, don't worry about rushing too much. Uh, I think, I think I'm jumping in on a conversation there. John Hayes says, my Black Mountain Honey F1 queen arrived today. Whilst in my kitchen, she was really noisy with lots of piping. First time I've heard it. What does it mean when they do that? It's it's interesting because it is a tendency of virgins for piping, but it's yeah queen bees do it as well, and it's a it's kind of that noise, isn't it? You should hear it when there's four hundred on the kitchen table, and when one starts doing it, the other ones respond. So I think it's just a thing that they do. I I hear them doing it all the time whenever I take them out the incubator and get them ready. They're they're singing along, loads of piping. Um, but it's definitely something that mated queens do. On the subject of that as well, a couple of people saying like the queens are small, and I just say I'm doing a video on it, I'm halfway through the video. Just give them 2 weeks, 2 weeks, and they double in size. And it's a well-known proven fact that queens in cages, they just shrink their abdomen down, and you can see it when they're walking around the cage because it's, it's like awkward for them in there. And they've got like tight spaces to go, so they just shrink. They don't need to have a long abdomen because they're not trying to lay any eggs down a long cell. And then as soon as they go back onto the frames and they start laying eggs again, just like lengthens out and it literally doubles in size. So if anyone's noticed it and thinks the queen is small, it's just because she's caged. Give her 2 weeks and take a picture, she'll be double the size. Uh, Marcus says, can you say hi to site member Lee Leatherborough, who unfortunately can't make it onto the live but will be catching up later this evening? He's gutted he can't make the live. Of I can. Hello Lee, how are you doing? Sorry you can't make the live. Nice name, says, I have a super almost full of honey, is there a way to tell if it's oilseed rape? We have some oilseed rape a few fields away from the apiary. Um, taste it, I would say, is the best way to find out whether it's oilseed rape or not. You, you can see like the pollen, like it's a bright yellow pollen. I, we got— I got caught out last week getting pollen colors wrong. Definitely oilseed rape is yellow pollen. But that would be the best way for me is to observe the entrance of the hive. And I know that's not really going to tell you what's in the supers because it can change quickly, but for me, I'd be tasting it. I can taste oilseed rape. It's very, very sweet and it's very kind of mono-floral, so there's not really much to it. It's a very homogeneous taste but incredibly sweet. I know, all honey's sweet. Um, but the other one that I'll be testing as well is giving it like a shake test. And if you've got— oh, I don't know, the shake test is not really going to tell you whether it's oilseed rape or not. Shake test for oilseed rape is, you know, when you shake the frame, if it's not capped over but it doesn't come out, it's good to be extracted. But I would be— yeah, give it a taste. I quite like oilseed rape. I do like all seed rape honey. Uh, so I think I answered that one, Thomas. Right, John Sylvester says, hi Lawrence, hope you and the family are great. Nice one Arsenal once again. Yeah, not good. Is Formic Pro as effective as Apivar? So I'm really not a big fan of any formic acid-based mite treatments. Never been a fan, and I used to be a fan. So it used to be called Max, M-A-Q-S, and the reason— so it was an acronym for Mite Away Quick Strips. And the reason that I quite liked Max at that time was because it was the only treatment that was available for beekeepers to use, which meant that you didn't need to remove the supers. So you could go on middle of July, 6 supers on your hives, and you could put in kind of like one of the like nappies of Max onto it. And as long as your queen wasn't super, super old, then it did, it did the job, and you've got really good effective mite drops from it. So I think it served a purpose there. However, if you had old queens, it would knock off your old queens. I used to lose a lot of queens using Max, so that was very, very annoying. Um, but they've changed it now, so Formic Pro is completely different. It's a slightly— I don't know if it's a slightly different formulation, it's a slightly different regulation for it though, which means that you need to now remove the supers to use it. So it, it's become this treatment that can maybe kill your queen and that you have to take your supers off and use. And I just think, well, it's compared to Apivar, which is, you know, you're not getting formic acid in your face. Like, it's horrible stuff, formic acid. If you ever get a whiff of it, it's, it's so like toxic, horrible stuff. And it's going to kill your queens, and it's not really as effective as Apivar, or not any more effective than Apivar or Apitraz. I just, I, for me, it doesn't really have a place in my beekeeping or varroa treatment cycle anymore, so I don't use it. Not a fan of it at all. Sorry if you bought a pack of it and you wanted to know if you use it. I, I'd still use it, get it out the way, but I wouldn't buy anymore. Gonna call you that. How long after I shut a bee in a hive will all of the bees die off so I can reuse the frames? Found a drone laying queen. Um, I'm just, I'm just rereading that again. That's— well, I'm not sure why you've done that. So how long after I shut up in a beehive will all the bees die off so I can reuse the frames? Found a drone and queen. Why would you do that? I, I would just take the frames out and just shake the bees out and let the bees go into the other beehives. There's no, there's no need to kill them. That's, that's a much better way because then you can boost all of the other hives that are in the area with additional flying bees. and maybe a few drones, and then you can just take the frames out now before they go moldy. That's what I would do there. Is it okay to change from 2:1 to 1:1 now? So definitely yes. Um, you can, you can feed 2:1 any time of the year. 2:1 is absolutely fine any time of the year. The only reason you really need to change from 2:1 at this time of the year is it's cheaper to use 1:1, but you can use less 2:1 to still get a similar effect, but you get more for your money using 1:1 or watered-down invert at this point in the year. Because if you're kind of using it to give them some food, but I guess you're using it to try and draw out some frames as well. So yeah, you can definitely go to 1:1. I've been feeding 1:1 for 5 weeks, 6 weeks. You can feed 1:1 really early in the year. The, the one to watch out is feeding 1:1 late in the year. 1:1 anytime after like August or September is not a good idea at all. and can give you severe issues over winter if the bees haven't got enough time to get the moisture levels down. Hey Lawrence, I merged 4 swarms into 2, put a new mated queen in one colony and left one virgin in the other, now queenless. Was it a mistake to remove multiple virgins and not let the bees sort it? I don't think there's ever any like mistakes in beekeeping like that, it's just different ways of doing things. Like I know some people that would never ever buy a queen, Like ever, because they'll just say, well, got bees, could just chuck a frame of eggs in. And if you're, if you're in some areas in the world, that's, that's all you need to do. You just chuck a frame of eggs in, come back 6 weeks later, and there's— you've got a mated queen every single time because it's very nice, uh, consistent weather. Um, so I don't think, I don't think it's a mistake. I'm reading it again. So you merged 4 swarms into 2, put a new mated queen in one and left one virgin in the other. Now queenless. Was it a mistake to remove more? virgins? No, I don't think so. The only problem is, is in swarms like that, you just don't know how many, how many queens are in there. I do find though, earlier on in the year, you tend to find colonies that just, they just have one queen. It's a prime swarm. And a prime swarm is the first big swarm, first swarm that leaves a colony in the year. And 9 times out of 10, it's got the, it's got a mated queen in it, the old mated queen. But you can have a prime swarm with a virgin, and you can have a prime swarm with multiple virgins as well. So if you've got a clipped queen and that clipped queen has tried to go off and swarm and hasn't been able to, then the swarm, the first swarm of the year, the prime swarm, will leave with virgin, a virgin from the capped cell that's left or the capped cells that are left. So for me, it can be easier with swarms, especially later on in the year, to let the bees at least have a go at trying to mate, because then you know that if there's 10 virgins in there, you give them 3 or 4 weeks to sort it out, when you come back you're either going to see a mated queen and some eggs, or you're going to see a failed virgin. But it's just going to be one failed virgin because they would have just like fought and killed each other. But not early on in the year. Will old dead brood help catch a swarm in a swarm trap? So yes, but I highly advise you against doing it. It's probably the most irresponsible thing that you can do in beekeeping. Please don't do it. Could you do a demaree with the brood left downstairs and the queen in a nuc box upstairs so you don't have to worry about the drones getting stuck in the queen excluder if no top entrance? Yeah, I, I thought about doing it the other way around. I don't, I don't think it works doing it the other way around, putting the queen upstairs, because you still have all of the brood downstairs, so the bees are still congested where the brood is. And then it's that that triggers them more than kind of like where the queen is. So it needs to be that you're taking the queen away from the brood and that she's got a nice new area to lay, but you're also taking away all of those bees away from her. It's— I don't think it works the other way around. I think just putting an entrance upstairs to let the drones out kind of fixes it. John Sylvester says smash the like and subscribe, community. Thanks very much, John. Liam G. Right, I'm gonna have some— before I'm gonna have a sip of tea. 25 minutes, I deserve a sip of my— what I've got today, I've got a Relax Organic Bio Tea by Pukka Teas. I'm going to see if Pukka Teas want to sponsor this stream, mate. That'd be good. I know we only get like hundreds of people watching, but I do drink a lot of their tea. Right, Liam G says, hi Lawrence, thanks for the crystallized honey advice. All sorted now. I have 3 hives, 2 really calm, 1 extremely angry. Any way to get them out, or is it just requeen with a black Mountain honey queen. I'm pretty militant now with angry ones because it's we've got loads of queens, and as soon as they get angry, I just kill them, put a new queen in. It's difficult to fix it quickly without putting a new queen in. So I know it sounds like I'm trying to sell additional queens. Like the other way of doing it is potentially to kill the queen. Whatever happens, you need to kill the existing queen. because that's what's causing the, the angriness. But you could maybe try adding a frame of eggs from another one of your Buckfast, but then you're, you're diluting the calm genetics from that Buckfast, and then whatever's in the air is— it might result in something kind of even worse. But going back to F1 always, always fixes it, keeps them nice and calm. And then you get the added benefit that they're not going to swarm anywhere near as much, and you get benefits that they're produce loads of honey, and I could go on. Also, my new mated queen is puny and lethargic. She was in the cage almost a week. Will she plump up? How long do I leave her before checking? So I don't think you got the queen from us, but maybe you did. I would say puny and lethargic, if you are seeing that, so 2 things: if they're small, just do not worry about it in the cage. They will plump up. they will double in size. And you come back— and I'm doing a video because a number of people say it to me, and I'm like, you've got to trust me, 2 weeks later she'll be double the size. I'm doing the video to show it. But the lethargic one is— we've got this a little bit at the moment with the cold weather. So they go into a kind of like a bit of a morbid state, and it's not the right word. There is, there is a correct word for it when they go due to the cold, and they're like moving really slowly like this. And all they need— whenever you get mated queens, if you get them through the post, first thing you should do, drop of water on the cage, put them in a nice warm dark place. Not like hot, but 25-30 degrees, but not in direct sunlight, but in the dark. And you'll hear them, they'll start— it'll all be quiet, there'll be nothing in there, and you'll start hearing them going, and you go back in, they're just all running around like crazy. So they get cold, and that's the problem, and that's, that's why they look bit lethargic in the cage. But in terms of queens being in cages, you can keep queens in cages in a good healthy colony where they're being fed for weeks. Obviously don't do it deliberately, but I've had it where you've gone back to a colony 6 weeks after you've introduced them and the queen's just not left the cage. She's just like, nah, not going out there. So she was fine, absolutely fine. Let her out, she laid up like 3 frames in the next day. desperate to get out and lay, but they kept— they keep fine. Queen banks will keep them like that for ages as long as there's lots of young nice nurse bees in there feeding her copious amounts of royal jelly. She'll be absolutely fine in there. Hello, he says greetings from the— is it Golan Heights, Syria? Very nice. He says hope your hives are doing well. My brother tells me this spring has been incredibly hard back home in Ireland and the UK. Has starvation been an issue for you? So it would have been an issue for me if I hadn't fed my bees. Uh, but I think a lot of people get caught out with starvation this year. I'm hoping that they haven't. I'm hoping that they've seen the advice from a number of people to go out and feed. Um, but yeah, everyone would have got caught out with starvation, I think, if we hadn't been feeding, because it has been ridiculously cold and miserable and wet and rubbish. Evening, bud. How's that reel doing? So B Folk gave me some advice about doing a little, a little frame building reel. It's doing all right. Definitely not going to beat my million. No, it's on about 20,000, but it's good. I'll keep plodding away. Dunny's Bees, Dunny Bees, he says, hi Lawrence, I have a Drone Land queen. I introduced a frame of eggs last week, left a charged queen cell. This is gone. Can't find the virgin queen or eggs, but no more drone brood. Some of the drones have deformed wing virus, only a handful. What would you do? Um, so did you kill— did you— if I ever have Drone Land queen, first thing I do is kill the Drone Land queen. And then you said you've introduced a frame of eggs last week, left charged queen cell. So I wouldn't, I wouldn't be trying to leave any charged queen cells or getting them to mate. It's way too cold. Like, to get— even, even once you've got mature, sexually mature drones, which you're not going to have until realistically second week of May, even if you've got that, you need like 22, 21, 22, and like a 5-mile-an-hour wind to get successful matings. And it's just there's no way you'd get a queen mated at the moment. So I would kill the drone laying queen, take down all of the cells. If they've probably not even made them, they're probably just like, we're not— can't do anything just at the moment. Um, and then add a mated queen and you can probably save it. Probably the best bang for your buck, uh, an overwintered drone laying queen colony— killing the queen, adding in a new queen and saving it. Because if you don't do that, they'll just— they'll be dead within 6 weeks. There won't be any left. Bee Enthusiast Peter. Hi Peter. He says, hi Laurence, are you putting colonies out on the heather this year? Also, any reports if Asian hornets get tar? So I've not had any reports, any further reports of any Asian hornets around here, which is good. I've not seen any or many in the UK at all yet, which is promising. In terms of heather, so we have a static heather apiary, so it's on, it's basically on like the right on the edge of hundreds of acres of heather, but it's a standalone apiary so we don't have to move, which was a very, uh, canny strategy made up by a lazy person, which was me. But I will say that— so they're not on the heather, but they're basically as good as you can get on the heather when there is a flow on. So there definitely will be some heather videos this year, and I get to use my Vigo stainless steel press, which I'm very excited about. I'm gonna have another sip of water. I upgraded my microphone again. I spent £300 on a brand new microphone, so hopefully I sound like really nice and clear. And I've got a— you can't really see it here, probably messed up the audio— I've got pop filter. So excuse all the banging and stuff. Let me set that back up again. I've wrecked it now. That's not podcast quality, messing around with mics there. Sorry. Right. I have put 2 supers on a double brood and checked the clear crown board tonight, and the top box is full. I'm expecting to find swarm cells tomorrow when I have a proper look. Sounds like a nice big strong healthy colony. That's good to hear. Um, I don't know, I reckon, I reckon you'll be all right. Double brood and 2 supers is a big old void to fill, and even though they might have hit the roof, you might have caught that just in time. Hey, greetings from Portugal. This week I hear about the theory of having the Y-shaped comb facing outside from the nest. What is your experience from this? Cheers, Andre. I don't think I've even— I don't think I've ever heard of that, you know. What is it? The theory of having the Y-shaped comb facing outside from the hive nest? No, I've never heard of that. Put a link, put a link in the comments. I'll definitely have a look at that. That sounds interesting. Sorry, complete cop-out of an answer there, but I've genuinely never heard of that. Hi Lawrence, me again. How do you trickle feed and how much should I give and how often? So trickle feeding is you don't really need to trickle feed at this point in the year, but trickle feeding does serve— serves a couple of purposes. One is that it definitely stimulates the queen to go a little bit quicker, which is good. So I like to use trickle feeding late on in the year when the colony is kind of naturally going down like this, is, is contracting, and I like to trickle feed at that point to stop them contracting and for them to build big strong clusters going into winter. The other time to use trickle feeding is in the spring but you're not really using it to build up. The bees build up naturally in the spring. For me, it's— I'm feeding bees at this point in the year because I don't want my bees to die, so I'm giving them as little as I can get away with, and I'm giving it to them often because I don't want them to store it. I just want them to— I just wanted to take it, eat it, and live and not die. So that's the only reason I'm feeding at the moment, and it is very dependent on the, the size of the colony. If you've got like a double brood then you're going to be feeding way more than if you've got a 4-frame nuc. But I would just, just try and, just try and judge it and see how quickly they're taking it down. Like, for an average-sized colony, I'd be giving them no more than like a liter every 2 or 3 days, something like that. And just, and just see. And you can see when you go into the colony if they, if they need more and they're, you know, they're shaking on the frames and there's not any stores in the colony, then give them more. You need to always have a little bit of a buffer in there. And the other way around, if you go in and they've just got tons and tons of stores in there, you just stop feeding altogether because you make it more difficult for the colony to expand. So you do— it's difficult, and I never will give like hard firm figures for stuff like that because you do just need to understand what the bees are actually telling you. Or yeah, Marie Wilden says, hi Lawrence, are there any new beekeepers out there that we should keep keeping our eyes on? Um, I'm not sure. How do you mean in terms of like people giving advice? Um, I don't know, not sure. I, um, obviously Just Alex is great. I like watching Just Alex's videos because they're just amazing videos and he, he doesn't hide his mistakes and doesn't sugarcoat stuff as well, so it's very refreshing. Um, I'm not really aware of, of any others, no. I'll have a think about that. First time I'll be deliberately double brooding tomorrow as the weather says no rain. Brood box below to conserve heat or above? This colony is primarily for splits later. So if this was, if this was 4 or 5 weeks ago, easy one, you just say definitely put it below. And, and if we were in normal temperatures at the moment, I would say just put, definitely put it above. Like, above is where the bees want you to put The bees always want space above. You're protecting them by putting it below. I'd be inclined though, with the weather that we've got at the moment, to still go below to give you that access to the feeder if you need it. But say, say you go in tomorrow and it's 11 degrees and you put the brood box below, and then you go back next week and they've not really touched it, but it's 15 or 16 degrees and there's incoming nectar and pollen, I just switch the boxes around at that point. point. Don't be afraid to change it with the weather and stuff. Jasper over there making some noise. Talking about bad weather and swarming, in Spain we had a month of rain and gales, then on the first moment of dry weather it was crazy with swarms, even in 13 degrees and wind at 6 PM. So yeah, they will go. It will be a very, very extreme swarming event this year, I think, because they've been so confined. Be good fun. Jason Walker says, looking forward to tomorrow, I've got 5 queens coming from you. Any advice on releasing the queen to guarantee the colony accepting her? So you do— I remember packing your queens up today, Jason, they're definitely on their way. Uh, so, so my advice is always the, the gold-plated, slightly long-winded advice, which is make them hopelessly queenless. So you should kill the, kill the existing queen, or if you're making splits, that you're not going to put a queen inside. And then from that date, that's day zero, you wait 8 days And then on the 8th day, you take down all of the queen cells, shake every single frame, and do not miss a single queen cell. At that point, put the queen in, wait 24 hours. I've changed my advice, it used to be 48, 24 is fine now from my experience. Wait 24 hours and then you pop the tab and then you wait a week. And if you can at that point, feed. Feeding really helps at that point getting them accepted because it just gives the bees something to do. If your queens are arriving tomorrow and you've not done any of that, you can just go ahead and do exactly what I've said, but keep the queens in the splits. So you just keep them in between the frames of brood whilst they're becoming hopelessly queenless. The, the hard and fast rule there is that you don't pop the tab before you take down all of the emergency cells. That's the really important bit. You can put the queen in. kind of day 0, day 4, day 8, it doesn't matter. You can't pop the tab before you take down all the cells. And if you do it that way, pretty much guaranteed. I've done thousands of queens like that and I've never lost one. And that, that sounds like bullshit. I've genuinely never lost one. But it is a long-winded process. Takes, takes 12 days to do it properly if you go back for the check. Hi Lawrence, if I found swarm cells, would you harvest them and put them in mini nucs as I want to expand my hives but not sure virgins to get mated at this time of the year. So 100% no, wouldn't work. Just, they will, they will not get mated. Also, harvesting virgins and putting them, or, or cells, and putting them into mini mating nucs, it's very, very difficult. It's not, it's not easily done. So just, just beware of that. You could be losing the resource. If you, if you, if you are intent on doing it, what I would say is much easier is, is making sure is putting the actual virgins in, I find easier when using the mini mating nucs. And you need to overfill them, um, put a lot of bees in them. You need to make sure that they're feeding in there as well. Ideally, if you can get any brood onto the frames one way or another, that will stop them or help them from absconding. And then you want to go and put them somewhere like in a nice cool garage overnight, but sealed so they can't fly. And you want to keep them confined for like 24 hours and then go out early in the morning and then let them release them early in the morning. That's your best way of getting them to stay in the mini mating nucs. I don't use mini mating nucs anymore because they're very hit and miss. Not to say that people can't use them, a lot of commercial queen rearing operations do use them successfully, but you need to be good, and I don't think I'm kind of good enough using those yet on that scale. We don't produce that many UK-mated queens to warrant thousands of little mini mating nucs. We just do it with national frames and it works quite well, but I definitely wouldn't be doing it now, it's way too cold. Mop top is still very strong. It is, it is genuinely down to my nose. Yeah, so, uh, and I said that the more comments I get about it, the less likely I am to cut it, so there we go, keep the comments coming in. Noticed lots of small black bees on the dandelions around local fields here in the Shropshire Marches. Is it marches? Have you had any experience regarding keeping indigenous bees? Do they need special foundation? So I've never kept it. When you say like indigenous bees, do you just mean like Apis mellifera mellifera, or like other bees that are not honeybees? So I've never had any experience of keeping bees that aren't honeybees, but I have had some experience of buying in AMM queens, and I've had quite a bit of experience of managing the local mongrels in North Wales, which I did not like one bit. because they were nasty and swarmy and aggressive and chalky. Um, but that's just my personal opinion. Hey Lawrence, I added 2 supers— uh, sorry, I added a super 2 weeks ago to my hives, and then last week I checked and they are working them. One of my hives had 9 frames of brood and charged queen cells. Okay, um, I'm guessing there's a question in there. So you need, you need to do a split on that hive, Aidan. That's what I would be doing tomorrow, going in. If they're charged and they're not capped, then you're very likely to be able to find the queen. So simplest manipulation in the world: find the queen, take her off with 2 frames of brood, frame of stores, make up a nuc, take her to another apiary, get her safe. That's the valuable bit— out of the way and safe. And then I'd be knocking down every single charged queen cell that is in there, and I would leave them just one open charged queen cell. And I know my advice at the moment was to not let the queens mate at this point, but that advice stands throughout the year, so that's what I would be doing. But you're getting close to the point where there might be some drones becoming mature, so if that was me, I'd be taking out all of the queen cells, adding in a new mated queen. But give it a couple of weeks and you'll be able to do that manipulation where you can just leave a single open charged swarm cell. So I'll give you like 2 options there. Personally, I wouldn't do it yet, it's too cold. but maybe next week or the week after, the advice will change and you'll get to the point where you can start getting some successful UK matings. If it is OSR in the super, how quickly do I need to be extracting it, as I'm led to believe after a time it's impossible to extract? So that is correct. With oilseed rape, the rules for capping don't apply at all. So generally, your honey needs to be below 70% moisture. That's the test that you normally do, and I don't— I never test my honey with a refractometer. I just look at the frame, and if the frame is 80% capped, I say that's it, it's good to go, happy to extract that. And then I'll extrapolate those figures across a whole box. So if I've got a whole box, 10 supers let's say, and 8 of them fully capped and 2 of them are mostly capped, I'll just say, right, that box is good to go. All of that goes out the window with all-seed rape. So you can extract all-seed rape on a frame that has no cappings whatsoever. So you're kind of thinking, well, how do you know whether it's good to extract or not? And the test is a really simple test. I said it earlier, it's the shake test. So you take each frame out and you just do a shake. Take the central frame out of each super and you do a shake of it, shake all the bees off. And if all of the bees shake off but all of the honey stays in, then it's good, you can extract it, it's fine. If you shake all of the bees off and all of the nectar comes flying out, it's obviously way too wet. and not at the correct moisture level yet. So that's what— so you need, you need to do the shake test, and you do it on the center frame because the center frame is going to be the most advanced frame in there. And if it's working on that frame, then the rest of them should follow. You can do it on a couple and give yourself like a little bit of an average as well. You could do it on all of them if you want to do it on all of them. You don't want to shake all of them out because you'll lose a lot of the nectar, but that is the test that majority of people do. But I think you should be good. I don't think it, I don't think it'll be going, going over yet. The problem that you have at the moment is that what makes oilseed rape honey granulize quicker is cold temperatures. So if you keep it nice and warm, then it doesn't go. So that early little blast that we had of 17, 18 degrees, they would have collected loads of honey, oilseed rape honey, and now it's got cold, so it will be, it'll be crystallizing pretty quick. So you might want to get it on. John Hayes says, we have managed to source our first out apiary, 15 miles, 30 minutes away. Secure, gated, and protected from wind. What else do we need to know about how to manage it? Um, so good, good that you got the first video. Secure, definitely number one. Gated, very, very nice. And protected from the wind, so very good. What else do we need to know about how to manage it? So I just I don't think there's much, much more in terms of management. Keep— keeping good terms with the, like, the landowner, that's always a good one. Bring them some honey is the best way, I think. Go and make a conversation with them, bring them some honey, ask them if they'll, like, keep an eye on things, which is, which is always good. What I would say though is don't, don't judge the apiary kind of, like, solely on those other things. The, the main thing is, yeah, it needs to be secure, gated, and protected from wind is good, but if it doesn't yield well there Don't think, well, it's— that's my apiary now, so I'm going to stick with it. Be open to changing it up a little bit. Be interesting to know what your access and egress is like, because that for me didn't used to be high up on my priority list, and it's almost like number one now. Security number one, number two access and egress. This— I can't get into sites at the moment. I got stuck first time ever, ever I've been stuck in the truck the other day. I had to get pulled out by a farmer. Really embarrassing. And I, I thought I was being all smart. I thought, I know what I'm going to do, I'm going to drive down the hill and then I'm not going to turn around because I think I'll get stuck turning around. I'm going to reverse back out. And I— it worked. And I was like, I was so— I'm so smug. I was like, I'm rubbish. I'm literally the worst driver in the world for like trucks and stuff like that. But I was really smug. And then I was reversing back out and then I came to this ditch And I thought, well, I'm not going to be able to reverse back out this. I'll have to turn around to get over this ditch, and turned around and got stuck. And I just thought, oh, it's like from smugness to sheer embarrassment. And I had to go and like find the farmer and get pulled out, towel between my legs. Really embarrassing. But it's so wet; it's soaking everywhere. Drast One Cone says, "Would ants that produce formic acid as a defense getting in a hive cause a similar effect as Max?" So, so it is the exact same acid that, that ants use. Formic acid is like what red ants use. But I don't think them getting in the hive would have some sort of effect. It would be nice, wouldn't it, if you had some sort of symbiosis there that you could keep ants alongside bees in harmony and they work together like that? And, and yeah, I guess it, I guess it would, but they wouldn't really be— they'd have to be on defense mode the whole time, wouldn't they, the ants? I like the way you're thinking though, but I don't— yeah, I don't think in real life it would work. But technically it would work. Uh, channel member, says, what smoker fuel do you use? I've just got a new Imperial copper smoker and struggling to keep it going. That's interesting. So I'm doing a few different videos at the moment, like using loads of different smoker fuels. I think my favorite smoker fuel though is still— I, I do actually have a few different ones. My favorite one though, in terms of like the smoke that it produces and the longevity of it, I like old rotten wood. Like really, really old rotten wood, but you need to bring it in like and dry it. So I find it kind of in the winter or whenever, when you find rotten wood, and then bring it and leave it outside, but bring it under a cover and then just let it air dry for literally months. And then you're breaking it up and you get all like fibers and stuff, and you can just stuff that in, get the blowtorch on it, get it going, and then that lasts like all day. That is probably the best one for lasting— No, probably not the best one for lasting long, but it's the best one for like a nice cool, really nice cool smoke. And then I like to, to make that a little bit last a little bit longer, I like to use like the grass pellets. So like the compressed wooden pellets, and that fills the void up a bit. But I find I like to get the, get the oak bark, like the, the rotten bark and the oak going first, and then I'll chuck in some of these wood pellets, and then I'll get the blower on there again, get that going. And then that mix is a, is a really nice long mix. But in terms of Like struggling to keep it going, you need to get it like— it needs to be an inferno in there before you stop using the blowtorch. And I've got— you've seen the blowtorch that I use. Get a proper, you know, a MAP gas blowtorch and blitz it until it is roasting hot in there, and then it'll keep going and it's good. So that would be my recommendation. I'm gonna have a sip of tea. Sorry about that. It was great doing, doing the thing with Griff last week, and I could just— you have breaks because somebody else talks. But over here, you can see there, look, I mean, I'm only 1 inch down into my tea. Nowhere near relaxed enough, right? I lost a hive this year to starvation. Very large, healthy hive 2 weeks ago, then classic starvation today. Stingy beekeeping on my behalf. There is literally nothing worse than starvation because it's always the best colonies that starve. And there's always an intervention, and the— there is always an intervention point. And you just— yeah, it's, it's a hard one because it's on you, isn't it? And I've been there, and it's a difficult one, but you just— you do need to learn from it. I've learned from it. Always err on the side of giving them a bit too much early on in the year. And, you know, tell other people like you, like you've done here. Share the bad news because it is It's gut-wrenching when you open it up and you're thinking, well, hang on, that was a big strong colony. Why is there no activity at the entrance when all of the other hives have got activity? And you know before you go into it, you know that they're dead and you know that they've starved. And then, oh, piles of dead bees. Not nice. Uh, JK Photography says hello. Hello, Joe. I've been confusing JK Photography, I think, for somebody else. There's another J, and I thought you were both the same person, but you're not. Let me find the other J. There we go. I thought you were the same person. Sorry, sorry, the 2 J's there. I think I've been speaking to you like you're the same person as well. So if there's ever been anything like I've been saying and you're thinking, what's he talking about? Then that's the confusion. Sorry about that. Steve's Honeybee says, I heard cat litter is good smoker fuel. Not sure. So cat litter is very similar. similar to wood pellets, kind of like basically this made from the same stuff, but it is good. Cat litter is really good. How cold is too cold for inspections? Hived a 6-frame nuc and a 12-frame hive 2 weeks ago, not gone above 11 degrees, not expected to warm up. Should I be inspecting them or leave them until it warms up? So I hope, hope your nuc's doing well, Sophie. Thanks for the positive review, very kind. So normally I would say you need to go in and do an inspection, um, especially like on a full-size colony, but a 6-frame nuc, they'll be fine. They're not going to have got to the point where you need to do inspection on them because they— you always need to ask yourself, why am I doing an inspection? And the only reason really at this point in the year, especially with, you know, you've got a nuc, you know the queen's in there, you know she's laying, you know they've got enough food, the only real reason to go in there at this point in the year is to see if they're swarming. And as long as they're not filling that box already, and they, they might be not that far off, but I don't think they're— I don't think they will be filling it that quickly, which means that there won't be swarm cells. So I don't think you need to do the inspection. So what I would do though is you, you've got a 12-frame hive there, so when the bees are covering 10 frames, you need to take the feeder off and you need to put the supers on, and it's at that point you should start doing your inspections. But what you should do in the meantime is go in, open it up, pop the crown board, and just have a look. Have a look at the top, and if they're on 7 frames, you just put the crown board back on and put the feeder back on, give them a bit more feed, and close it up, and it's done. That's, that's what I would be doing, and that's all you really need to do. So wait until they're on 10 frames, take the feeder off, put the supers on, and at that point start your inspections. Hopefully it'll be a bit warmer by then. Um, sorry, I think I answered that question. I, I, yeah, I'm not, not sure. I'm gonna, I'm gonna keep my eye out for that, any new upcoming beekeepers. Uh, Drast One Cone says, if you want to fully propagate a preferred genetic line, would it make sense to let a drone layer just lay drones briefly, add a frame of brood, and then let him raise a new queen, let them raise a new queen? Um, no, it doesn't, it doesn't really work like that because the drones that are going to be created there are just not They're not going to be getting involved in any of that mating at all. The queens— that, that new queen that's going to go out and get mated is going to fly off a couple of miles, come back, and she's going to have lots of different genetic material inside of her from lots of different drones, not the ones that are created in the same hive as her. Um, so no, it wouldn't, it wouldn't really work. This cold spell is very annoying. I think that's gonna have to go down as my new favorite comment because it is very annoying. Oh my God. And you know what? Do you know what's probably even more annoying than that, which is what my wife tells me, is me talking about it all the time and getting really depressed and saying, oh, this weather's just driving me mad. It's so annoying. The only one good thing— there is a silver lining with the, the weather— is that we're sending lots of nukes out at the moment, and we don't want it too hot. If it was 26, 27 degrees, I'd be saying, oh, it's too hot to send nukes out. I don't know what we're gonna do. And you can send nucs in that temperature, but I always get more— I get more worried when it's warmer. But when it's cold, it's great. I can just— we can send as many nucs as we can get out of the door and not have to worry about them overheating in the post. So that is the only silver lining for me at the moment, but it is very, very annoying. How long can you keep frames of foundation before they are used? So you can basically keep them indefinitely, and they will— the bees will still use them. It does go stale though. And not stale in that, oh, it's gone off, but it just goes a bit like hard and a bit brittle and a bit off color. But as soon as you put it into a colony, they just, they warm it back up and it becomes malleable again and they work it perfectly. So it never ever goes off. The only thing to watch out is that when it goes a bit brittle and stale though, is that it breaks really easily. So if you drop it, it's just, it just shatters into bits and really annoying. And it always shears across where the wire is. Basically get one piece of foundation turns into 2. Some people say that you should like run a hair dryer over it. And I, I've done that, it does make a difference. You've got like really nice bright or like whitey yellow wax, and then you run a hair dryer over it to warm it up and it goes to like a nice deep yellow. And people say that the bees take to it better, but I've not found that. The bees take to stale and brittle beeswax absolutely fine, and they draw it out just as well. So I'm not one for doing things if they don't need to be done, but you can keep it indefinitely. Channel member says, hi Lawrence, going to give cut comb a go this year. Would you recommend putting a super with just 10 frames of foundation in or checkerboarding with foundation and wet comb? Hmm, I would— if you're going for it, I would keep it without any other comb in there at all. You— it can confuse the bees— not confuse them, but it gives them like a preference, and what you want is nice even kind of combs. So I would just wipe it all out, just go with 10 frames of foundation and get the right sizing in terms of the frames that you want for the spacing. And if you, if you, if you've not bought it already, go with the Manley frames. Manley frames are perfect for cut comb because it's the correct depth, because it's like a much wider frame, which means that when you cut it out, you get the correct weight and you get the correct spacing on it as well. So go with a Manley frame. Uh, Stephen says, we have several Ponticum rhododendrons about 500 meters from the hives. Apparently Ponticum can produce hallucinogenic honey. Any thoughts? So, uh, I wish it was true. In, in the forest that where I keep bees, there is so many rhododendrons, and I'm not sure if they're Ponticum, but they're definitely rhododendrons. Maybe, maybe this is a slightly different one, but you would need a huge density to make it worthwhile. But I, I thought exactly this because it is full of rhododendrons, like really nice pinky purple ones everywhere, like thousands of them. And I've never, never gotten any really cool trips eating the honey. Maybe you'd have to eat a bit more. Um, but yeah, there we go. Right, John Sylvester's taking them back. Oh no, we're kicked off here. Sorry, he's huffing. Sorry, John. Peter Tomkinson says, why do some colonies supersede the queen and some swarm? Is it down to time of year, temperature, or genetics? So it's just 2 completely different impulses. They swarm, but colonies swarm because they're trying to reproduce into kind of more than one being, and they'll do that because that's what bees do. All bees will swarm. There isn't a single colony that ultimately won't go out and swarm, and if bees didn't swarm, we wouldn't have bees. But you can force swarming through cramping them in. So if they've not got enough space, they'll swarm loads quicker. Whereas a supersedure, they're not trying to reproduce, they're not trying to turn one colony into 2, they're just saying there is something wrong with our queen, uh, we're gonna die unless we try and create a new queen. So they supersede with the intention of just replacing the queen and then maybe not swarming. So they're not reproducing. So there's 2 different impulses. One is to create more bees and create new colonies, and one is just a response to stop them dying. So you might find, and some people do think this, that they will supersede at certain times of the year. So I think you'll find a lot of superseding kind of early in the year, and you'll find a lot of superseding late in the year, and then in the middle period you don't tend to find quite as much, but that might— it might be anecdotal. Genetics might play a little bit of a part in it as well. A lot of people— like, for me, colonies superseding an old queen is just the best thing ever. If you've got, if you've got a queen that's 3 years old, brilliant queen, F1 Buckfast maybe, who's produced loads of honey for 3 years and not swarmed, and then she's 3 years old and then the bees say she's not doing it anymore, we're going to supersede her. that's a really good trait, and that's something that you potentially want to keep in your apiary. Because what might happen again is that they'll just go another 3 years without swarming and supersede again. But each generation, you're diluting the genetics down with whatever is in the air anyway. So without kind of any sort of form of artificial insemination, it's going to be difficult to kind of do anything with that. But interesting question though. Hi Lawrence, what's your thoughts on using the top brood box in a demo rear as a queen cell starter finisher? Just thinking this might be easier than building queen plus queen minus hives for queen rearing. So you, you can do that, that would— it does work, um, because you've ultimately got a box of bees that is far enough away from the queen to trigger the emergency response. For me, there's not quite enough young bees up there. I like to have a much higher ratio of young bees to the space that is up there, and because what you're doing in, in that box there is If— unless you do it on like day 1 when you're gonna have the highest density of young bees up there, as soon as the queen starts laying in the downstairs box, all of the nurse bees are drawn to where the open brood is. So like the best place to do that in the Demeray split is going to be down where the queen is. But obviously you can't do it down where the queen is because there's a queen there, so they're not gonna— it's not gonna trigger the emergency response. So it's not really set up perfectly for it. I know it seems like it is, but I think the timing is just like a few days off. from it being— from it working well. Um, so yeah, not, not sure about that. It's not to say that it wouldn't work, you'd still trigger the response, but I just don't think you'd get like the juicy grubs that you're looking for. Uh, Ben Davis says, I recently put my super on as you suggested. This cold spell, will that put them at risk of starving? Shall I take the super off and start feeding or leave it? So that is the greatest conundrum at this point in the year, and that is the reason that I really like to not put the supers on early. And it's the reason that I like to have double brood up my sleeve as something that you can do early on in the year, because it just, it ticks both of those 2 boxes perfectly. You take away the issue of the bees not having enough space, you take away the issue of adding space above and the bees losing all of the heat upwards, and then you also get the benefit that you can still keep the feeder directly above where the bees are clustering. So even when it's cold, they'll access it and you can feed them. So overwintering on like a double brood, even at this point, if you're overwintering on a double brood, what you'll find is that all the bees are in the top box and the bottom box is just empty. So you've kind of like configured that perfectly anyway. You don't really need to do anything. It's one of the reasons I really, really do like double brood. Gives you that massive buffer of flexibility early on in the season. The updated message from the NBU is to encourage beekeepers to opt for oxalic and formic acid and thymol rather than synthetic treatments such as tefluvalinate and amitraz. Interesting. Um, I'm not sure I agree with that whatsoever, I'm afraid, because it's fully effective. And you know what would be interesting is if they genuinely believed that oxalic acid was the best way to treat varroa, which I do believe it is, maybe they should lobby for us to be able to use pure oxalic acid as opposed to something that's got a markup of 1,000% with added sugar in that gunks up all of the equipment that you use it for. So there we go. Thymol doesn't work. Thymol is just really not very good. It needs to be the absolute perfect temperature. Formic acid was very good and was effective, but it knocked off old queens, um, and the only real benefit of using it was that the licensing allowed you to use it with the supers on. And now Formic Pro doesn't let you do that. You have to take the supers off, so it becomes a really useless treatment. So I'm sorry if that's come across as a little bit passive-aggressive. I felt, I felt myself going down that. Wasn't, wasn't intended to be at you. Sorry, Carol. It frustrates me if that is genuinely their advice, because if that's their advice, then they need to support the beekeeping industry and lobby for those treatments to be used more effectively. Kind of in their more natural form, as opposed to just don't don't use what works. Use these ones here that don't work. Two of those are really bad. Sorry. I'm gonna have a tea. I do. Got a bit bad there, Carol. Sorry about that. You hit a nerve. You definitely hit a nerve there. Right, Michael Menino. Good afternoon from New Hampshire, USA. Snow is finally gone. Bee season has begun for us here. Glad to catch your Q&A. Sanding bee boxes, getting ready for paint. Very nice. Must be kind of like late afternoon there. Uh, Libby Ramsden says, to bank queens, does the hive being used need to be queenless? So yes, definitely needs to be queenless. And if you're banking like a number of queens, you need to have an incredible amount of young bees in there, and you need to constantly be replenishing the young bees. Now if you're If you're doing that kind of like on a smaller scale, just like banking a queen, then yes, it does still need to be queenless. You can bank queens in supers, so some people do that. If you've got a colony with 2 or 3 supers on and a queen excluder in place, you can put a queen upstairs in the super on a queen-right hive, and that will work for a few days. You can definitely do it that way around as well. But if you're doing it anywhere near the brood box or the queen's got access to her, they will just kill them. Definitely. Wildways Farm says, hi Lawrence, sorry I'm late. Excited about my Italian queens, if possible nice and long and ginger. I love ginger queens. I think you've, I think you've probably gone to the top of the favorite comments list for tonight. I love ginger queens as well. I will pick you out some nice long ginger queens. The Italian ones, the Lagustica queens, are very long and very ginger. Um, beautiful queens. I posted a video. See the video I posted today, just the short? That's basically what they come out like. Uh, Jay says, I've never really understood how queen breeders keep the F0 bloodlines going, like Peter Little's bees. I'm sure a few managed to get hold of them, bless him. Is there a link or a video that explains this? So I, I'm not a breeder, so I, I'm, uh, not the best one to explain this. We, we rear a lot of queens, but we don't do the breeding. But it is pretty simple to keep the bloodlines going though, because all you're doing is you, you're taking the queens and then you're just artificially inseminating them with the drones. So as long as you've got a mother line and you've got a drone line and then you're artificially inseminating them, you know what the combination of those 2 is. So then you, you're never bringing any new genetics outside of the genetics that are created to create the pure F0 queens. So you just, you need, you basically, if you, as long as you've got both of them, you've got that mix, and you can, you can do it. You can do it on the same, you can do it on the same colony as well. So you can take the drones and the queens from the same colony. Don't think that's generally done, but you could, you could do that. Um, but it's as simple as that. Says, what are your thoughts on the spread of Asian hornets, and how do you think the UK will cope with them if establish themselves. Um, I'm really scared about the threat of Asian hornets, really scared. It's, it's not good, and I'm worried about the impact that they're going to have to like everything really, like inside beekeeping, outside of beekeeping, just like the impact that they're going to have on the general public. You know when you go to like the zoo or something like that and you see wasp traps up? Asian hornets get hold, it's just going to be carnage with all be massive hornets flying around. Uh, I think you'll— the newspapers will sensationalize things and you'll get someone getting stung by one and dying, and then there'll just be mass panic and hysteria, which is, which is the classic UK way. Uh, how did the— how do you think UK will cope if they establish themselves? I'm, I'm not sure. I don't know if it's going to be as bad as it is in France. I'm hoping that, that the temperature will result— like, the climate will result in a slightly shorter season. So I think in France it's kind of June onwards that it gets really bad for the colonies, through to like June to September-ish. I'm hoping in the UK it might be July to September. You know, I think it will still end the same, but it might just be a little bit, a little bit later, which I think is a— like, it is potentially a big difference. that, especially if you're in the south. Because most beekeepers, like when I speak to commercial beekeepers and bee farmers in the south, come the middle of July, like it's done. They're finished. They are well and truly done. The season is over unless they're going for some, maybe have some like the back end of the borage or going for the heather. But the general clover and bramble is done by then. So if you can do all of your beekeeping and you'll see like the spring build up and get a spring crop and then get a summer crop and get all of the honey off, Then the bees don't really need to fly. And that's what's going to happen is the Asian hornets come over and they're hawking in front, the bees won't fly, and that's what kills them. But if the bees are fed and you give them syrup and you give them water and you give them pollen substitute or real pollen, they don't need to leave the hive. So you can just keep the colony going. So I think it'd be a bit more work for beekeepers to do that. but it won't be like mass deaths of bees. So I think people will adapt. I think, I think we will adapt and we'll come up with a way of living with them, but there'll be more, more work for the beekeepers to, to do. I've split colonies like 6 times already each and they bounce back like crazy. Brilliant Black Mountain Honey Queens. Excellent, good to hear that. We chatted on the phone the other day, didn't we, and you said about It's good to hear. I'm glad they're doing so well. Man United says, how do you ask a question? If you just chuck it on there, I will. I'll come down to it. I'm nearly at the bottom now, so just put it in the comments. I'll answer any questions. Johnin says, I think it's Johnin. Say greetings from Lebanon. My second time beekeeping. Tried grafting last week after splitting a hive. Tomorrow we'll make a checkup and feed. Very good. I love Lebanese food. Lebanese food is like my favorite cuisine. Absolutely amazing. Miroslava says, put supers on already when weather was good. What would you do worried about starvation? So what you definitely can't do is like let your ego get into it and think, well, I put the supers on, definitely not taking the supers off now. If you need to go in, have a look, and if they're short on stores, then you need to feed them and need to take the supers off to feed. Unless the only one I would say is if you, if you put supers on and they are— it's like foundation, 100% foundation— you could potentially just put the feeder on the top and just give them a bit of a feed and, and hope that they just— they're not going to store it because they've got to draw out the foundation first. So you definitely get like a couple of rounds of feed into them before they start storing it. So that's maybe, maybe a way around that. I, I've had to do that before. gone out, put all the supers on, hundreds of supers on, and then had to go back around, take the supers back off again, feed them. It's really annoying. I have two— I have made 2 splits due to colonies making charged queen cells as they had 9 frames of brood. Would the queens be able to mate in Sussex, or would it be better buying mated queens? So like I said, 2 or 3 weeks later they probably get mated. I wouldn't be risking it. At the moment, I'm afraid. It's just it's just too cold out there. And this is the thing: the people a lot of people say, "Oh, imported queens! You should never import queens." But if you've got colonies swarming and you need to make splits and you need to do something, then they'll just fail in the UK if it's like damp and miserable. So they do serve a purpose. Donnie's Bee says, "Thanks for the advice on the drone laying queen issue. I've just bought one of your queens. Fingers." crossed. Keep us in the loop. Excited to hear about that one. Says, second full inspection of this year today and still can't find a queen. Any tips? Um, mark the queen when you find her. That's a really good tip. Like, and, and this is, this is the one as well, you know, don't inspect your bees and then find the queen and think, oh, I found the queen, right, where's my marking gear? So in your pocket, before you start, queen cage and the pen. Shake the pen, prime the pen, test the pen, make sure the pen's working, and then have it like ready to go, like on the side of the hive. So when you're doing the inspections, you're like, right, there's the queen, bang, she is marked. Good mark, good pen. Use a nice oil-based pen. Um, Richard's favorite, uh, pen for marking is— he doesn't actually use a pen, he uses nail varnish. He uses luminous pink nail varnish for his production colonies, and it's good. It's really good. You need to leave the queen in the cage a little bit because it's not, it's not the quickest drying, but it's rock solid once it dries. Never comes off, literally never comes off. And it's because it's bright pink, and bright pink's definitely my favorite color for queen marking. Brilliant color. Hate red. Red is the worst queen marking color ever. Not a fan of that. But sorry, I've not answered your question there. Any tips on finding the queen? So it is a difficult one. I find as you go through the season, you do get a lot better at finding queens. So early on, it can be a challenge. What I like to say is don't look for the queen. Yeah, don't look at all the bees and say, oh, that's not the queen, that's not the queen, that's not the queen. Look at the frame and try and identify the behavior going on on the frame, because all of the bees just run around the frame going crazy. They don't really respect each other that much. They try not to run into each other, but they'll just be banging into each other the whole time. All of the bees on the frame respect the queen, let the queen walk. So you can see this behavior kind of like parting, and, and I find that's, that's the best way to— you're almost like taking a step back and saying, right, you're not looking for the individual queen, you're looking for the behavior that indicates that the queen might be nearby. and, and it's like, it's like a bit of a Zen state. But finding unmarked queens is very, very difficult. But don't make the mistake of not marking her when you find her. And then finding marked queens is well easy. One of my hives has superseded a cell already. Do you think it's too early, or do you think that she may be okay to mate? So again, I, I wouldn't be risking it with my own bees. Definitely not. I'd be taking it down. Uh, Welsh black bees, tiny indeed. I like that name. He says, hi all, I just received the fake Flow Hive. Hopefully we'll start building tomorrow, but it's a Langstroth and all my kit is national. How did you populate your Flow Hives with national frames? So the video that I did properly bodged it, but there's a number, there's a number of ways of doing it. So if you've got like a hive that's got like loads of— if you've got like really dark black comb, like really black comb, you're thinking of a black comb, just do a shook swarm. Do a shook swarm into it. That's what I should have done with mine and just cycled out some old frames, because you should be cycling out your frames every, every 3 years, really. Every 3 years, every single frame should be cycled out, melted down, rewaxed, or burnt, and just buy new, new wax and foundation, uh, new frames and foundation. So if you've— if you're looking at a hive and thinking, oh, I want to put that National hive into this Langstroth Flow Hive and the frames are all dark and black, do a shook swarm. And if you're not sure what a shook swarm is or how to do it, you're basically going to shake off all of the bees off the frames onto the new kit. First thing you do is you find the queen, get the queen, and put the queen down onto the new Langstroth, like, frames. Sorry, I've got an itchy nose. And she will just run down, and then you shake all of the bees in, and because the queen's in there, they'll all stay put. You put the hive, you put the new Langstroth Flow hive where the original national hive was sited, and you take the national hive off just like 2 or 3 meters away, shake all of the bees in, and then just burn all of the frames of bees and brood. Sounds a bit drastic, I know, but you're, you're giving them a nice clean break, and you'll be amazed how quickly at this point of the year the bees will come back from that, and they thrive, and you've just— they've not got the like the disease and the pathogens that are located in that comb. So I've got a lot of colonies this year that I shook swarmed last year, did a big whole apiary shook swarms, and they just look so good. I'm over the moon with them. And I used to be one of these people that thought, oh no, shook swarms, I'm not, I'm not a fan of shook swarms, massive waste of beekeeping resource and brood. But I am now, really, really big fan of them. So that's what I would be doing if you've got nice new clean brand new foundation, uh, and the National frames are in good condition, the way to do it— and it's not, it's not the best way of doing it, but it does work— but the National frames do fit quite nicely into the Langstroth frames. So the way you need to do it is you make up the Langstroth frames but don't put the bottom bars in. And if you don't put the bottom bars in, they fit really nicely inside of them, and then you just need to zip tie the National lugs onto the Langstroth top bar, and then that's the way— that's the best way to get them to transfer over. It's not— it's not very neat. You're going to end up with not very neat frames. Um, a lot neater if you do the Shook Swarm way, but both of those ways will work. Both of those ways will work. Have you ever looked— have you ever looked back at your first stream? Picture quality is quite a bit better than now. Also, you're not blocking as many people now as you did back then. Um, is it, is it better quality? I'm always, I'm, I'm a bit interested by that. I think the reason that the stream quality is better is that I use, uh, I use StreamYard and it's, it's linked, uh, limited at 720p, so it's quite a low resolution stream. But if I go directly through YouTube, I can have like a 4K stream and then it just like gives you whatever bitrate. I don't know, I don't know about that techie stuff, but it does, it does all the stuff for you. So the, the quality of the resolution will be higher. But you know what I can't do on YouTube? I can't do this. I can't put comments up like that. And for me, I think it makes a massive difference being able to like put the comments up so people can read what the questions are as opposed to just listening to me. It's really bugging me at the moment because I've been thinking, do I stick with StreamYard? Do I go back to YouTube? Do I use Riverside. There's all these different methods of ways of doing live streams, and I've not found one that I'm perfectly happy with. Maybe I'll pay the money for StreamYard. It's annoying, StreamYard has 2 paid options. One's like £20 a month and the other's £50 a month, and it's the £50 a month that gives you 1080p streaming. I don't really want to pay £50 a month just for ever so slightly better resolution. Is it that much worse? Have you ever looked back at your very first stream? Picture quality is quite a bit better now. Also, you're not blocking as many people now as you did back then. I don't get the second bit. Who am I not blocking? Uh, I'm not blocking as many people now as you did back then. Oh, what, on the streams? I don't know, I'm, I'm lost. I want to go and cry and work out how to do a 4K stream. I'll have a think about it. Kevin James says, any experience of Iberian bees? My parents' colony had I still had 18 frames full of bees, 6 capped queen cells, and 6 virgins after swarming 4 times. The 21 virgins are known for being swarmy. So no, unfortunately no, I don't have any experience of them, but they sound, they sound pretty swarmy. Says, just did a quick full inspection, there was one capped queen cell that was near to the center of the top of the frame. Would that be a supersedure cell? Eggs in hive. So I spoke to somebody else about this earlier in the week. There is— people need to get away from the super— sorry, not, not particularly you. There is a myth out there that says about like the locations of cells meaning things, and it's just not true. It's absolute rubbish. So I find that super seizure cells generally would be on the face of a frame, generally. But I just ignore all of that because I just don't think that matters. This is the simple way of working it out. If you go into a colony and there is one cell wherever, doesn't matter where it is, if there is one swarm cell in the whole colony, that is a supersedure almost certainly. If you go into a colony and there's any more than one cell, regardless of where they are, that's swarming. It's as simple as that. So don't ever be lured into thinking, oh, it's just, it's just like it's on the center of the frame, or there's 4 cells on the center of the frame, it must be supersedure. But people can get really caught up into that. So reading yours again, there was one capped queen cell that was near the center of the top of the frame. Would that be a supersedure cell? I would say yes, because there's just one cell. I wouldn't really see the near to the center as being relevant. But it is a very well-spoken myth. Hear that all the time. Right, next question. Denby Honey says, I found swarm cells today, so I've moved the queen and a frame of brood, etc. I've ordered a mated queen from you to be delivered next Friday. Any more advice, please? So that is exactly what I would have done. That's really good. You've done it well. Move the queen, frame of brood, taking that elsewhere. You've secured the important resource, you've ordered a new mated queen. All I would say is go back in kind of regularly, every 2 or 3 days, and keep on taking down any new swarm cells that they create, because they will keep on taking down new swarm cells. Um, sorry, they'll keep on creating new swarm cells, and they will swarm with the first virgin, but they can sometimes swarm on the capping of the cells as well. So that's why I like to say go in regularly, take them down, don't give them a chance for any of those cells to ever get capped over. And then once you've got a queen in there, they shouldn't swarm, should be good. Just wanted to clarify, so sorry Lawrence, just to clarify, I made a split, left the colony, so left the queenless colony for 7 days, broke down the cells, put in my queen. Do I need to leave her in for another 7 days before popping the cage. So no, once you've got them to a point where they're hopelessly queenless, that becomes like— that's day 8. So on day 8, you can put the cage in. The additional 7 days is more— it's my advice of not going in immediately after. So once you put the cage in, 24 hours, come back, pop the tab so the bees will be able to eat down into the fondant, and then I say don't go back for 7 days. Just leave the bees to it. You could go back after 24 hours if you wanted. Um, it's, it's less important that time, but for me, you, you can really mess up the introduction by going back in and nosying. And what can happen at that point, if you go back in after, say, 24 hours, you find the cage empty and you find the queen on the frame, the queen can fly off at that point. They, they're very flighty early on, mated queens, once they come out of cages, because they're just like a bit nervous, especially if they're not started laying yet. But if you go back in after 7 days, highly likely that she would start laying. Can take like 2 or 3 weeks for queens to come back into lay, especially if the conditions are like they are in the UK. If the colony is not ready for the queen to lay eggs, like you might have a mated queen in a colony and she's just not interested in laying eggs now because it's too cold, or there's not enough nectar coming in, not enough pollen coming in, so she might be taking a break anyway. So I just, I put that advice in there to stop people going back in and Prodding them and pestering them to try and make them do things quicker. Richard says hemp flowers are the best, mellows the bees but gives them the munchies, and the smoke is not harmful to the beekeeper. That sounds pretty cool to me. John says Steve's Honeybees, I use Asda's organic cat litter wood pellets if I need to use a smoker. Very nice. It is Friday, health warning. Dressed— is it Dressed One Cone or Drastic Cone? I don't know. I'm gonna, I'm gonna call you Cone. That's your new name. Cone says the drones would propagate locally, hopefully with outside hives for propagation back into the apiary the following year. Okay, yeah, it— they definitely would add to the drone population in the air. I'd agree with that. Uh, the Wellesbourne Honey Company says quick blast with a heat gun works well. I'm guessing that's in relation to wax. It is nice, it's very satisfying to do it. Heat gun, hair dryer, anything to kind of warm them up a bit. We have a new apiary that is 2 miles away from heather. Do you think the bees will fly for the heather come the autumn, or is it likely to be too far? They'll almost certainly fly 2 miles, and you will know when you go to the apiary because you'll smell it. I've got one that's probably about 3 miles to the heather, and they go there, and then don't come back like filling 3 or 4 boxes, but they'll do like maybe a super or just under a super of heather honey from 3 miles away. They like heather honey, they'll fly quite far for it, and it's not even that they'll fly that far for it over something else, but just at that point in the year, there's not really that much else going on. I've just realized that I've not posted all of my social media to say that the stream's on. That was silly. There we go, done that now. Kind of Jackson. One of my colonies is full on 2 supers but not making much honey. Is it still okay to do a demerite? So if it's full, it's a good time to do a demerite actually, but I wouldn't do it if they've not got a lot of stores in there. I like it if you do 2 supers full of bees. But ideally you want some honey in there as well. The only reason I say that is that, say you had a brood box full of bees and 2 supers full of bees but no stores anywhere, and then you do a demerare, and then we get this weather, like, where are you going to feed? It's a really difficult one. You don't— like, you've got nowhere to feed at that point. So I think, yeah, it's a good point actually. I think I will caveat any further advice to say there needs to be like at least a super full of honey before you do a demerare. Because if you think about it as well, the demerare for me is a mechanism to stop bees swarming or to like move that swarming period to later on in the season. And if the bees aren't going to swarm, then I don't really need to do the demerare. And if they're not making— the bees only swarm when the colony's in a— they leave the original colony in a fit state with sufficient brood and sufficient stores. You never get a colony swarms on like an empty hive with no stores. So I would wait and wait and wait and wait. And the reason that it's better to wait is that you get more bees in your colony, so when you do the demo air and you trick them, then you end up with like a bumper, bumper colony. So I wouldn't rush to do the demo air. You want to do the demo air as late as you possibly can, but before they think about start— they think about starting to make swarm cells. Really good question though. I've not had that question before, and it's a very a good way of thinking about it. It's something that I've not added in, so thanks for that. What do you think I should do? I'm not too sure as they feel lighter than normal. Should I take a super— take off the super tomorrow or just leave it and see? So I always err on the side of your bees not dying is the way that I would go. If you're concerned that they're a bit light, take the super off, feed them. That's what I would do. Says, my first beekeeping year last year, the ivy flow in South Devon was huge. Would it create too much congestion if I feed syrup before the ivy flow to prevent solid frames coming out of spring? Cheerio. Um, no, I don't, I don't think that would cause too much of an issue. I quite like, I quite like the ivy honey. It's nice. It's a bit stinky, and I've only ever had like half a frame of it here. We don't, we don't get enough to have like a crop of the honey, but it is nice. But I wouldn't worry too much about like these hard solid frames. They're usable, those solid frames. You can still use them. You don't need to chuck them away. Just bruise all of the cappings and just put them in the middle of the brood, like split the brood checkerboard with them, and the bees will clear them out. They'll go out and forage water to break them down because they say, how dare you split the brood like that? Brood's not supposed to be split like that. So they do everything they can to to get it out, and it doesn't seem to reappear elsewhere. So all I can think is that they're using it and they're processing it in some way. Um, but what you said there is, yeah, that would work, putting some syrup in there as well to maybe like wet it down a little bit so it's not the same concentration of ivy sugars that are in there that making it go that hard. I guess that would work. Um, in terms of congestion, it might, it might congest them a little bit, but you're not going to get an ivy flow every year, I wouldn't have thought. Like for me, the ivy flow is nice, but it's the ivy pollen that's more important. You want to make sure that there's sufficient space in the frames for the pollen coming in, because that means that's what you're going to get a really nice boost the following year with the pollen frames that are in there. Well, just running through the comments to see what I've not answered yet. Right. So Peter Tomkinson says, thanks, Lawrence. Excellent answer. But how can you tell the difference between a a colony that is superseding and swarming during the inspection? So dead simple, as I said before, if you go in and there is one single cell, the cells look the same. A supersedure cell looks exactly the same as a swarm cell. They are identical, they look the same, you cannot tell the difference between the two of them. The only way to tell the difference is that if you go through the whole colony and there is one, it's a supersedure cell. Any more than one it's swarming. And I know some people say, oh, if it's 2, could be supersedure. Maybe if it's 2, maybe it's supersedure. If it's 3, definitely swarming. So maybe a slight gray area in there, but for me, that's my cutoff point, which is 1 is supersedure, anything more than 1 is swarming. Do you think a mite drop of 1 daily is a good amount? Yes, very good amount. Congratulations, that's a good amount. I wouldn't be worried about that at all. Blackwater Honey says, uh, thanks Lawrence, signing off here in the Middle East. Hope to check you again, check in again next time. Regards, Andy. Cheers Andy, good to see you. Pat the 14th says, hi Lawrence, on my recent inspection I saw a bee with DWV, deformed wing virus. I did treat for varroa last August but could have had a varroa problem, but could I have a varroa problem problem, or is it okay to see the odd deformed wing virus early on in the year? So it's not ideal to see a bee with deformed wing virus this early on in the year, but you could do some sort of testing. That's probably the best way of doing it, is doing like an icing sugar test or killing some bees or doing the alcohol test. And do it if, like, if you think you've got a problem, I would test to see what the drop is, what kind of like levels you've got of varroa. But I wouldn't worry about it too much though, and I'd be looking for other signals to me that there was something wrong with the colony. Maybe it's not growing as much as the other colonies in the apiary. I'm seeing holes in cappings. I'm seeing like natural mite drops. I'd want to see like the combination of a few of those things before I said, right, I think I've got an issue with varroa here. Uh, so seeing— if I just saw— if I open my colonies tomorrow and I saw one bee with a bit of deformed wing virus, I'd be like, no, but I wouldn't, I wouldn't take any action just yet. Hello all the way from Miami. Hello. I'm gonna say he says, hi Lawrence, got a 6-frame nuc installed in a 12-frame Abello hive, have lots of bee— have lots of flying bees, but lots today in the grass near the hive, bees loaded with pollen. Is this something to be worried about? Oh, I don't like the sound of that. So potentially, yes, that is potentially something to really, really be worried about. Bees loaded with pollen coming back to the hive that can't make it back to the hive is potentially a sign of poisoning. So it could be like Roundup, or it could be some other chemical or herbicide, or even worse, an insecticide used on something that those flowers were used on those flowers that the bees are foraging on, or it could just be that it's a bit cold, and I'm hoping that it's the latter. So definitely monitor that, and if you're constantly seeing more bees with pollen coming back in on the grass in front, I don't know what you'd do. I genuinely don't know what you'd do. Speak to your neighbours and ask them to stop using chemicals on The dandelions maybe, but I'm hoping that it's just that they're cold and they may be kind of coming back. I just don't see why they'd be on the grass with pollen though, because you think they're going to be flying back in. Why would they get to the grass? It's, it's a, it's a bit of a strange one. Definitely, definitely want to monitor. Bring it back next couple of weeks and tell us what happens. Hopefully there's nothing major to worry about. Uh, Zums Honey Company says, hi, I bought a license filling machine and an additional pipe that enables you to feed honey directly from a barrel. Is it necessary to have the honey above the pump? These pumps are made to be able to do so. So yes, unfortunately I got— I, I didn't think so when I bought it. I thought that I could just, you know, have like a barrel of honey and just run the hose into the bottom of the honey, keep it there, and then to pump upwards and to use the Lyson filling machine. Definitely doesn't work like that. The pump's not strong enough to keep constant pressure on it. And even when it will give you like relative constant pressure, it— when you're using it on turntable mode, it doesn't give you accurate filling. And when it— when you have the honey stored above the pump and you just have like gravity, so with no air in it whatsoever, the dosing is so, so accurate. And for me, that's, that's the benefit of the bottling machine, is that it does all of the jars to within like a gram. Half a gram, something crazy like that. So no, you do you do need to get it set up on like a gravity-fed system, which is quite it is quite difficult. I end up having the honey the bottling machine like low down just off the floor and then have a gravity-fed and it works really well. Maybe not the answer you wanted. Jason Walker says, "When feeding, would you just use one to one or and or if any other additives? What would you suggest like pollen, hive alive, essential oils or anything?" So definitely don't use anything that you're not allowed to. use. It's the kind of thing that VMD do test for, and you shouldn't be using any unlicensed things at that point. I would just use 1:1 at this point in the year, and I wouldn't use any other additives. The only— like you mentioned there, Hive Alive, it's not— unless you're making— unless you're just going for splits and you've ruled out any sort of honey extraction, I wouldn't use Hive Alive because it's so pungent with the thymol. And if you get any of that anywhere near your honey, it's just— it's contaminated, so you can't sell it or eat it anyway. But it's just not nice even for personal use, so I don't use any Hive Alive early on in the season. Pollen— oh, people know I'm not a fan of pollen sub or pollen substitute or real feeding real pollen. If you can get it, you'd have to get irradiated pollen to avoid any disease risk. Uh, I think the bees can still get out even 11, 12 degrees. The bees are going out, they're getting pollen, getting loads of dandelions at the moment. So, so I would just feed 1 to 1. I think 1 to 1 will give all the bees all that they need at the moment. Do you know what's irking me? It's at the back of my mind, is that someone said about the stream not being good quality, because I've been thinking about that for ages, and I'm thinking that I'm sat here in like 6 pixels. I'm gonna have to deal with that. I don't know, maybe we'll do it next week. On YouTube, we'll go back to YouTube and see see if it's any better because it does annoy me the resolution of the stream. Gutted. Right, I'm gonna drink some tea, make myself feel better. Matt Burrow says, "Hi Lawrence, when would you do a demeray split at this time of the year, or is the weather not good enough? Days between 11 to 14 degrees, nights 2 to 5." So for me, it's the temperature is not the main driver for me. I use the Demaray split to stop the bees swarming. I want to do it as late as I possibly can. The bees need to have a brood box full to the brim with bees, no swarm cells. They can't have started any swarm cells. Need to have 2 supers full of bees, and new advice, at least a super full of honey. They're like the minimum requirements, I would say, to do a successful Demaray. But this is— well, I don't think I've said this as well either previously, which is like, do it as late as possible. So you don't want them to create swarm cells, but you want to push it as far to the right— project management speak— you want to push it as far to the right as you possibly can, because that means that you're going to get more honey. That's basically what you're doing. And it means that you might get away with just doing one demeray per season as opposed to 2. So you don't want to force the bees and do an early demeray. And if you do that, if you do the demeray too early, when the bees aren't ready for it, you badly damage the colony, you set them back. Okay, they won't swarm, but they're gonna— you're gonna struggle to get a decent amount of honey off them. Hi, question. I've noticed a lot of almost completely yellow bees in one of my hives, not just their bodies but their heads too. It has bright orange Italian Buckfast queen in it. Could this be a problem? So no, I think they've just been out on the dandelions. Looks great. They come back just like, oh, just like lethargic, and, uh, they're just crazy with the amount of pollen on them. I think, I think it's a good thing. I don't think there's any issue there. Uh, I love it when they come back like that. My favorite thing. What queen would you suggest me buying from you for my split? So, so for me, I always go F1 Buckfast queen, cheapest one on the website. And it's like our bestseller, and it's my favorite. Uh, well, Harry says no picture quality is brilliant. £12 a month more than love. Okay, I'm relieved. There we go. I, uh, ah, I still, I still want a slightly better one, but it's good. I'm glad that Harry said that. Maybe, maybe it was other person that had a slightly worse connection. I don't know. But I'm gonna— first thing I do after this, I'm gonna go back and look at my first stream and look at what the quality of it was like. Lynette Blackman has become a channel member. Excellent news. Thanks for supporting us, Lynette. You'll see all of the brand new videos first when the weather comes out and I get to go and do some more videos. I'm a bit gutted. I wanted to— wanted to do more videos at the moment. I've not been able to go out. Jason Walker says beekeeping has done wonders for my mental health. Anyone else think this 100%. It is probably one of the best things that you can do because you're just like peaceful. Do you know what the second best thing that you can do is? And some people will disagree with this, but play golf. Golf is incredibly good for mental health. But I'll answer the question first. So beekeeping for mental health is really, really good. And I think the reason it's so good is that it's a very mindful activity. So you kind of like cleanse your mind of everything and you're just like tunnel vision thinking about the bees. But I think the other thing that's really nice about beekeeping is it's very sensory. So you get, like, for me, one of the best things, first time of the year, opening up the hive and the smell that comes off. And it's the combination of, like, the warmth of the bees and the propolis and the wax and the honey and the pollen and everything. Like, that smell is so evocative and so nice. And then I love it, like, beekeeping in the sun. You've got, like, the sun on your face. Um, but then, like, the, the touch And the feel, and you get stung, and there's stickiness, and it's just the sounds. I think it really does trigger all of those emotional responses. And if you're stressed or you've got mental health issues, it stops you thinking about like life's stress and life's mental health and, and life's met— like issues that are causing maybe your poor mental health. So I do, I think it's a really, really good thing for mental health. Everyone should do it. Dave Dwyer says, do you think bees could move an egg to another spot, uh, in a hive to make a queen? Interesting one. A lot, uh, a lot of beekeepers disagree about this one. Some say they definitely do and that they think they can prove that they do, and some say they definitely don't and they think that they can prove that they don't. I think that they probably can, but I can't prove it, so I'll sit on the fence a bit. But I, I have heard people say Without a doubt they have, and kind of said for X, Y, and Z reasons. Um, but I don't know. Yeah, I, I think they can. I think they can, and I think they do. Lynn, the new channel member, said don't forget your tea. Uh, I'm just not drinking that much. It's cold. It's now cold herbal tea. Brilliant. But I'm really thirsty because I've been playing golf. Golf is brilliant for mental health, and the reason golf is brilliant for mental health is that when you're on the tee All you're thinking about is I've got to hit this ball, hit it straight. Great, love golf. Uh, right, let me jump back down again. I've done all these, sorry. Right, so Marcus says, is all your knowledge on beekeeping from experience and mentors, or have you studied and taken the modules? So I think it was proven quite, uh, quickly last week that my beekeeping knowledge is pretty poor when it comes to actual examinations and modules. Um, so definitely not that route. I, I did all right at school. I didn't do like great at school, but I kind of can absorb information quite well. But I really don't enjoy academic study. I can't think of anything worse than reading books and doing exams and stuff like that. And like, for me, beekeeping should be fun, and there's no way that beekeeping wouldn't improve my mental health if I had to do— if I had to read and study and take modules and stuff. But I do like to learn, like I have a passion for learning about stuff, but just in the kind of format that suits me. So I'm like a kinesthetic learner, so I like to learn through breaking and feeling and touching and building and stuff like that. And so I've kind of learned through that, but I do have, you know, Richard is basically my mentor and he's been a bee farmer for 30 years and he knows pretty much everything and is very happy to share that knowledge. So he's good. But I chat to other bee farmers as well. So bee farmers are pretty good at sharing knowledge and stuff, and, and some of them only too happy to tell you when you're doing things wrong. But I'm, I'm, I've not got a huge ego. I've got a bit of an ego, but I've not got a huge ego. And I definitely don't think that I know it all when it comes to beekeeping. At like quite the opposite, in fact. I've said this a million times, like I'm just an amateur beekeeper who's got a camera for YouTube. So loads of people that I talk to, they've got tons more experience than me. I'm, I'm pretty basic. But what I do have though is I, I have a, a kind of desire to simplify things. So I don't like big, difficult, complex techniques. I just like to keep things really nice and basic and simple and break it down. And I also have a, a huge hatred for people saying stuff like, um, I won't say that, but for people not trying new things. So I love to try new things, and I love to break taboos and, and try different things to see if they work for me, and not just because somebody else says, oh yeah, don't do that. Because I wouldn't be using Buckfast bees if that was the case, because everybody said don't use Buckfast bees, Buckfast bees are the enemy, definitely don't use them, they create Horrible bees, and they swarm, and they just always need to be fed, and you won't get any honey from them. And I did that for years because that's what people told me to do. And then I just got fed up with beekeeping with dark, horrible, angry chalkbrood bees, and I just thought, you know what, I'm just gonna give it a go. And it was the best thing I ever did. And it made— and it just opened my eyes because it was like, why, why did they say that? Because they, they gave me the advice, and the advice couldn't have been worse. Could they? Couldn't have been more wrong with their advice. They said Don't use Buckfast bees because they'll just swarm, and it pretty much stopped swarming. They said don't use Buckfast bees because they'll be diseased, and I was like, really? But anyway, chalk brood went overnight. They said don't use Buckfast bees because they'll be aggressive, and they— you're basically like breeding aggression. And within 12 months, I had the calmest bees possible. They said don't, don't keep Buckfast bees because all you'll have to do is just keep on feeding them, you'll never get any honey. And my honey crop went up 300% within a year. But you know, so I like trying things, like trying things and breaking things and seeing what works for me, and then sharing that knowledge and encouraging others to try things as well before judging. Uh, okay, John, uh, moderator extraordinaire, put out a 60-minute warning on No Nonsense Beekeeping. Removed it now and unpinned from features. That would have done, John. You're on the ball. Thank you. Uh, Ben Davis says, I have fresh foundation on the hive right now, so could I place the feeder on top of the super so they still have space in the hive? So, so yeah, I think that that's probably like the halfway house that I'd be. If you've got— if you put a super on and it's just all foundation, just get the feeder on top and feed them through it and just go, go like really small. Don't put those in there. A couple of liters. If they take down a couple of liters what they're likely to do with it is start drawing out the foundation in the supers. And then as soon as they start storing any stores in those supers, stop feeding them, because then you're just going to have a super full of stores. But that's a, that's a nice halfway house, I think, for this point in the year. Has come in. Hi there, hope your soap making's going well. Uh, Ben then says, will they then just store the feed in the brood box because they don't have drawn foundation in the supers? So like I say, If they— what they're likely to do at that point is to start drawing out the foundation in the super. I don't think they'd take it down and store it in the brood box. Noticed a lot of bees under my hives also loaded with pollen but unable to get into the hive. It is a bit worrying hearing that, I've got to say. It's not— that's not normal behavior from bees loaded with pollen, but I am hoping that it is like entrance related. And maybe they're coming down and there's not like— not a landing board. Maybe using like an underfloor entrance without a landing board, and they're just— they're trying to come in and falling off and then getting like a bit of a chill on the floor. So what I would maybe be doing is like maybe making the landing board a little bit easier or more accessible for them. I know I don't like landing boards, but— John makes a very valid point. 162 people in the stream but only 72 likes. It would be very, very nice if people could hit the like button, please. I'll tell you what, I'll have a sip of tea while you hit the like button. Here we go, see if we get the numbers up. Uh, Matt Burrows says, hey, would you be so kind as to explain the June Gap, and would this apply to bees that are in a paddock in a village? So the June Gap is a strange mythological being— it's not really, uh, it's, it's just There is like a natural— in the UK you get spring forage and you get summer forage, and it completely varies to where you are within the UK, like when the timings of that. But on the whole, there is a time in June-ish, maybe 7 to 10 days, where the spring flowers have finished, got the blossom and stuff, and the bramble and the clover and stuff from the summer doesn't come out. So it changes depending on where you are in the country. It's going to be a different time, and depending on where you are in the country, it's going to be a different duration. And some years you might not get it, and you might have an overlap, and you just don't have a June gap. Some years you might have a really, really long June gap, and you just need to be aware of that. And I think you need to be more aware of it if you take a spring crop because might think that all is well and you think, oh, I've got 4 supers of honey on my colonies and it's the 29th of May, well, I'm going to take all of that honey off and I'll leave them half a super. And, you know, there's loads of honey coming in, everything's good. And then you come back a week later and everything's dead. And you can't underestimate how much stores and honey the bees need in order to just keep that colony going. And if you time that taking off that honey with the June gap when nothing comes in, like it drops dead. And the easiest way to tell when the June gap is— this is a really good one— is that the bee's temperament changes overnight. It's like someone flicks a switch like that, and they could be all happy and everything's great, and they're going out and collecting pollen, collecting nectar, and then all of a sudden they have nothing to do and they just start fighting. And it's when the robins— you start getting a little bit of robin coming in, and they are tetchy and they are really defensive. about what they've already got in their hive. So that's the best way to kind of seeing it coming in, but it is just as simple as that, is the flowering stops and there's just a bit of a lull, but it generally doesn't last long. Uh, right, let's have a go. Uh, just reading everyone's comments about the resolution there, that's good. Really reassuring. Oh, is that right? Is it? Have I got that wrong? Is he saying that the quality of it now is better? I didn't think it was. I'm gonna have to go back and look at it now. Was he? Did he say that? I thought he said, "I won't bore people with the stream quality ones. I'll work it out at the end." If he did say that, then that's great. It was a compliment. Brilliant. And if that was the case, then the reason for that is is that I've got like a three thousand pound camera that. on because look, I can do stuff like this. Oh yeah, there we go. So I did, I upgraded the kit. I spent a ridiculous amount of money on AV equipment. Um, and you know the, the phrase, all the gear, no idea? That's me down to a T. I have no idea how to use any of it. Uh, but I— it gets some nice results because it is good quality kit. Brilliant. Got a dog watching. He says, "Hi Lawrence, we had a queen of you yesterday. We're watching from Anglesey. There is nothing wrong with the stream. It's good quality. Excellent." Okay. Oh, here we go. Right. So Matt's clearing it up. Oh my god! I'm so sorry. The stream is so good. I was just saying your very first stream ever wasn't as good as they are now. Keep up the great work. Oh right. The panic is over. Okay. That's great. Sorry for everybody that I ruined a lot of the stream talking about resolution. I should read the comments a little bit better. So there we go. No apology. Necessary. Uh, Bree says, Bree, my bees come back with red heads from the red dead nettle. Very nice. Uh, but Ian's not happy with the ads, so any way you can stop all the ads popping up? This doesn't happen on Griff's stream. Yeah, maybe he's not got the ads turned on. I do— I, I— they're on like moderate, I think, the ads. Some people get more than others for some reason. Not sure about that. Uh, SimBobCraft says, I had a nuc arrive in the post recently and Royal Mail wrapped it in plastic, killed half the colony. Queen still alive, so trying to nurse them through. So I'll tell you what would have happened there. I bet you any money they sent it in a Correx nuc, and I bet you any money they didn't seal up the edges of the Correx nuc, so the bees getting out the side. So if I was Royal Mail, I'd have probably done the same, which was stop my staff getting stung. Big, big benefit of poly nucs and screwing them down is that they are completely sealed. So we've never had— I don't think we've had a polynuc turn up in plastic. They're pretty good. Uh, right, so here we go. One of my queens has turned nasty. Hive was absolutely fine last year, been in a couple of times since, and really flighty and nasty. What's your view on why, how they turn bad? So I've had that before where it's definitely the same queen as well, because you know, because it's marked. And I'm not, I'm not entirely sure why they go— why sometimes they go nasty like that. The, the other option is that they superseded or that they've swarmed, and it's the next generation of queen, and then you're just reliant on the drones that are in the air to give you the temperament. But I, I did have— I had one colony like this before, and I just couldn't, I just couldn't work it out. I thought, what is going on with this colony? Here they are vicious, and they weren't vicious last year. Like, they were really nice the year before. It was Buckfast colony, this F1 Buckfast, and they turned horrible on me. And I was chatting to Richard about it, and I said, I just don't know what it is. And he said, you sure it's the same generation? I said, 100%. He said, are you sure? I said, Richard, it is the same queen. That was a yellow-marked queen. I said, it's a yellow-marked queen, and it's the same queen. Like, it's 100%. And he said, he said, are there any marks on the front of the hive? And I said, well, I don't know, I'm gonna have a look. So next time I went, I had a look, and there was, there was like scratching marks on the front of the hive. And I thought, oh, so I spoke to Richard. I said, look, there's all scratching marks on the front of this hive. And he said, badgers. He said, definitely badgers. So I, I— this was ages ago— I set up a trail cam, and it was, it was badgers. and they were going up to this hive and they were just like attacking it. And then obviously they just become really defensive because they've just been constantly pestered by a badger, which I thought was really interesting. It was, it was proper good detective work by Richard. And I just, I had a trail come up in that apiary anyway because I wasn't 100% sure on the security of it, so I just turned it around a bit and it was badgers. And I, I did a video on that hive as well showing showing that. But it was, uh, the interesting thing that the end of that story was I, I moved them. So I wanted to like prove the point and see if it was about— so I moved them to a different apiary and didn't inspect them for a couple of weeks and went back and they were like well chilled. They weren't like 100% chilled, but they were like 100% better than they were. They were really, really way more chilled. So it could be something like that. It could be like a pest. or an environmental condition on that colony. Something, something's happening to it that isn't happening to the other ones. The Yanks, Americans, polite term, seem set on monitoring mites with alcohol washes, etc., whereas in the UK we just seem to treat regardless. Do you think it's too risky to not treat from the results of a mite wash? If you did a mite wash and you got a sufficient number of mites and it showed you that you, you know, had X amount that you needed to treat, you should definitely treat. It is interesting though, I see a lot of people in the UK monitoring as well, though I do have to say I don't think it is just an American thing. I see a lot of people in the UK monitoring through different methods and being quite meticulous about the amount of mites and keeping them down and stuff, but I'm not a fan of not treating for mites. I'm a big advocate of keeping on top of them. Beekeeping and golf, both great for mental health, but my preferred cure would have to be fly fishing. Less stressful than golf. I can get behind fishing. I do like— I love sea fishing. The thing for me with fly— I would go fly fishing. I think fly fishing would be really nice, and I love— I'd love to have a go at like the technique. It does seem cool, and I love the idea of being in waders and being in like a nice stream in the sun. I would— I could definitely get down with that. But the only thing that I'm not keen on with fly fishing, and I know like in some places you could do this, but for me fishing is all about the eating. You've got to be able to eat what you catch. And I don't want to— like, I know you can't— there's not really like wild salmon or anything anymore, is there? And I'm not a massive fan of trout, but I don't even know if you can catch that. Can you catch like wild trout? Are you allowed to do that? I don't know. But I, I do think it'd be a very mindful activity. And again, like, the skill— I understand it's like very difficult, isn't it? Like a really mindful, skillful activity to try and get that little fly to do what it does. So I agree with you there. It can— I'll put it at number 3 in the list of mindful activities. There you go, Chris. Uh, Dave Dwyer says, if you just treat without needing it, wouldn't you promote immunity to a given treatment? Um, there is There is an argument to that. It's not something that I've seen, but it's also dependent on the type of treatment. So kind of like a chemical-based treatment. So you could argue this with Amitraz or Apivar, that that is something that they could become immune to. And I think with other chemical-based treatments like Apistan, there's signs that that has happened. But for things like oxalic acid, and making them broodless and then using oxalic acid, because it's more like a mechanical way that, that burns the mites' hands. It's not really something that they become— they could become immune to like relatively quickly. It would have to be a bit of an evolutionary leap for them to develop some way for you to not burn their hands off with acid. Um, so I think it does— it depends on, it depends on the treatment that you would be using, but it is a good shout. Harry says, uh, the chat keeps on getting longer. It does. We are nearly 2 hours in. How many likes have we got now? I think I should definitely get a couple more likes if I go over 2 hours, but I've just basically just worked through. I'll just keep on going while people are asking questions. Got 162 people on, which is really good. It's still not up to the levels that Griff gets. Griff gets like 200, but he does have guests. Um, maybe I should get guests. It's weird, whenever I have guests, I don't get anywhere near as many people watching. People just like to have some questions, it seems, and watch me drink tea. I don't know, I'm— I've barely had a third of this. Oh, right, my throat's going now. I'll do a few more minutes. Here we go. Great name, says, hello Lawrence, I'm picking up my first 2 colonies from Thorns on Tuesday. They said the bees are doing really good, and I was just wondering whether I should feed them once moving them to my hives. So definitely, my advice to people all Always when you install a nuc into a new hive, if you're putting foundation down the sides, feed them. You've got nothing to lose. The bees will need a helping hand to draw out all of that foundation. It's not to say that they could cope— they couldn't cope without it, but it gives you that buffer, gives you additional stores. But then my advice is don't overfeed them. So what you're looking to do is you want to get them to a point where— so you've got 6 frames going into, say, an 11-frame hive. So it's gonna be like 65, 66% full. You want to get them to 80% full in that hive. So call it 8 frames, 8.5 frames of bees out of the 11. Once they're covering 8.5 frames, then stop feeding, take the feeders off, put the supers on, and then that gives you like sufficient buffer. And then you can keep going with that rule, that 80% rule, all the way up. So when you put your next super on, once the bees have filled out 80% of those frames, you put the next super on, just keep on going up and up and up. Hi, please can you share your thoughts on using a Snell Grove board for swarm prevention, also versus a Demeray split? Thanks for sharing. So I've not really got— I've never liked using a Snell Grove board because it's basically just a way of bleeding off bees into a split. It's not something I— I've done it a couple of times and I swear whenever I did it, it didn't work. I was doing it wrong. So it's very different from a Demarais split using a Snail Grove board. What I'll do, I'll go away and do some research on how to do it properly and do a video on it. I always do that. I never just— I don't have it all up here. I go and research it, make sure I'm doing it right, ask, ask someone who knows what they're doing so I won't embarrass myself and get it wrong on a live stream. Uh, but it's, uh, it's not something that I've used a huge amount. Sorry about that, Angus. From your experience, I know you prefer Buckfast, what is the breed of bee that produces the highest honey crops? So Buckfast would be up there with a Ligustica queen, like an Italian queen. You've got the potential for absolutely monstrous honey crops, but you need the weather to go with them, and if you don't get the weather, you don't get the honey crop. So I think like on average, the Buckfast will be the one that will give you the biggest ones from the ones that we sell. The Carniolans as well would be very, very high up there. They produce very, very big colonies of bees, but slightly more difficult to control the swarming. Um, so it's not, not my number one favorite. Right, Caldespar says, so I can still feed 1:1 to get them to draw my super foundation out for honey production? So you can, yep, you can feed 1:1 to get them to draw out super foundation. Just got to monitor it to make sure that you're not overfeeding them and that they're not storing it anywhere. But you definitely do that. Uh, next question says, hi, I think my bees loaded with pollen are not able to get back into the hive. Maybe the old overwinter bees running out of steam. Like, it could be that. Just seems a strange place for them to end up though. If they're flying back in, why are they falling on the floor? I don't know. It's gonna like worry me that overnight. I think by now all the, all of the old bees are dead by now. Okay. Uh, right, I'm gonna do a few more questions. I'll do 5 more minutes. Uh, so says, how are you getting on with your nuc hive? Not put bees in mine just yet. My nuc hive is just over there. I've got it inside at the moment. I wanted to like— I was getting a bit of water going in through one of the windows, so I put a bit of sealant on it and I just brought it inside just to dry it out and, uh, just seal it up. But I'm gonna put bees in it, but I've not— I can't get— I can't get anywhere near the apiaries at the moment. It's a nightmare. Duncan Newton says, evening Lawrence, how do you become a channel member? So if you go on to my home page, uh, there should be a button on the top right-hand corner that says subscribe, and then next to it it says join, and then you hit the join button and you can become a channel member. And the, the one that you want to hit is the early access videos, which gives you access, early access to all of my videos as soon as they're live on YouTube. Uh, Ben Wong says, just to add, I think I'm going to squidge the queen. Do you think adding the the brood to another hive will mean some of the— these are nasty thoughts, views. So they would only be temporarily nasty, adding brood. The genetics are the genetics, but they're not going to live. They only live for 6 weeks and then they'll, they'll die. Hello Lawrence, could I ask if you don't use a queen excluder board between the top, deep, and super boxes and you check and bring queen down if she goes up into the super, then do your bees fill the super quicker. So no, I'm really not a strong believer of that. All you end up with that is you just get this column of brood all the way throughout the supers, and like the density of the bees and the number of the bees is just the same. Don't buy into that whatsoever. Queen excluders are— people call them honey excluders. It's just, it's just not. It's just a load of rubbish. Queen excluders are really good, and they keep the brood where it should be, keep the queen where she should be. If the queens mate with several drones, so contain a mix of drone sperm genetics, could this explain why a colony's behavior can change after a period of time? The genetics change. That's a really good point. It could be that. They asked a question— there was a queen rearing video— no, a queen breeding video that I watched that, that mentioned that, and I'm pretty sure her answer was no because it homogenizes quite quickly or quite effectively within the sperm Spermacia. Um, she didn't give a kind of conclusive answer on it. She was kind of like, yeah, no, maybe. But like, for me, that, that seems very, very logical in that, you know, there's lots of different genetics in there. But I'm not sure that it's so kind of linear in that it's like, that's that drone, that's that drone, and then you kind of work through, or sequential. I just thought it was a, a bit of a mix. And don't know, I'm trying to bullshit an answer. I don't know, that's a really good point. Maybe. Oh, Dave Dwight, £10 tip, thank you very much. $10, great chat, thanks for your time, appreciate it. Nice one, thanks for that, Dave, really nice. Uh, Chris says, back to beekeeping, do you know if the queen stores the drone semen sequentially? Oh my God, how weird is that? That is like exactly Exactly what I just said. So no, but my understanding was it wasn't stored sequentially and that it is homogenized and mixed up. That was my understanding of it. But now that you've both said that, I'm thinking, right, I'm gonna I'm gonna look at that video because they definitely asked that question. It was hmm. I'm gonna go back and check on that. I've not used the Anohive yet. No, I've been I've been having a big sort out. And it is there. I will use it though, get some stuff into it this year. Mr. Green says, thank you, Lawrence, appreciate it a lot. I'm always watching your channel but can't be overprepared as it's my first time. Definitely not. Good to prepare, right? Only got 2 questions. Neil Garfield says, Lawrence, how did things go regarding your vandalized apiary? So it wasn't, it wasn't vandalized in the end. It was a tree, uh, and the contractors going in to clear the forest had gone in there and there were 2 massive trees that had smashed everything and they just cleared them up without telling anyone, which they'd kind of been hired to do, so why would they tell anyone? It was a good answer, uh, and I don't think it was them that felled the trees into them either. Um, so no, it wasn't vandalized, which was good. It means that the apiary was secure, which I was very happy about. Right, final question. Yet another great live feed, thanks for some great questions, answers. Every day is a school day. Indeed, and it is a school day for me as well. So we'll finish it there. Two hours six minutes. If you've not given it a like already, I really would appreciate a like. Thank you so much to everyone for dialing in. Hopefully we get a little bit of sunshine soon. I will do these every two weeks: Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. I'll mix it up a little bit so we can get some more people in. But we had good good amount of viewers tonight, so I'm happy with that. I hope you enjoyed the stream. So have a good weekend. Get inside your bees, have a look, see what's going on. Don't let them starve, try to stop them swarming, and I'll see you next week.