Black Mountain Honey: Let's Talk Bees with Andy Wexham - Episode 22

Right, so we are live here on World Bee Day with a very special guest, which is Andy from Pure Yorkshire Honey. So unsurprisingly, Andy, you've been asked for loads of times to come on here and have a chat, and you said yes, which is amazing, which is a lot more than a lot of other people say. So welcome to our live chat. Do you want to introduce yourself to everyone?

Yeah, thanks, Laurence. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, I'm Andy from Pure Yorkshire Honey. Uh, you might have seen me on YouTube. We've got a little YouTube channel, just trying to show how we're trying to expand and stuff like that. So reasonably new to beekeeping. This is our 5th year. We started on Red Queen, so we've come around like full circle now. So yeah, so we're very much like everybody else watching this, um, always learning, don't know everything, and yeah, it's all a bit of fun.

That sounds exactly like me as well. Um, so So, so, well, yeah, well, welcome, welcome on. We're just gonna have a chat today. I'm very excited. For anybody who's not subscribed to Andy's channel already though, Pure Yorkshire Honey, go over, it's a very good channel. And, uh, he does occasionally review some Black Mountain Honey Queens as well, so that's all good fun. And we're not going to do this as a Q&A really today. Like, if there's any good questions that come in, I'll answer them and we'll discuss them kind of together, me and Andy, but we're just going to have a chat really, aren't we? So how's your day been?

Busy, absolutely busy. Done bees today. So all of a sudden, summer's just kicked off, you know, it's been cold, cold, cold, and this week has been 17, 18, 19 degrees. Oilseed rape is just about finishing and the bees are just going nuts for it. Bees are wanting to swarm, just filling boxes up. Yeah, it's just trying to get all your kit ready and just prepared. That's the hardest bit. Very hot, sweaty day today.

Yeah, it's— I love days like today. I've done no beekeeping, I've been out with my family. Tomorrow is my beekeeping day. But how many colonies have you got now? Because I see— I follow you on Twitter. What's your handle on Twitter? It's something different, isn't it, to normally?

Yeah, Kay does Twitter. Yeah, I'm not entirely sure unless it is Pure Yorkshire Honey or something like that. So, okay, yeah, yeah, I forget which one it is.

Yeah, I was gonna say, yeah. So how many colonies have you got there? That's what I was leading to there. How many have you got?

We've got, I think we've got 8 full-size colonies, and our nucs are just doubling every week at the minute. It's getting a bit silly. So we've got like easily half a dozen nucs. So yeah, I'm splitting splits that I split 3, 4 weeks ago and they're just wanting to go again. So yeah, it's getting a bit silly. But production colonies, yeah, probably got a good strong 6 colonies that are production, you know, productive, and actually we're going to get some decent honey off them. So yeah.

And what's your target like? Where do you want to get to kind of over the next few years?

Um, that's what I had in my head by the end of this season, try and get to about 25. And then run into next season with 25, see how I can manage it, because like everybody, we've, you know, we've got full-time jobs and stuff like that. So the management side, I've got to figure out how I can do that, if I can manage it, and then potentially, if it's okay, I might try 50, but we might run 25, 30 for a couple of years and see how we get on with that. So yeah.

So what's your— well, I'm always curious, everyone asks me what my full-time job is. What's your full-time job that you're balancing with bees?

I'm a Porsche specialist.

You're what, sorry?

So I worked for Porsche, I worked for Porsche Centre Leeds, and then I worked for Porsche Centre Teesside. Now I've gone self-employed about 2018, so I look after people's Porsches and stuff like that, and old ones, new ones. Yeah, so that's what I do. So I'm a mechanic or technician, whatever you want to call me.

I can fix them. Very nice, that's cool. I was saying, I was in the car with my wife today and we were brainstorming like videos that of like new videos to do. And I was thinking, some, some YouTube channels just make up videos, don't they, in terms of like they're completely staged. And I was thinking staged videos might be good. It might— you could do a video on like, this is the world's biggest swarm, and then do a video on like how I staged the fake world's biggest swarm. I think that would get good views. But you, what you could do is you could get like an old Porsche and then set up a colony on the inside of it and then make it look like a, a A swarm has gone into a Porsche.

I could do that.

Yeah, you could do it, couldn't you? It'd be a great video. I'm kind of trying to think outside the box with random, like, random videos, but I think that would work well. We could collaborate on the world's biggest swarm inside a Porsche.

Yeah, or world's fastest swarm.

World's fastest swarm. Yeah, we could drive it around. That'd be amazing. And so, are your bees swarming now? Are they— are you— have you lost swarms already?

Uh, I actually picked out a cast swarm out of a cherry tree About three days ago, really small, and it didn't make sense because I know what I've got going on, and any queen cells they weren't ready to hatch out yet. So I was a little bit confused. Anyway, collected it; it was quite nice. It landed about eight foot high. Collected it and let them settle. And I've gone into it today, and there is a queen in there. She's not marked, I think, and she looks mated. So I don't know where it's come from. There's some bees on the other side of the village, so whether it's one of them. I don't know, but yeah, so touch wood, uh, I'm doing all right. I'm doing all right with my own queens.

Do you go out catching swarms? Like, if you get the call, are you, are you ready to go?

Yeah, we, we put some stuff on social media last year around this time because, as beekeepers know, this is the time, uh, and we were really busy. We got quite a few swarms. Um, this year I think it's just slow on getting started. I think now is swarm season, and over the next week we might see quite a few go, especially big prime swarms. Um, but yeah, if we— if I'm available, yeah, I'll go for it. But like you say, you need, you need pictures and stuff like that, because I had a look at a neighbour's the other day and it was just mason bees in a wall, and it's like, you know, they'll be all right, you know, you've just got to sort of leave them 6 weeks, 8 weeks, and they'll sort of disperse eventually. So.

I've had a lady near me recently, like yesterday, day before, messaged me and said I think I've got bees going into like a wall in my house, and she's only down the road. And I said, WhatsApp me some pictures. I always say like you, WhatsApp me a couple of pictures, let's have a look, see what there is. And she sent me it over and I was like, oh my God, you've definitely got a massive colony of bees in your house. Like, it's huge. The activity is incredible, just like properly reorientating to this new spot. Um, so I'm going to go down there tomorrow and have a look, but I've not, I've not got the skills to do the cutouts. But I do, I always want to go and have a look. But the next 2 weeks are going to be mega swarm season, I reckon, because the weather looks nice now and the colonies are big and condensed and people are— it's going to be serious. And I'm off work for 2 weeks now, so I know I said I'm not doing any swarms. No, I'm not doing any swarms. I've got Jasper in the background there, but I might just kind of prepare a little swarm catching kit in the back of the truck on the off chance that something decent comes up.

Yeah.

So what are your plans for the rest of the season?

Like I say, we'd like to get a good spring crop because around where we are, like based at home, spring is our main flow. There's not a great deal in summer around here because it's a lot very arable. So yeah, ideally we want a good summer crop, spring crop of honey, and then that can just obviously sort of go in the bank and then fund the bees— well, to be fair, pay us back because we put in a lot of money actually over winter. Um, and then like I say, just expand, you know, and might have a play about with queen rearing as well. Um, there's a couple of really nice queens that I'm intrigued to, um, breed off, even go F2s with, with your one, um, that we've got videos of. It's just in— well, to be fair, I have got some F2s of it already, but I— they're only in nucs because I had to split her off because she was, she was going to go otherwise, and I put her in a box. I wanted to keep her safe. So yeah, I'm looking forward to doing a bit of queen rearing. I'd like to do some grafting as well, but it's just time and kit.

It really is. I'm just going to copy over a question. So like when a relevant question kind of comes in, or I've got one on my list, I'm going to post it here and then I'm going to try and show it. So there we go. So I had a question coming from Joe Murphy saying, is it true that a queen from a swarm cell typically performs better than a queen from an emergency cell? And my view has always been I don't like emergency cell queens because it's like an emergency response and a last-minute dash to make something good of something that might not be usable. But how do you go, like, normally making your splits? Like, what's your process?

Yeah, I would prefer like a swarm cell or a supersede as well. So the emergency cells, like you say, they pop up everywhere and, you know, you you've got to start looking at the nutrition side. How I look at it, you know, they're in emergency mode. Not all those queen cells are going to get even amounts of nutrition. So yeah, I would try and steer clear from them and just try and, you know, create a swarm cell or a supersedure cell or something like that. But yeah, usually what I've done up to now really is just make splits off swarm cells and just, you know, put them in boxes and move the queen away and stuff like that. So yeah, emergency cells is a bit of a nightmare really.

And do you find, like, do you find you've got swarmy bees? Because I used to do that and used to take it way over the top, that you'd get a colony that's like trying to swarm, it's got like 3 or 4 different frames with loads of swarm cells on, and I always think I'm gonna go big here and go split it into like 4 nucs, 5 nucs, and then like the nucs build up and they swarm, and I'm thinking, am I propagating swarmy genetics by kind of picking the colonies that swarm to be the ones that I make my splits from. And I, I never know whether it's, it's right or not, but I did stop doing it. But what do you think?

I don't know, it could be one of those beekeeping myths, couldn't it?

Could be, yeah. Yeah, all bees swarm, like they've got to, otherwise there wouldn't be any bees.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, it's their natural instinct, isn't it, to swarm? Um, I've got some colonies, I mean, at the minute I've just done a video about it, about our local mongrel queen that we've— we started way back, you know, 5 years ago with this line of queens. And, um, we still got this queen. Um, obviously she's a supersedger and stuff like that, but she's brilliant. She's got like 10 frames of brood on a single brood box, 3 supers on top of her full of honey, and they're not bothering. They're just quite happy. I think she's just steady away. But then, you know, I've been using Buckfast, obviously I've used your Buckfast, and it's a completely different ball game. I mean, you've got to be so on it with space for them. I should have double brooded at the beginning of April on the queen that I got off you. It was just bonkers. They came through winter as if it was the middle of summer. There were so many bees, it was unbelievable.

Yeah, and I think people use that as like an argument for not having them, is how they're gonna— they just eat too much food. But then I always think, well, if you left them all the honey that they created, like the hundreds of pounds of honey, they'd probably be all right. But it is amazing when you get them through into the middle of April and you see like how many bees there are and how much brood they've reared already, and they do just get going, especially in poly boxes. They get going so quickly early on in the year.

Yeah.

But then the colonies I really like are the ones that just don't swarm. Doesn't matter what you do to them, that you get like 2 or 3 years out of the queen, they don't swarm, and then they supersede the queen. they're just kind of like, oh, she's running a bit out of steam, we're just going to supersede. And I think, oh, that's the colony that I would look to do something with.

Yeah.

But yeah, you don't get many of those. I'm just looking in the comments, there's not many questions coming in, so if people do have questions for either me or Andy, stick them in the comments, we will answer them. I'm just looking through some of the other ones that I've got on here. I had a question from someone saying about livestream guests, because I put it out there if anyone's got any suggestions for livestream guests, and someone's put on there, what about a regional bee inspector? bet they would have some stories to tell along with some great advice. So I don't disagree with that, but I don't think they'd come on here just because they're not really allowed to talk about anything. It's all kind of like, yeah, like private and confidential. I suppose they could talk about it and not mention any names. But who else should we get on here, Andy? Who's next after Andy?

I have a bit of an idea. It's a bit of a long shot. It's a famous beekeeper along the football lines. I know you're a bit of a— you like your sport because David Beckham's came into his bees. So why don't you try and get David Beckham on?

Yeah, do you not think— you don't think I've tried? I've tried to spam all these people to get them on. They just— I bet they're getting like thousands of messages a day. It'd be good though, wouldn't it, if anybody here has got an in with David Beckham? There we go, let's get him on. There's a lot of famous beekeepers. It has become very, very trendy. So you've got— you've got David Beckham, I think Angelina Jolie, Jamie Oliver, they've all got Flow Hives. Do you know that?

I didn't know that.

They've all got Flow Hives, and then they seem to do stuff with Flow as well, so no doubt they've got a nice fruit.

I'd love to try a Flow Hive. I've seen your videos on them, and I like the idea. I really like the idea. And like you say, the marketing is absolutely fantastic. It's the best marketing out there for any product. And, but yeah, I'm just intrigued. But yeah, in this country, when bees are hungry and they're see honey coming out of a box, they're just going to be all over it.

Yeah, like some of the— it's designed for YouTube, isn't it, the content? Like, it might be a little bit controversial, and I might look at the marketing that they do and say, look, it doesn't work like that, especially not in the UK. And there's no way I'd ever put them on oilseed rape because it would just be carnage. Yeah, but they're great fun. And, and I get— I do get a lot of, like, hate for using the fake Flow Hives as well from people. Saying, how dare you use a fake Flow Hive? But it's not my job to protect their pattern. Like, if people are going to copy it and sell it and I can buy it on Amazon, it's kind of— I don't know. Yeah, it's not really, it's not really for me. But the fake Flow Hive that I've got is performing very well. Yeah, like the Flow fake Flow Super is full already. I'm going down there tomorrow to take the honey off.

What is it you don't like about it? Is it, is it the roofs you don't like about them?

The room?

The roofs.

Oh, I can't stand the roofs. The roofs are shockingly bad because they're, they're designed to look good, but they're just completely impractical. So they're gabled roofs, but they're like wooden gabled roofs, so there's no, there's no metal. They just kind of disintegrate, and then you can't stack anything on them, so you're just having to take them off. And then because they're gabled, there's no feet. You can't get any feeders in there. The most, yeah, like the most impractical roofs you've ever got. But the, the— this is what's strange with it is because for, for a beginner, for someone who just wants to have like 1 or 2 beehives in the garden and like have some honey and you're not worried about like 10 or 20 colonies, like they're perfect. But they're probably the most difficult, like, different difficult beehive to manage. Like, they're so difficult. And I, I would imagine a lot of people buy them, get honey from them, and think this is, this is easy, this is the best thing in the world, I've got a box full of honey, I've turned the honey on, and then they swarm. And then they give up next year because trying to get them back after that is very difficult. There's just not enough space. You've got a fixed brood space and you've got a fixed super space and you can't really do anything.

You can't put another brood box on or anything like that on them?

So you can put another brood box on, that's what I've done with one of mine, double brooded it, and I think that as a minimum you've got to double brood it, but then they start storing all honey in the brood nest. which makes it a little bit more of a challenge. But then I find once you get them up to double brood, you kind of reach capacity. And then if they start throwing out swarm cells, what do you do? Like, what's your next step? What would you do if you had a double brood on a Flow Hive? Flow Hive super's full, both brood boxes are full, and they're doing— and they're throwing out swarm cells. Like, what would you do? What would be your next step? There you go, next question. There's not much you can do, is there? Like, what— the only 2 options: one, you take down all the swarm cells, and just hope that they don't swarm, and it doesn't, it doesn't really work. They do swarm. Or 2, you make a split.

Yeah.

And I tried to do like a Demeray, and it didn't really work. It's just not really the same because you've not got the space between them.

Yeah, they've got weird frames. They're not like a standard— they're based on a Langstroth setup.

Langstroth frames. Yeah, in the brood box, it's just, it's just straightforward Langstroth frames. You can have like an 8-frame version or a 10-frame version. But I think I prefer slightly the fake one. The fake one comes as a standard with 10 frames. It's just a bit easier to work.

Yeah.

And, and this is what annoyed me as well with, with the 10-frame. But so the 10-frame version, the fake one, the spacing was like perfect. So the top, the top bead space was perfect, but then the spacing of the frames was absolutely perfect as well. So you put 10, 10 Langstroth frames in, and I think you had about 5mm extra additional space on one side. So they respected it as bee space, whereas in the, in the actual 8-frame real Flow one, it was just all over the place. There was 8 frames in there and there was like room for like another half frame, so they just started doing loads of wild comb, and that really annoyed me because I thought, why are they just making up sizes? So I've got, I've got a love-hate relationship with Flow Hives.

Yeah.

Like, they are literally my— I think, I think it's my favourite beehive that I've got. I love it. But I quite enjoy the challenge of it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'd like to try one. Like you say, it's bad people knocking them and not actually trying them in the first place. I can see it's just going to be a bit of fun. But like you say, you don't want to— you couldn't buy a load of them commercially. It's just not viable, which doesn't make sense. But yeah, like you say, if it's just a little nice garden hive, it's a bit like having a WBC and stuff like that. So, you know, it just looks nice in the garden. Um, but yeah, it's, uh, yeah, be interesting. I'll take one for free if they're watching. Yeah, no problem, we'll get it on the YouTube channel.

Believe me, I tried that, they, they were not interested. Um, I'm just putting a question up there from Henry saying, have I experienced any oilseed rape honey crystallizing in my fake Flow frames? So no, I've never had that, but the apiary that the, the Flow, both of the Flow hives are at are, um, It's quite near some oilseed rape this year, so I'm going down there tomorrow to have a look, and I might have left it a week too late. I know everyone's extracting their oilseed rape.

Are you—

have you extracted yours yet?

No, I'm gonna wait until it's properly done because I've tried to keep as much bees and give them as little space as— as much space as possible and let the bees control the heat in there because, you know, Might get a little bit of crystallisation, but it's still looking good. I have a sneaky peek in, but I think next week I've teed Kay up and this is right, we might be on next week, so we need to get everything ready. But yeah, it's an issue, isn't it? I know crystallisation with oilseed rape, but yeah, I've been told by a couple of bee farmers, just leave it on, just leave it on until you want to take it off. The bees will control the moisture content and stuff like that. Like that. Can't leave it on too long.

Oh, bloody hell, I'm not sure about that advice, Andy. Um, well, just leave that— leave your honey supers on until you're ready to take it off, as in like—

That's what a couple of bee farmers have said to me. Yeah, yeah, just sabotage. Just, just leave it on. Obviously, if you've got— if you've taken splits off it and you've started to reduce the numbers of bees, because obviously the bees are going to control the heat of the hive, aren't they? And they're going to control the humidity and everything like that. But yeah, we'll soon see because I'm following their advice this year. Yeah, we'll see. The boxes are heavy as well, which is really not annoying, it's nice. But yeah, if it doesn't all come out, I'll be a bit lighter.

You'll be melting the frames down, won't you? It's the only way to get it out. I guess it's coming to the point where I would be looking to get it out now. But then for YouTube, if it goes wrong, it's great because then you've got—

Yeah, well, this is it. Yeah, like you say, everything— I mean, that's partly my channel. I mean, I've heard it before where like they've compared you with Griff and stuff like that, and you all do— we all do the similar things, but we're all at similar places. I mean, yourself, you've done it for quite a long time. I'm sort of going at it as if, you know, we— I think we started the channel, we just had a couple of hives in the background, and it was a case of, right, we're just going to grow And we'll grow with our YouTube audience and we'll just come across the struggles, you know, the wrong bits, the right bits, and everything in between really. So yeah, if it doesn't work leaving these supers on, it'll just get videoed, you know. We'll do a video taking the supers off, trying to spin it out. Our new honey room, I got— I was given a job to make a honey room at home, turn one room into 2. So I turned into a builder, joiner, and electrician all in one week. So, but yeah, like you say, it's just getting it out there so people can learn off my mistakes.

Yeah, the, the hardest thing about a YouTube channel is starting it. Like, I speak to a lot of people who are like, I'm going to do a YouTube channel on X, Y, and Z, and you say, oh wait, like, send me a link, and they say, I've not started yet, but I'm, I'm currently researching, I don't know, researching something or trying to work out what to do, and you just think, I'll just get it done. Like, just do it. You're never gonna, you're never gonna look back at your first video and think, oh, that was good, proud of that. You're always gonna look back and think, oh, that was really embarrassing, really embarrassing. So just get, just get it out of the way.

Yeah, I like looking back at some of my early stuff and yeah, you cringe at it, but then you look at the stuff that you've done recently and you think, yeah, I'm improving, you know. And if people are putting their comments on there saying, yeah, that's good, and it's, it it makes a big deal, actually. You know, I don't know about yourself, and I don't really want to go down this path because it's like you say, it's talking about YouTube. But yeah, it's nice to get a bit of feedback. And a couple of people have commented and said, oh, do a video about that B-suit, or, you know, what gloves are you using, or great video and stuff like that. And yeah, just geez you up to do a bit more. But then you rack your brains for some ideas and stuff like that. So trick is it's just trying to film the right stuff. But yeah, I think the supers, you strapped in your RC rope, would be a good one if we've left it on.

So yeah, good stuff. Right, Henry's got another question. I know I got— so I clicked on the wrong one there. Grant, I'm going to you next. So Henry's saying do a video on your flow frames when you go. He doesn't want to break his, so I will do it. It'll either be tomorrow or the next day, and we'll have some very broken ones. But then if we do the vid, the next video will be how to try and fix cemented together flow frames. The one that I meant to click on there was from Grant saying, evening, could you pass comment on the Abello 12-frame hives and squashing bees in the rebate system? What's your personal experience? So have you got a 12-frame Abello?

No, we've got just the normal Abello poly boxes, but I've only got one brood box and a few supers. So yeah, okay, I am a fan. I'm not a fan of the floors, but yeah, I've not really had any issues against the floors. No, I just, yeah, I think the mesh underneath is just a bit tight, and especially with a tray in, it just, I think it just stops that natural sort of ventilation through. But yeah, that's a whole different conversation, isn't it? Ventilation versus insulation and all that.

How do you set yours up? What's your standard setup in terms of like—

I like my wooden floors. Yeah, wooden floors. Most of my stuff handles single brood boxes apart from Buckfast colonies that I need to double brood. Stay there, you. And yeah, going through winter, I just had a lot of condensation in that Abello setup with that floor, and that's the only colony I lost as well. Oh dear.

It's like a cat attacking you or something.

Yeah, it is. Yeah. So, but—

Animals.

She means well. But yeah, that was the only colony we lost, and it was ramful of bees, and it had a lot of CPB, chronic bee paralysis, last year, and I think that just hindered the winter bees, I think. And it was just, they just weren't particularly very strong. And yeah, but yeah, the flaws, I prefer, I like the boxes, I like the poly boxes, I think they're great. And they are, like you say, it just gives them a boost coming into spring. They just seem to expand that bit quicker, but the floors are just a bit, yeah, just a bit clunky for me.

Yeah, I like the floors. I see what you're saying in terms of like the mesh might be a little bit too small, but what I really like about the floor, and it's like the only floor on the market, is that it's like a proper molded plastic floor. Like every other floor is either a wooden floor or it's a It's a poly floor as opposed to like a solid plastic floor that can't rot. But so when you, when you set them up, do you use— you have crown boards on the top?

Yeah.

And then just straight on with the roof?

Yeah, yeah. Or I might just use an 8. At the minute, and I'm still running again because it's got oilseed rape on, I'm leaving my insulation on top of the crown board still just to keep that, hold that heat. Especially with the boxes, you know, if you've got your supers stacked up and they're all full of oilseed rape. That is, no one really mentioned that to me, but in my mind that sort of works out because you're holding the heat still. You're still keeping it cool because obviously insulation works both ways. So yeah, it'll be interesting to see. But yeah, I like to have a crown board and then I'll put some insulation on. Then I usually use an eke of some sort just to have it there. and then I'll just pop the roof on and stuff like that. It gives it room for insulation, or I can feed on top, you know, when they take the supers off in June, because it's like if someone turns the tap off up here when it's June.

Oh, it goes quite quickly, doesn't it? I, I, you know me, I love my polyash forth feeder, so I leave the insulation on all year. I just— you've got to do something that works for you. One of the things that I find so useful with the polyash forth feeders at the moment is that it's like each hive has its own Yeah, so for disease control, it's so good. So if you're pulling out like a queen cell or you're pulling out like a bit of wax or something, you think, what do I do with this wax? And you see some beekeepers, they just chuck it on the floor, they just chuck it in their long grass and forget about it. And it's really, really bad practice. So anything that I'm taking out of the hive, I just put in the polyashworth feeder, and then kind of after, I don't know, a few weeks, I'll have a little round and just clear it all out into black bags. But I've not, I've not answered the question here at all. So Grant's asking, yeah, past comment on the Abello 12-frame hive. So, so some people do have the issue with this in terms of like catching bees in the rebate. I'm not gonna lie, like, I, I do crush some bees in the rebate, but I, I think because it's like plastic, it's like a plastic molded rebate, you hear the bees die. And that's a bit grim saying that, but it really makes it sound a lot worse than I think it is. So on the wooden hive, you don't really hear them kind of pop. Oh, this is horrible, isn't it? But you don't hear them pop in the same way that on like a plastic one where there's no space and there's no give on it. But all I find is I just kind of brush them off with my finger and then use a bit of smoke and then put them at a 45-degree angle, and then I smoke them and I put it back on, and I don't— you get a couple of bees that are crushed, but not that many. Uh, but yeah, some people do have issues with that. Uh, Gundogs— I'm not even pronouncing his first name, I get it wrong every time— he, he was your biggest—

I think it's Kildare, isn't it? Is it Kildare up here, Scotland?

Well, he's one of your best mates because he said that you definitely need to get Andy on. But he's saying in his first year, super of honey on the OSR, leaving it too long. Wow.

Yeah.

All right, so next question. Next question, I'll just answer this one from Pete. He's saying, how is your Hyde Hives long hive doing? Did I set it up as Cayman Reynolds with the brood at the rear and super frames at the front? Uh, it's his 3rd year, not very successful yet. So I find on all of my long hives, they end up— they start the year with all the brood at the front. They always do it. So I do, I push them back, give them the space to work that way. But I, again, I struggle when I come to Swarm control in a long hive is, is just impossible. You almost just have to let them swarm and just catch the swarm, and that's the best way I've found so far. Uh, Jim, he says, uh, and I— you'll know this one, Andy— so he says, how am I getting on the, the Beevax at the beekeeping show? Uh, I, I've not spoken to the guy yet. I need to get my Beevax. Did you— you saw these Beevax as well, didn't you?

I had a chat with him. Yeah, I think it's a great little invention, especially with the adjustable sort of— you can you know, you know, it's a potentiometer there to stop him vacuuming them too much. But yeah, and really reasonably priced, very reasonably priced.

Yeah, I, um, after that video, like, we get comments back after videos and people saying, oh, people, a lot of American people actually saying that was way overpriced, really, like, really expensive. Yeah, but then the other, the other bit that people were saying on there was that, like, the professional ones where people who are doing this, like, for a living, they don't use the ribbed hoses So they were saying the ribbed hoses are quite like damaging for the bees going through, and they were sending me links to another one which again was UK made and was reasonably priced and was like a square one that you suck the bees in through this smooth hose into like a 6-frame nuc, which I quite liked. I quite like the idea of sucking them in and having them in like they're ready in the box.

Yeah.

Um, so I might, I might get one of those as well, but the reason I've not got it is because I don't do any, I don't do any cutouts or many swarms, so I don't really need it. And I'm sitting on my hands buying things at the moment. What are you like with buying things for your business? I'm so bad.

I'm a spender. Yeah, I'm a spender. Yeah, so Kate will tell you, it's like trying to set up this, and I thought, no, I don't like the webcam out of the laptop. We need to get, you know, we're going live with Laurence, need some sort of quality. So, and kit as well. I mean, oh, that's the one thing about beekeeping You always underestimate the amount of kit you need. It's ridiculous. So yeah, it's, um, if I need it, I'll just buy it and just worry about it later.

So what are your big ticket items? What have you spent your money on for your beekeeping business?

Uh, Abello, um, 20-frame radial spinner. Nice. Um, the Abello 50-liter creamer, all Classic line, not the Premium line. Um, You're probably better to tell the difference because I think you've had both, haven't you? But for what we do and what we put through, it works really well. The Crema is the one with the heater element in as well. So obviously you can just let it— if it's set, you can set the temperature off and stuff like that. So they're the big things. And buying queens, you know, this year I'm wanting to get my own breeder. Um, because growing, it's great if you've got a few hives and you can buy queens like off you, um, and off other people as well. You know, people have had people moaning at me a little bit, but, um—

What have you had people moaning about? This is so cryptic, I want to know. Let's scratch the surface a little bit here, go on.

Oh, there's, um, if you go, it's one of the videos on your queens, and there was a guy, he was just having a right chunter, which is fine, fair enough. But I thought, right, I'll pin the comment and just leave it up there.

And what was he saying?

He's just saying, you know, they're not that good, try your local bee and also this, that, and the other. And yeah, I do get it, and the local bees are great, but for what I wanted and at the time, you know, it works for me, you know, and it might not work for everybody else. So yeah, it's just It's just difference of opinion, isn't it? So he might not have never had one, I don't know. That's the thing.

Yeah, I'm, I'm all up for difference, difference of opinion and having a discussion, but some, some things with beekeeping, people have such strong views on things that they have no experience on. Oh, don't get Flow Hives, Flow Hives are rubbish, blah blah blah. They've got 10 reasons why Flow Hive's rubbish, and then you say, have you, have you ever used one? They're like, I don't need to use one, seen videos. And you just think, can't really have like a proper informed discussion if you've not Tried it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I did get a little bit.

Queens is one that is, yeah, it's quite a binary view, isn't it, on queens with people? Yeah, and treatment-free as well, that's one, that's one way to get yourself barred from your local beekeeping association. Not that I do.

Yeah, yeah, no, I treat, I treat.

What do you treat with?

We go with Apivar, but we're gonna have to rotate that out this year probably because I don't like to use it year in, year out. And then oxalic vaporize, vaporizing, you know. I did try a trickle treatment last year, actually, which seemed to work really well. And that was one thing your queen in your—I keep going on about it. People are just going to say you're plugging it. The the drop was—I couldn't get a drop of varroa off that colony. Virtually one or two of over a week. came out of that colony. It was just like, there's no varroa in this colony. And I think that's one of the reasons they overwintered so well, and they were just humongous in spring. Like, 18th of April, I had to take the queen out.

Yeah, it's interesting because we, we don't do any breeding. Like, it's not— we're not set up for that, but we rear queens off good quality breeder queens. Um, so I'm just— I'm fully reliant on the breeder sending me good F0 queens, and I don't, I don't specifically get VSH queens from him. Because I find if you get, say, like a VSH breeder queen, then when you take it down to F1, you're getting so much variation anyway. You might get 1 or 2 out of 10 queens that's like really good, and then the other, there may be 6 that are all right and then 2 that are rubbish. So I could never, I could never get a VSH breeder queen and take it down to F1 and say, oh, these are, these are really good for keeping varroa mites down. So it's kind of like a bit of a fluke, or just good breeders that we're using. But that's good to hear.

Yeah, no, I think I got, I got very lucky. I think I was well impressed, to be fair.

Yeah, all right, definitely checking the post. Right, let me have a look at some of these other questions here. I got, I got a question here from another, from Joe Murphy again, saying he's looking to start up some national hives as he's currently all on Langstroth. Would I do a shook swarm-esque artificial swarm, shaking a load of bees in from a national nuc with the original queen and feeding to draw out the foundation? So how would you, how would you play that if you had loads of Langstroth and you wanted to get them into nationals?

Can you fit a National frame in a Langstroth?

No, so he's going from Langstroth to National, so it's the other way around.

Oh, the other way.

Yeah, yeah, and Langstroths are way longer.

Yeah, oh yeah, it's one of those things you'd have to sit— with me, I'd probably sit down and think, well, if I make that, I can see I'd make something, and yeah, even if you try and cut your comb out, but then if you You've still got all your bees in there. Oh yeah, yeah, it's trying to transfer your comb over if you can.

But do you know what, if you've got, if you've got a saw and you've got some plywood and you can drill holes, you can do any, any size to any other size. You just get a bit of ply and you just build it to the size of your Langstroth box, and then you just put a piece of ply onto the size of the Langstroth box and then make sure that it fits on the National as well. So it's just like a kind of Like a spacer board and then put a queen excluder in between the two and then just chuck the queen upstairs and then feed them through. And then you will end up with a— you'll end up turning the brood box into a super and you can just extract the honey out of it.

Yeah.

But it does work. I've not done a video on that and I've used that loads of times with like scraps of plywood where you just kind of cut them out. It does work quite well. I'm just going through the uh, the comments on here, see if there's any on there. Oh, that one's from Glyn that he did. I didn't read the first bit out. Um, so, so I'd say, what are your plans? I've asked you that loads of times. What's like, what we're going to talk about next? Simple as that.

Um, I am getting some more queens actually. I'm going to try some of uh, Northumberland Honey's queens because they're, they're close to us. And the reason why I went with your queens in the first place, because I thought North Wales is probably similar climate to North Yorkshire, you know, with the, with the, you know, rain pretty much. I'm guessing you get quite a lot of rain. Um, and same with Luke and Susie at Northumberland, you know, they're a little bit further up. So, um, I've got, I've got a few on order with them. But after that, I want to try and start rearing my own. And yeah, really, it's just splitting and trying to manage the time, manage the bees. And I must admit, last year the penny dropped with me. You've got to put 110% into bees. If you put as much effort into your bees, you will get so much reward out of it. If you just sort of play with it, and we did that for maybe The 3 or 4 years, which is sort of like had some highs. We expanded really quickly on year 2. Um, I think we had some losses over year 2 back end, and we had loads of honey. And then all of a sudden, you know, we got busy with work and, you know, dropped down. But last year it was like just putting as much time as you can into the bees, manage them, and you will get huge rewards using good quality queens is a massive, massive gain. Um, and you can figure out as well, you then figure out what a good colony is compared to a bad colony because it's like chalk and cheese. I mean, I've— I mean, we've all done it at the beginning. We've, we've had a hive or a couple of hives and like you're being battered but you don't know it because you've got nothing to compare it to. And all of a sudden you go somewhere else, someone else's apiary, or you you buy a queen in to try it, and all of a sudden it's like, why am I wearing a suit, you know? And where's all this honey coming from, you know? And you've got— you've just dealt with these colonies that are just sort of feral and angry and don't produce anything. It's, it's— yeah. So last year was a massive learning curve for me. So yeah, hopefully we're just gonna push that through. And again, with the, with the YouTube stuff, um, it's always It's a bit of fun. It's a bit cringy for me. I never talk about it. Like, up here, I'm sure people know, you know, I mean, our local association, that I do it, but I never mention anything. I just—

Really?

Yeah, I don't. I'll probably mention it to, you know, complete strangers. I'll be like, oh yeah, well, yeah, we've got a YouTube channel, you can just check it out, whatever. Yeah, um, and we're doing some of the BBKA modules. I've actually gone on to the module, I think I think it's November, I think they do it. So yeah, I quite like learning now. You know, at school way back when, couldn't be bothered with it, just sport. But as I've got older, I just love it. Just, I think I just need to occupy my mind a little. So yeah, we're going on with the modules as well, so try and get to a 4 or 5B paper.

Yeah, I like learning, but not so much kind of like academic learning. Like I did, I went like to university and stuff and had got quite an academic job. But I'm not one for sitting and reading books. I can't stand books. However, like, I got my DASH training this week, so Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday I'm up in— I'm in York, your neck of the woods, doing DASH training. I'm really excited because it's like proper physical out there doing stuff, looking at diseased frames, and it will make me a better beekeeper. So I'm very excited about that. Talking of Northumberland, what Honey— what they do, which I really want to get involved in. I say get involved in, I just want them to come and do it at my apiary. Is they do like, they do artificial insemination, but they do it as like a roaming unit, don't they?

Yeah, he does. Yeah, yeah, Luke does. He has it in the back of his— I think he had a Transit. He did a talk at our local association through winter, and I got chatting to him, and he says, oh yeah, I just got it set up. He's just got a plywood bench in the back and all the bees that are Yeah, just mobile artificial insemination. So yeah, I don't know how much he charges, but yeah, it'd be £600 a day.

It is. Um, and then I think you have to pay— he said he recommends it's better if you do it for 2 days. So you have like come and do like a full, a full 2 days. And then I think there's like negotiation to be had if you supply, if you share genetics or something. And then it depends on whether you're harvesting your own drones and Yeah, but I think, I think I'm gonna have a go, see if he's up for it. I'm gonna say to him, we need to do it on a video though. I don't want— I'm not, not looking for a discount, pay you full price, but if you're up for it, let's go. Because we've got some good genetics and I'd quite like to see some, I don't know, some just play around with it, have some weird crosses.

Yeah, yeah. Not fancy doing it yourself then?

So I've probably come close like 3 or 4 times to buying all the kit and setting it up, and I'm so glad I haven't because I've not got the the time. And I, I think I want to get the experience for something like that under my belt before I'm let loose with all the equipment, because it's not straightforward. And it's like, it is— that's going to take years to get me going, and I've not got the time to do it. And speaking to people, I know a few people who do it, they say it's so time-consuming, and they say it's pretty dull as well.

Yeah.

And it's not just Richard?

Yeah, Richard Knoll.

I don't know if Richard does artificial insemination himself. I'm not sure. I've never spoken to him about that.

I could be wrong.

Yeah, I know a few people in the UK and they say what the most boring thing in the world though is you have to like milk the drones. Sounds grim, doesn't it? But like you're just sitting there just milking drones for 8 hours. I might have over-exaggerated, but they say it's pretty boring. So they— the way that the big people do it is they get other people to milk the drones, and then they're doing like the centrifuge. You have to like— they get all the, the semen and then they centrifuge it and it homogenizes it and mixes it. I genuinely don't know how it works though.

Wow.

But I'm so interested. And like, we, we bought— I think about 70 F0 queens last year, all artificially inseminated. And I've got so many like in my colonies, and it's just— they're amazing. And they're weird though, they're like, they're not like real bees, and they're not— it's not even like, oh my God, these bees are the best bees in the world. They're a bit dopey. It's really odd.

They look a bit like that.

They're like thick, they're like the most inbred thick bees ever. And they give you a good amount of honey, and they're really nice and calm and gentle, but it's crazy when you get down to F1, you just see the difference. And the difference is there's, there's like the temperament's like maybe a tiny little bit worse, but they're so prolific. You've never, never seen anything like it, how prolific they come out. And the honey they produce is just like the next level. So it's almost like they need that, I don't know, genetic diversity at the next level to, uh, to actually do well. Right, I'm gonna flick through. Here we go. Gundogs, he says, how are your F2 queens, Andy? So how are you finding your queens going down at F2?

F2s, um, it's early days because they've only really just hatched out. They've probably, uh, I think the colony from Lawrence that's quite publicized on YouTube that I've got, um, she's gone out and mated. Yeah, I'll tell— it's a good story that, because I went in that today because It was on the 1st of May, uh, and I left the queen cell. I thought, right, 3 weeks, 21st of May, we'll go back in and check on the F2. So went in there today and they're a little bit fly at me, but they settled down. So I thought, well, because I've not been in for 3 weeks, went through and I couldn't see any eggs or anything like that. And eventually found the queen. I thought, ah, right, I'll mark her. And I want to try and pick up queens now and handle them properly and stuff like like that. So I picked her up, I had my nice pink pen, put a dot on her, really impressed with myself, put her on the flame— frame, sorry— and she just flew off. I was like, you're joking me, she can't be a virgin, it just doesn't make sense. So she did like an orientation and I'm like, oh, fantastic. So I just put it all back together, so I'm hoping she's just gone back in. So yeah, it's early days for the F2, but, um, yeah, we will be having a look at that and, uh, doing a couple of videos and stuff like that. So, but yeah, I was so impressed with myself picking this queen up, handling her, you know, putting a little dot on and stuff like that. And I was like, what? So, but anyway, would have been a brilliant video.

So annoying when they fly off like that, but she, she'll definitely come back. When they're like that, they fly off, they know to come back. Lee's just asked, kind of explaining what the difference between F0, F1, F2 is. So F0 is pure you kind of control both the mother side and the father side through either artificial insemination or island mating, where you're just controlling the drones as well. And then F1 is the daughter of the F0, and then F2 is the daughter of the F1. So you kind of lose control of the genetics with the bigger number, and I think anything past F3 is just a mongrel, isn't it?

Yeah, with the F1s, is it right your drones are still sort of classed as F0, is that right?

Yeah, drones are still pure the way it works. So this is what I always think is good, and yeah, you don't— people don't realize it in terms of like drone flooding. The F1s are perfect, they're just— they are as pure as you can get. So by keeping the F1s from the F0s in that apiary, you're kind of boosting the good genetics as well. And it does make a big difference boosting the good genetics. What I always say to people for every colony that you boost in terms of good genetics, remove your worst one as well. And then that, that's what makes the difference. If you've got like a horrible colony there and they're producing tons of honey and you're thinking, I want the honey, like the, the drones are going to be mating with all of those queens and it's got a right old mess.

Yeah, right.

Joe Murphy says he caught 3 virgins that hatched in his hand, put them in clips and left them in the hive. How would you make use of them? Could you make splits with the virgins? And how would you introduce them to a queenless swarm? So I just— I did a video the other day on this. It's great. It's probably one of my favorite things to do when you get a colony that's, that's like gonna swarm and you see the cells and you can see with the cells at the bottom, they, they go like a little bit orangey right at the tip of the cells when they're about to emerge. And sometimes you can see them emerging. And I always find, right, if I've got colonies with emerging virgins, my favorite term, I just go and like find colonies in the apiary that need requeening, so I'll go and kill the queen and go and set them all up. And I did this, I did a video, I think, I think it's on the channel membership section. I'm so bad plugging it. Channel membership section, you get early access to it, you can link on it. And while you're there, go on Andy's Pure Yorkshire Honey, sign up to that, and give the stream a thumbs up. There we go, we've got all the plugs in.

Yes.

But when they're emerging like that, you just chuck them in. You can literally just like open them up, get them in your hand, just chuck them straight into a colony. And because they've just emerged, that like they seem to accept them really, really well. You're just kind of running them in. Some people run them in the entrance. See people do that? They hold them at the entrance and let them like run in. But I always like to take the roof off and just, just chuck them in, and they just go immediately down. And I'm going back to— it's either tomorrow or Monday, I'm not sure. I'm not decided which day I'm going to do my beekeeping yet. But I've got 3 or 4 that I put virgins in a couple of weeks back, and the weather's, the weather's been all right. There's been a few days of like 21, 22 degrees, so we might have eggs. So it will be interesting to see. But how would you do that? Have you, have you had occasions where you've got virgins and you've made use of them?

No, I haven't, but I'd love to run them in. I just, I think that's just great. It's like running a swarm in. I just love to run the virgins in, like you say, just have her in your hand, set— already set up your nuc and stuff like that, queenless, and then just pop her in and she just runs in. She can't wait to get on the frames. And then, yeah, that's it. You just treat her like another bee as well because she's got no— her pheromones haven't sort of, you know, matured. So they just sort of go, crack on, feed yourself.

What's strange with it though is I see people selling virgin queens, and I bought virgin queens through the post before, but they're virgin Virgin queens are almost impossible. I find if after like 3 or 4 days to get them introduced into a colony is really, really difficult. Like, you can't use an introduction cage, you need to do something completely different. So, so what they do with the, with the little mini mating nucs is they just, they'll kind of like soak the bees and just chuck the virgin in and mix them and agitate them. But I really, I don't like introducing old virgins. It's, it's very difficult and it's kind of like quite costly because you don't get many introduced very well. Uh, right, I'm just looking through the rest of the ones in here. Um, right, so Dog Black Prince Trust wants to talk about swarms. They've had the first one today. I'm definitely going to go swarm hunting. I, I say it all throughout the winter, but I'm not doing it, and then I think I'm just going to do it. I'm going to get some because I've seen some of the swarms this year. I've seen some Mega swarms, and I am jealous because it is like the most fun thing in the world, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. Have you had any cool swarm stories?

Uh, our first call out, again, we've— if we, we did a bit of a video for it, and it was on a bit of MOD land, um, but it was like public as well, and it was this massive prime swarm on an oak sapling, and I was like, ideally I just want to Cut the little sapling and put it in the box. But because it was MOD land and it was an oak, I thought, well, best not chop it just in case someone has a moan. And yeah, we caught that, but just like the old-fashioned way, and shook them in. And the queen ended up flying around my head, and Kate was shouting at me because my trousers were hanging down and bees are all over me back and stuff like that. So yeah, it's just, it's just good fun. It's just— and they're all a bit different. You can get— Some right up in trees, and I've seen people with like telescopic poles and buckets and stuff. And yeah, Bush Bee Man was a good one, wasn't he? I think he's got a couple of good videos with his swarms up in trees and stuff. So yeah, I love it. I love it. Some are a bit tricky, and you've got to know when to say no. And you need pictures. It's like, yeah, you need a confirmation that it's actually a honeybee because there's a lot of mason bees at all. That's one thing I would say to people is get confirmation, get a picture. Don't just go on, oh, it's bees. You know, it could be anything, could be wasps.

So I had a lady the other day call up saying about, yeah, it was clear very early on from the conversation that it was mason bees. And I said, there's not really much I can do, sorry. Our advice is to leave them there. And she said, well, what do you expect me to do with them? I'm not leaving them there, and she was getting like really aggressive and pushy. And in the end, I just, after like trying to politely end the conversation probably 4 times, I said, I've got to go, sorry, see you later, just hung up. Yeah, yeah, but yeah, it's all good.

Yeah, it's a bit weird because you're classed as a beekeeper, that's it, you know everything there is to bees, and all the bees in the world are your responsibility, and you need to get them. That's how it comes across sometimes, and it's a bit—

The councils play on it a bit as well because the Because the councils like so the pest controllers won't kill honeybees, and then the councils say, "Well, no, we're not doing it because beekeepers do it for free." So they say, "No, we're not doing it." Speak to a beekeeper. So then so then you're getting kind of like secondhand, like passed on from someone who's called up the council, and they think it's like a cert that you're paid to do it. All right. But yeah, this is a good question from from Peter here, East Sussex bee enthusiast Peter, who who sends me like a Amazing watercolours at Christmas.

Yeah, yeah, he's nice, is Peter. He comments on that channel there.

Yeah, he's a legend, isn't he? Hi, Peter. So he says, I had some great queen cells, so I've done 2 nucs in Payne's pollies, each with 1 cell. Is there any way of slowing down the nuc development as you want to keep them as nucs to overwinter? So that's a good question. The only real way of doing it is to remove brood, but I would say though, just removing brood on its own doesn't necessarily slow the queens down that much. Like, I find, say you've got a nuc with 6 frames of brood in there, if you take out 4 frames of brood and put foundation in there and leave all the bees in there still, you'll come back next week and generally, if you've got a good queen, she's just laid it all up again.

Yeah.

So you need to remove the bees and the broods. I know you don't want to do more and more splits, so it is a bit of a tricky one. You need to find out, kind of, you need to work out what you're going to do. with some of that brood or some of those bees, you could get some extension boxes and kind of keep on going a little bit taller. But I would say probably the best way of doing it is just accept that you're not going to be able to keep those in those boxes to overwinter them as nucs, and build them up, get them into another hive, and then take out a couple of the frames and keep those, and just time it at the right time of the year to get the overwintered nucs as well. And then if you don't want to increase your numbers with those nucs that you've upgraded into hives, just combine them to some other colonies over winter because it's a very good way of getting booming colonies. Like, if you're going to double them up over winter and combine 2 big strong colonies, it's like, for me, it's a little bit of a false economy. I would just buy some more nuc boxes and just overwinter more nucs, and then you can sell them in the spring. But that's what I would do. Would you do anything different, Andy?

No, that's it. It's a hard one trying to keep the numbers under control, isn't it? It's like you say, you've got to take the brood frames out with the bees. You can't just, you know, take the brood out with no nurse bees because, like you say, they work double time. They literally put foundation in and, like Laurence says, it'll just be drawn out and it'll be all laid up. In a week. So yeah, you could nearly— I don't know how many other colonies, uh, you have, Peter, but, um, you could nearly double brood another one of your main colonies and then start, you know, adding in frames of brood from your nucs and stuff like that. And like Lawrence says, come wintertime, you could sort of think about uniting a couple of weak colonies, or try and pick out which queen you want to keep, or again, sell them. You know, look at new beekeepers wanting nucs and stuff like that, or donate, you know, if anybody's had some severe losses, or chronic bee paralysis is becoming more common. So yeah, it's, um, there's a lot, but yeah, trying to keep numbers under control is a bit tricky. I think I would sort of donate the frames to a weaker colony or double brood a stronger one. That's why.

Okay, it's good advice. And I remember like the road to the number of colonies that I ended up This is so easy increasing bees, isn't it? It's like child's play. And then you get to the point you're like, right, I can't cope with all these bees, too many bees, right? So we'll— we've reached a plateau, we're not going to split them anymore. And it immediately just like changes the game. You just think, shit, I can't split my bees anymore. So when they swarm, I can't just split them because I'm gonna end up with double the bees. So I do, I do still like though, as long as you've got double the amount of equipment on, on hand, just split them that final time and then just combine them back. And you do, you do have to be quite, uh, strict with yourself when you get to the end of the year and say, I'm combining these back, because otherwise it just gets out of hand. This comment came up here, so your wife just heard that, uh, us say we don't like introducing— sorry about that. Again, are either of you on the BBKA swarm list? So I'm not.

You? Um, no, I don't think— not officially. We sort of do our own thing, um, because more likely they're going to see our media posts than the BBKA posts. And plus, I want to stay local. I don't want to be going too far away. So yeah, I think it's a no to that.

But yeah, I, uh, I used to— I used to be on it. It was good. I, I'm only off it now because I don't— I don't want to go and collect loads of swarms. And like you, we get We get calls anyway, but if you want swarms, definitely get on the list. I just like to see— there's definitely some like new technology out there that could be implemented to make swarm catching a little bit easier because it is a bit manual and it is like you turn up and there's 3 other beekeepers there already collecting them. It's really—

I love that story. Yeah, you said that a few times, didn't you? Someone having a bit of a grumble at you.

Proper grumble. I'll never forget that one. Um, let's have a look what other ones we've got in here. It's different. Normally I just got like loads of questions and it's just me talking loads of rubbish. Someone on here actually, someone on my list asked— I'm going to go to the questions that he asked there. Let me find them. He chucked his like 9 questions in one. I think I deleted it. Okay. But it was great. I'm going to save that for next time if you're watching. I can't remember the guy's name. Um, but yeah, right. So I, I had a question the other day from someone about the honey that we produce, and the question here says, so glad I found this local honey. Quick question, I assume all the honey is raw and unpasteurized. So how, how do you deal with that question if I said to you, is your honey raw? What would you say?

It's filtered. Raw, to me, raw is like— there you go, there's a frame of honey, you know, and it's like it's got bee legs in, it's got pollen in, it's got all sorts in. But yeah, you can't sell it as raw. And we quite often get this through social media, whether it's Instagram or Facebook, you know, is your honey raw? And we just say, well, we take it off the hive, we just explain the process. But we can't call it raw.

So, so people know my view on this. I think it's ridiculous that you can't call it raw. Like, that it takes forever to try and get people to understand, like, what your product is about and, and even coin a term which has been coined as raw. But like, with honey, everyone knows, everyone knows what that term is. Everyone asks for the term. Everyone asks for honey. They say I want to buy raw honey. Is your honey raw? And you have to say, can't call it raw, sorry. Yeah, it's called something else. I'm just thinking, what? It's madness. And it's people at a high level within the honey game who clearly want to protect their honey that isn't raw. I just don't get the hatred behind the word.

There's a bit of— I think I find some of the beekeeping stuff is a little bit old school and it just sort of needs updating a little bit, and we call ours pure Yorkshire honey, and really it's just—

Pure is not a reserved description on the honey regs. Sorry, Andy, Trading Standards are going to come knocking, mate. You can't call it pure. This is what they say though, they say, oh, don't call it raw, just call it pure, and I say, well, what's the difference between the two? Because pure's not It's not on the regulations either, but apparently pure's all right, raw's not. And the same with unpasteurized.

Yeah, I don't know how it works because technically Pure Yorkshire Honey is the brand name. So yeah, it's, yeah, it's a minefield, isn't it?

I'm, I'm not really going to call trading standards, don't worry. It really is, it's one of the things with honey that really annoys me though. And people say, well, you know what, I don't call my honey raw and I don't have any issue selling it. And I say, yeah, but you're not, you're not like an SEO website-based sales company. It's different if you're just selling it to like local people because you can talk to them, you can educate them. But then if people are Googling where to buy raw honey and you can't call your honey raw, then you're at a massive disadvantage.

Yeah.

It, it just, it's another UK-ism. I think like in America they're just like, yeah, just call it raw honey, who cares, call it what it is.

Yeah, yeah. Sorry, what about the cooked comb stuff? Can you— you can't, you can't even call that raw, can you? And to be fair, that's as raw as it gets. But this—

so this is, this is another thing that's really annoying though, yeah, is that Trading Standards will not proactively seek out people using the word raw. So when they came to me and said you need to remove the word raw from everything. Yeah, all the labels, all of the, the website, all of the listings, all of the social media. You cannot use the word raw. And I say, okay, fair enough. When Trading Standards say that, you, you say okay and you do it. But then I say, what about my competitors who are still using it though? And they say, well, yeah, they could— they can use it. That's pretty much what they said.

Wow.

Yeah. And I said, well, we'll just go and go and do that. They said, if you want If you want us to like look into something, we can look into something, but you need to make a formal complaint against the other people for using it. So they don't proactively seek anything out because it's not important enough for them. But if someone complains about it, then they send you a letter saying you can't use the word war. It's madness, isn't it?

Oh yeah, politics.

It's politics, but it's also like it's it could be a good barometer of good honey. It could be a case of, right, you can use the word raw, but here are the rules. Because at the moment there are no rules. Like, raw could— it's very subjective. But they could say, right, here are the rules for raw. You look at like the crap— this, this is the thing. Yeah, so my honey and your honey is called honey. Yeah.

Yeah.

Also, what is called honey is crappy Chinese stuff that comes in that's heated up to 65 degrees that is also called honey. We can't differentiate between the two. Yeah. And people think, well, hang on, I'm not paying £7 for an 8-ounce jar because I can get a pound for 50p. Yeah, still honey.

Yeah. And that, that, that's another reason why we've done the YouTube, is to make people aware of what real honey is. And I think the only way you can do it is you start getting into your scientific tests with your HMF and your diatase levels. But then to test that, it needs to go to a lab or somewhere like that. I don't think there's a home kit where you can test your own HMF in your honey and your diatase, which is— I can't remember the figures, but if there was a proper place where some people can look up and say, oh, well, real raw honey should have this level of HMF and this level of diastase, then, you know, and you can have it on your label, should be on the label, but how do you test for it? That's the thing. But that's the thing that will differentiate rice syrup, like you say, little— I'm not gonna say little, but, you know, stuff in the supermarkets that, you know, is from China, which is clearly just— it's rice syrup and stuff like that, or sugar syrup. You know, you can't sell honey 50p a pound. It's just It's just wrong, and it's just, yeah, it really gets under my nose every time I go into the shop. I just pick a jar up and I'm tempted to take one of our jars and just plonk it on the shelf. Yeah, I'll probably get told off.

Guerrilla advertising. I like this from Glyn, as long as it's not pasteurized, it's raw. Yeah, so my view of this is, and we don't do this, but so we can't sell raw honey, so then what, where's the incentive for us to keep our honey kind of as not tampered as possible. Yeah, no, just heat up, keep it, keep it looking fresh. Yeah, it's madness. And Barry also says, yeah, raw honey and organic honey minefield. So organic slightly more so, especially in the UK, you've got, you've got no chance of doing it. Just going back to the, the question on Peter's nuc, Tim says, could you cage the queen on the comb to control the size of the nuc? That's a really good idea. I like that, that's great, because that's, that's what Richard does with his varroa treatments. And not only could you do that to control the size of the colony getting too big, but you could take the opportunity to go and treat them when they're broodless as well. So I really like that.

What you might find with that though, they might try and chew her out, especially if there's a flow on. They'll try and get her out, I reckon. I reckon they'll try and chew her out.

Yeah, maybe. Richard has really good success with this. I know he did this pretty much on all of them last year. He's a strong advocate of caging them at the right time of the year for varroa, not for kind of limiting the size of the colony. Yeah, but yeah, maybe they would. The push-in plastic cages, I hate them. I hate push-in plastic cages because they do, they just burrow underneath straight away. But if you go with a proper like kind of stainless mesh one that you push right in, it's quite difficult for them to get her out.

Yeah, yeah. as well. Yeah, they can't get around.

Yeah, there you go. There's another couple of ideas for YouTube videos there. We should be like scribbling these down, shouldn't we? Um, well, how, how are we going to do a collaboration? There we go, we've done a collaborative stream, but how are we going to collaborate on a video? What should we do?

Uh, I don't know. Well, I think what we— from each other, I mean, about 3 hours from each other, saying that you're, you're tomorrow, you can go and try and find this virgin queen that I've, uh, well, more newly mated queen that I've put a pink dot on.

Oh, that's what I was going to ask. So why do you, why do you use pink?

Well, it's, um, red. I, I'll struggle to see red, to be honest. Um, and I got those Zaya pens off your, um, video, I must have. And, um, yeah, there's a hot pink, and I thought, yes. Yeah, we're going with hot pink this year, I think.

So that is my absolute favorite color pen. It is.

They look really good on it.

It is the best pen, I think. Like, there's a, there's a neon yellow that I like as well, but the neon pink, yeah, it is the best. I can't see red queens either.

Is that what you match your queens with that you sell? Because that— the dot on the queen that you sold me last year is still good.

Yeah, we've had a variety of different ones that we use, but most of the oil-based ones are fine, like the Posca ones. I don't know why people still sell Posca pens, they're rubbish. But I find pretty much all of the oil-based ones are good. I know a guy that I speak to quite a lot, he uses the Thorn one. It's like a little nail varnish, and he swears by them. I've not used them. And then somebody gave me a tip the other day, and I can't remember what it was, It's like an American company. So if some— if anybody knows it, what the tip was, it's like— I'm going to come out and make up a name now, but it's like an American oil-based pen. It's like— I want to say Chameleon Sports, but it's definitely not Chameleon Sports, but something like that, because like a C and an H. If anyone knows what it is, I tried to buy some and I couldn't. You just couldn't, couldn't get them over here. And that the one— I think one person was selling them on Etsy and they were out of stock. Uh, quick one for Grant. He says, will I offer 14x12 nucs next spring for delivery? So yes, we'll definitely do that. Um, do you, do you sell nucs, Andy?

Uh, no, but again, if we start expanding and I can't cope with the numbers, then I might say I'll sell locally. I don't know how you do it, sending all your nucs out. You must be absolutely flat out. Um, but yeah, I might do local, local nucs, um, because We have a lot of new beekeepers every year in this area, and my old mentor, he just, he runs the training for the local association, then he sells the nucs for them as well. So he's on a bit of a win-win. And I said to him this week, I says, well, if you're struggling, I might end up with a few this next spring. So if you want, we could sell a few and then maybe queens as well for start rearing with queens if we do get an F0 or pure queen. Um, might do that, but again, only local, just to try. So, but yeah, it's, um, could be another string to the bow.

Yeah, it's definitely, it's definitely worth doing them, um, especially if you, if you combine it with your swarm control as well. That's, that's what I like doing, merge, merging the two together. I need to, again, I've got how many videos on my beekeeping list for YouTube? There's a few duplicates on there, about 320 videos.

to do. Yeah, I've just been building my list.

It's a great tip, like you just have a list, like it's just like a— I don't know, I think it's like a one— a Microsoft list, and I just— yes, I stick it on there, and there's some proper obscure ones. Um, but I think that one is on there. Yeah, well, I've got a question. Yeah, question from Dan. He just got a 5-frame nuc, transferred them to his hive. All the frames are drawn in a week. They got some syrup to help draw those frames, when to put the supers on after the June gap. So go on, Andy, I'll let you, I'll let you answer that one. What do you reckon?

Yeah, you're probably wanting to look at, I'd say, 6, 7 frames of brood easily, 6, 7 frames of bees looking strong and healthy, and then I think that's when I put it, put it on, you know, put a super on then. It's easy if it's easy to get too carried away and you see like 6 frames of bees and you think, oh yeah, put super on, and I think you'll be surprised, it will just slow them right down. But if you're on 7, 8 frames of bees, all of a sudden they'll be like, right, we're on, and, um, yeah, they'll just pull on quite quickly, I think.

I wouldn't— yeah, I wouldn't disagree with any of that. That's about right. Uh, Alan says, can you use the demerger to create new colonies while preserving honey harvest? If so, what pitfalls may there be? So I, I don't think that's the best way of doing that. Like, the reason that I use the demerest is to stop my bees swarming and create, um, and get a good honey harvest. But I don't, I don't use it for splits as well. The only way I would say that you could kind of maybe merge the two is that once the— once you've taken down the cells in the top box, is just— or even, even before you, you can do it before they start making cells is just to start harvesting that brood. I wouldn't take it all down because I find it's that brood at the top that emerges that gives you that like double boost of bees. So then you time that with the flows, you get crazy honey. What do you use? What's your like kind of swarm control, or do you just wait for them to form?

I do like the Demaray because like you say, it's just a vertical split really, isn't it? And you're just, you're not going outwards, you're just going upwards, and it's a bit more easier to manage. And the question I quite often get asked is, what do you do with the honey upstairs? Because it's in tainted frames usually, because it's still last year's happy fire frames. And what I tend to do, I'll keep an eye on what's hatching out, and if it's hatched out and they've backfilled it, because they will, I might just pop that back downstairs, but leave like the rest of the brood upstairs still. But yeah, I do like that. I do like the demeray, but yeah, it's You end up with a lot of bees, a lot, a lot of bees. Just seems to. But yeah, I don't know how it happens.

Yeah, it's not for everyone. Like, I had some people last year follow it, and I think they were kind of slightly older generation and maybe not as strong and like lifting. If they're— if you've got them on like a high— because I have mine on quite high hive stands as well— and then if you've got like a brood box and they're like 4 supers and then a 40-pound national deep at the top of that. Like, it's heavy. I find myself lifting it up, I'm like, that is heavy. So it's definitely not for everyone. And then when they swarm, if they swarm after a demo ray, like at the peak, you do get huge swarms. It's great, it is all good fun. Well, Alan, do you want to go on for Andy? I'm like, I can keep you here all night just talking bees, but—

I don't mind if, um, I don't— I can't see any questions, but yeah, if there's people want to chuck some questions, then fine. Yeah, if I don't know the answer, I just say I don't know the answer. I'm pretty straightforward about that. So yeah, but I'm quite easy.

Right, this question here, I'm not gonna type it in, I'm just gonna read it out. But this was a question from a guy called Ed Walton who asked me on— I think it was an email— and I said you need to ask this on the livestream because it's a cool question. So he says, can I ask your advice? He has bees at home in his garden and made an inquiry inquiry at a cider farm down the road, uh, asking if I could have some hives there. They were really keen and they offered to buy the hives and bees if I look after them. They would then sell the honey in their shop. I'm interested but obviously need to clarify every detail. Can you think of any problems with that situation? And I looked at that just like, oh man, that's— there's lots to think about there. What do you think?

I don't mind putting my— if that was me, I'd be like, quite happily put my hives there, but they stay our hives. We manage them. We take the honey and stuff like that. And, you know, if they want some honey, that's fine. But really, they're just wanting a pollination service, and then they're wanting honey off that as well. So I would try and keep the bees your own, and then, yeah, sell them some honey if they want some honey. But yeah, really they're getting the pollination service for free. That's why, yeah, you'd give them the pollination service for free.

So I'll play devil's advocate because I'm kind of where you are, which is always keep things neat. You own the bees and you bring the bees there, and then everything else is nice and neat and clean. But I can imagine, say, so you've got like a young lad, 16, and he's just built up enough like money for 1 or 2 colonies. Beekeeping is expensive. And then you go and say, oh, can I, can I keep, can I keep a colony of bees at your cider farm? And they say, well, you know what, like, we'll buy 5 hives and you can put them down here and then you manage them. Like, for me, if I was 16 years old and I, I was in that situation, I'd find that really appealing because I'd be like, well, hang on, that's probably like £2,000 worth of bees that somebody else is going to pay for, and then I just, I'll manage them and I can get like the experience of managing them. and then they would sell the honey in the shop. So I would be— I would look at it and think that looks like a good deal, but I would give the advice exactly the same as you, which is it's a proper minefield, that one. Because the people are gonna— they're gonna buy the hives and buy the bees, and they might have expectations of X amount of honey per year. And then what happens if all the bees swarm? What happens if they don't produce any honey? And then what happens when you start making splits? Who owns the splits? And then how much is a realistic amount to be paid to look after somebody else's bees? And then, yeah, the pollination service that's being, that's being added in there as well. Like, apples, apples do need pollinating. So I would always— yeah, I'm with you. I'd err on the side of, we, we own the bees, um, you can pay us. I'll probably, I'll probably offer pollination for free if you've got a retail outlet there. I always like to site bees somewhere where there's a retail outlet. It's good, definitely good. Um, but yeah, they, they would be the problems that I would see there, and I think people do get caught up in some of those problems. But then, okay, alternatively, on the other hand as well, I know people who make a very good living out of managing kind of corporate bees for people.

Yeah.

And it is just as straightforward. They are your Bees, yeah, you might not get any honey this year, but you get all the honey. I'll jar it up for you, I'll do everything, and this is my hourly rate. And they charge a very handsome hourly rate.

Yeah, yeah, it's— you'd need contracts, wouldn't you? I think if you go into a corporate company, it's a lot easier to do it, and you can just say, yeah, we want X amount an hour, and this is how it's going to be. We'll draw up a basic contract. There you go. But yeah, Joe Bloggs, who's got an orchard Yeah, it's just going to get messy, isn't it?

Yeah, get really messy. There's another question from Joe Murphy on here. So any tips on stopping foundation bending in frames, especially when you're storing made-up frames and foundation? So I'll just expand the question a bit, like what do you— what's your standard setup for frames and foundation as well?

I usually make up what I think I'm gonna need in the season and then I'll put it in boxes so the They're vertical, and I'll store them in my workshop. And then I notice them bend more in the hives a little bit sometimes, but usually the bees will jump on that. But if I was just storing normal foundation before it goes into the frames, it all gets stacked on top of each other on a shelf in a nice cool dry place where it's not going to see direct sunlight, so it's not going to bleach. And stuff like that. So yeah, if I've got frames made up, chances are they're going to get used pretty quickly, and I'll just keep them vertical in like a brood box or a nuc box. That's how I would do it.

Yeah, I think, I think that's the important bit there. If you leave them on their side, they just go, don't they, very quickly. They just bend, and then it's a pain. I hate when you get frames that are bent like that. Do you use wired foundation or wired frames?

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah, certainly brood, definitely always wired.

Yeah, yeah. But is it, is it the foundation that's wired, or is your wire the frames? Are you—

Oh, sorry. Yeah, it's wired. We buy it in as wired foundation.

Yeah. Where'd you get it from?

Um, just our local garden center, but it's Thorne stuff. He's just, he just buys in Thorne stuff.

Yeah. So your local, local garden center sells beekeeping foundation? Is it like a, like a bee shop?

Yeah, it just has a little— it looks like a staff room, staff canteen that's been converted into a beekeeping supplies So you go past the till into the back room, and yeah, I've never had a strange look yet. And you just go in, you can just, you know, he's got like foundation, roof supers, kit, you know, just a nice little— I don't know, it's probably 3 meters by 3 meters little room. And, uh, yeah, YouTube video. He's a local beekeeper, uh, and he's been— I think he's been keeping bees for about 40 years. So he lost all his colonies last winter. He had 14 colonies and they All died, and no one knows why. He's had the bee inspector out. How many? 14 colonies. 14 colonies, yeah. And they all died. Wow. So yeah, yeah, yeah. I think there was a thing going around about a contaminated water source, so if they were going to contaminated water or something like that, I don't know. Yeah, but he's back up to 11 now because everybody gifted him loads of bees. Yeah. I would have sold him a nuc.

Yeah, I bet. Um, oh, that's not good, is it? I, I, I hate using this example because the guy might be watching. I felt so bad when he said it, but he said that he had 40 colonies and he took his 40 colonies and he wanted to give them the best place to live over winter, so he put them in his greenhouse. and they just cooked. And because they just, they just kind of like, just, he came back one day and he said they're just all dead, every single one of them. Because it would have been so warm in there and they would have been so active, and I think they just starved in the end. Um, yeah, but yeah, 40 colonies in there.

It's heart-wrenching, isn't it, when you, when you lose bees and, and if you think it's your fault, it's, it's devastating. Yeah, it's awful. Yeah.

We've had a couple over the last like 2 weeks that have died in the post. So they've gone to the wrong mail centre and then they've been redirected the next day, so they spent 2 long days in the post. And Royal Mail are so good, they look after the bees so well, and they pick them up from us at about quarter past 5 in the evening. So we've managed to get like the latest possible slot, and then from like quarter past 7 the next day they're delivering them. So they're only really ever in like the postal service like in the cool of the evening, but then if this— if you get a failed delivery, they go to the wrong mail centre, they're in the back of a van for the whole day before they go. We had a couple that just completely, completely died on the way, and you feel gutted. You feel like, oh, it's not the best.

Yeah.

Then I've had more colonies of bees die in the back of people's cars coming to collect them from me and taking them home than we have Yeah, um, so you do—

how'd you get with your queens through the post?

Queens are really good through the post. Like, we very, very rarely have any that, that die. We obviously, if they do die, we just replace them. But yeah, the, the special delivery service is good. They're very quick and just kind of get them out next day. And we've had them, we've had them back before, like You get them sometimes just randomly turned back up at my house and it says like return to sender. So that, uh, it says not called for is the one that the term that they use, which means either like the address doesn't exist or we've tried to deliver to address 3 times and there is no one at the address, something like that. And we've had them turn, turn up like a week later, they're just fine, like all the attendants still alive. But then sometimes, you know, the next day Um, like you'll send a queen out one day and then the next day they arrive and everything's dead. So if the postman just takes like one of the packages, they say they sometimes think they're doing the best thing, so they don't leave it in the back of the truck and they put it in like the front of the truck, like in the sun, and then it just cooks them. But they're pretty good, they're not, they're not too bad at all. Uh, Gundogs says, do you treat your bees, Andy, or do you advocate treatment So you, I think you said you'd use Apivar, didn't you?

Yeah, definitely, definitely treat for me, to be honest. I think when Griff was on, he put a, he made a good example, you know, you know, if you have pets, you know, he has obviously has cattle and stuff like that. I think it's the same for bees. It's a living animal, they're, you know, they've got mites on them, you know, scale or size, they're absolutely huge. if you can do what you can do to treat them and, you know, get rid of the varroa, then yeah, I would treat all day long. And like I say, I do, I'll do my Apivar or rotate it. I don't know what I'm going to rotate it with in autumn. And then obviously we'll do oxalic acid through winter. I try and do twice. And I do VarroaMed as well. I don't know, I never mentioned that before, but yeah, I'll try and do a VarroaMed With a trickle, but obviously I'll take my supers off, so I might do that once we pull the supers off. We'll do some VarroaMed and on swarms and stuff, that's a good time to get swarms treated.

Yeah, definitely. I'm amazed at these small cell bees that I've got because I've seen the studies. I don't buy into it that Varroa can't reproduce in small cell foundation, but the colony that I've got, I got it from a guy called— I always forget his second name. His name's John. And he said that they've— I think they've not been treated for 3 years. And I got them through the winter, so they're in— I think they're in their 4th year with no treatment. And, uh, it's not a plug, it is on the channel, it is on the channel membership page at the moment. It will go live in the next couple of weeks. But there— I'm just— I'm not— I won't go into the detail because it is, it is a, a video that is coming up, but I'm just amazed. How they're getting on without treatments. And it's interesting to see, like, the differences, like the brood patterns, the holes in the cappings. I've not done a drop test on them yet, but that's next, and I will do that definitely this year to see kind of how many mites are there, because there are definitely mites there, and you can see mites on them, but there's no deformed wing virus, like none. And I know a couple of bee farmers on Twitter who really do, like, don't— they say they don't treat their bees and it makes no difference. So I'd love to get to a position where I didn't have to treat. It would be good. Here we go, Joe Murphy. Joe Murphy asks loads of good questions. So should you get rid of attendance when introducing queens? Seems a lot of people doing it to improve acceptance. What's your thoughts on that?

Yeah, it is a very good question because it's something I've started to think about now because If I do go down the route of getting a purebred queen, I would definitely take the attendants out because the attendants are only there to feed the queen and tend to the queen in theory. I've introduced all the queens that I've bought off you and other people with the attendants in and been fine, with the exception of one or two, but that was more colony issue. But yeah, I might start playing about with this. But it's— you've got to be confident, I think. I think, you know, if you've only been doing it for 1 or 2 years and you're not confident of releasing the attendants, then just go with, you know, your video. Your video is really good, step-by-step guide. Um, but yeah, if you're quite confident, you can get those sort of sleeves, can't you? Put your hands in and flick the attendants out and leave the queen in. Um, so yeah, it's, it's actually something I, I might try, certainly with a very I think I'll go that way.

Do you know what my view of it is? It makes— I don't think it makes any difference whatsoever. And it's just like, it's just a process that people do because they've seen other people doing it, and it just, it just doesn't make any difference. Like, we've introduced thousands of queens with the attendance in, and they, they never don't get accepted. But having to— like, if I had to go through every single one of those and take the attendance out, like Oh, it's just adding in, adding in something else to do and adding in something else that could go horribly wrong. Like they do, like opening the cage like that and you just— there's just a boom, the queen goes off and the attendants go off, and then you've got them in all these little cages and like those little sleeves, and you just think, yeah, just— you don't have to do it, just leave it. So no, I'm, I'm a strong advocate of no, don't take the attendants out because there's no need to. Um, but I— yeah, people can do what they want. The one tip that I would give if people are doing it, a little tip, is if you soak the cage— it sounds like it's like torture, waterboarding— but if you put the cage in water, underwater, for like a few seconds before you do it, they can't immediately fly off. And then you can just kind of pick the queen out, chuck the attendants out, put the queen back in. It's quite a good way of doing it. But yeah, not for me, that one. Have I heard of the— or either of us— the Australian native bees? So no, I've not heard of that.

I've got family in Australia as well, so I'll have to ask them. Yeah, but no.

You hear a lot about like UK native bees, don't you? Where do you stand on— because this is another way to alienate everyone— the No, I was going to say Griff didn't sit on the fence, did he, with the mite treatments one? So we should probably not sit on the fence. But where do you stand with the whole UK native bee argument?

A bit of a rock and a hard place, really, because like I say, we've got a local mongrel colony that is absolutely fantastic, to the point where I'm thinking I could sort of naturally sort of just, you know, grab, you know, make queens off her. But now I've got Buckfast colonies in my apiary. And I'm a bit like, I think these days there's so much, so many genetics in and floating about in all these bees. And I don't think there's many feral colonies, not around here. I don't know about yourself, that there's just a bit of all sorts in. I get it and I get, you know, I get the understanding of it and I get why people are quite passionate about it. And you know rightly so in some respects. But yeah, it's I don't really like being told I can't get this queen because it's not you know local or stuff like that. You know you've got to work with what you're comfortable with, what works in your area. So yeah, it's it is a very quite a touchy subject for some people. So I'm sort of. One day I'm a bit like, am I doing right by getting some of these Buckfast queens? And other days I'm like, is it really going to make much difference from what I have here anyway? So yeah, it's, it's a tricky one. It's a tricky one.

Yeah, I, I'm— don't want to annoy people because people, some people are very passionate about this one, but I hear a lot of people say stuff like, um, don't, don't buy an Essex queen if you're going to take her up to Manchester because it's like different, different climate. And I just think it's really not. It's kind of just like UK's pretty similar, like it's kind of like a northern European climate. So bees that do well in Italy will do just as well over here, as kind of like is proven with the way that the F1 Buckfasts like produce. They're not from Italy, those are from Malta, but yeah, they do the fine, they overwinter well. But so if a colony that's bred in Malta can do well in North Wales, a colony that's bred in Essex can definitely do well in North Wales. Like, it's really not that kind of— the differences in temperature and climate and weather are not that drastic between kind of north and southern England.

Yeah.

And then my other kind of piece on that is that I don't think there is. There's not a pure native bee to save. It's not because, because there's so many genetics thrown into the mix anyway. So it's almost like trying to save a Greyhound-Labrador-Alsatian cross because, yeah, you know, you've got a mongrel. It is a mongrel, so you can't save it because by its very nature it's already a mongrel. If there was like pure pockets of pure bees, then maybe that's something different. And then you see the Ireland argument, and they're in Ireland, people are very passionate about this as well. But my experience of what I've had of the AMM queens is like not, not great. They're really— it's not great in comparison to the Buckfast ones. And I've tried kind of both of them, and I've got my favorite. But it's, uh, some people get a bit angry if you say things like that.

It's a, yeah, it's a tricky one.

Uh, right, we'll go to this one. I like this one from Joe. Joe does ask the best questions. So, thoughts on the news about Australian, uh, New Zealand trade deal and the ability to get mated queens in? So I did, I did read about this. I'm not— is it, is it like done, signed? I didn't think that was— it was that far advanced, but it would be interesting to see how early you can get the queens in. But I don't think it's going to make a massive difference because like the queens that you can get in now from Europe are like so far in advance of when you really need them in the season over here. So it's not like you— it's not like you're getting like a 2-month jump on where you need to be. I think the queens coming in are coming in at the right time, but the genetics might be different. You might be getting different genetics in. It's— I don't know, you've got any thoughts on that, Andy?

I don't know. I mean, this is the first I've heard of it, actually. So is it— we could literally import an Australian or New Zealand queen to here? Yeah, it's, um, it's a long way. I've been to Australia, it takes a long time. So yeah, the quality of the queen by the time they get over here, you You know, you could have quite a lot of losses as well. So yeah.

Yeah, you, you'd be surprised actually, because we, we import— so like when we get them in from Malta, they come via air freight and it's, it's really expensive. But the, the place that they go in is like the most temperature-controlled place you've ever got on a plane. And they go in there and it's just like, bang, 23 degrees, 35 degrees, whatever temperature you want it, they put it in the exact temperature and give you the airflow. So okay, it might be a 24-hour flight, but we have queens in the post for 24 hours and they're fine with no temperature control. So I think in terms of, yeah, mortality, I don't think, I don't think that would be an issue. But I just, I question whether we, whether we actually need any more queens at different times of the year.

Yeah, I don't know what type of, what quality, what they're like over there really. Um, what did, uh, was it Mark the Bush Bee Man, did he call comment much on these, uh, quality of bees over there.

Yeah, not, not really. And I've, I've not seen kind of anything out there to say that they're particularly good. I'm not really sure. I'll have to have a look. We'll maybe get some in. Here's another question from Joe though. This, this is a good question. So is there any chance of EFB or AFB being transferred by mated queens? So the risk is incredibly low, but also like, this is an argument that's banded around a lot in terms of we shouldn't shouldn't import queens. Imported queens have to go through like the most rigorous inspection process and like sign-off and health certification. So getting something that's come through that process, which is like proper, like I said, really rigorous, versus getting something from someone down the road, I know which one I'd prefer, which is the one that's signed off like at numerous places by numerous vets But the bigger risk, like, so, so I don't think, I don't think you've got any risk really for EFB. Maybe AFB a little bit more because it's like spore forming, but EFB is like, it's bacterial disease in the frames. So as soon as you just took a few queens out and put them in some cages with some attendants, the risk is minimal. Nucs, on the other hand, like nucs, that's where you're going to spread around EFB and AFB. Have you ever had EFB or AFB?

No, no, touch wood. Yeah, I've seen, obviously you had it last year and you were devastated. It's a devastating thing to happen and it's something that I'm conscious with, you know. I think I've spoken about it already about, you know, donating brood frames and stuff like that. I always would do that with a sign of caution, you know, inspect the frames if there's any open larvae in there, just make make sure they're nice pearly white, they're not contorted, you know, because that's the way you check for EFB. AFB is obviously, you know, after the fact as such. But it's, um, yeah, it's, it's through mated queens. I don't know, I think it'll be a very low chance, wouldn't it? It'd be interesting because they'll talk about it on your dash course, I would have, I would have thought. It'd be interesting to bring that up.

Yeah, they will. I just put up Aussie Beekeeping here, so he's saying it only takes 12 spores of AFB to successfully transfer AFB between hives. So it's very possible. So I would agree, I would agree with that. But what I would say is with the certification that comes with this, the, the imported queens, like you get exclusion zones. So they have to sign on to say these, these queens have been harvested from X location and there's been no cases of EFB or AFB within— I think it's within a 3-mile radius ever. So as soon as they go bang and they get an EFB or AFB case, then they have to stop all of the queens there. So they are so on the ball with the disease. Um, but yeah, if you were taking a mated queen from an AFB hive, then I think you'd almost certainly contaminate the cage because it's so— it just gets everywhere, doesn't it? Uh, Barry says Ian Stepler's imported some packages from New Zealand. He said very few losses. So I think packages are the far greater risk in terms of not so much disease but like pests. That's where you're going to get pests coming in, and I think that's why the UK stopped the packages coming in for fear of the small hive beetle coming in, which I think is probably the right decision. Have you ever had any packages?

No, I've never really seen them for sale in the UK. I don't know when that stopped. But yeah, it's, um, I always see it banded about in America. They quite like selling packages in America, don't they?

But yeah, it's a big thing in America.

Yeah, yeah, it's an interesting thing.

Packages are a pain in the ass. They are. And I know the Americans on here say, no, they're great, they're fantastic. I just, I, every time I've had them, they're awkward. And I think the key to packages is you need proper drawer comb. So if you do it with drawn comb, like on a colony that's expired for one reason or another, you just want to chuck a package in with a queen, is, is pretty easy. But seriously, try doing packages on foundation. It is not, it is not fun. And try doing like 100 packages on foundation. It is carnage. Really is carnage. Yeah. Um, should we do, should we do 5 more minutes? Because I'm sure you want to, you want to get off and get some dinner.

Yeah, yeah, what we are. Yeah, yeah, we'll do 5 minutes then.

Um, right, let me see if I've got any other good questions on here. Um, so there we go. James says, have you— have either of you ever experimented with multiple colonies that share the same supers? You ever done that?

Um, I assume he means it's been on one colony, it's been spun out, and eventually ended up on another another colony, then in that instance, yes. I don't mark my supers depending on what colonies they've been on or anything like that. If there's any— if a queen's been up there and accidentally laid some brood because the metal queen excluders have been bent with the hive tool or whatever, then I might take out frames that have sort of had brood in them, so they've just been purely used honey, I, I— they'll end up on whichever colony, rightly or wrongly. Um, but yeah, that's how I do it here.

I, I read that question a slightly different way, which was like 2, maybe like 2 nucs with like the same supers on. So like 2 queens, 2 separate colonies, one queen excluder, and then supers going up. So I did, for that one there, if that is right, James, I did— I had to play around with that, and it worked. It it was fine. They seemed to not kill the queens for some reason, which was a bit strange, but it didn't— there was no real like benefit to it. And if anything, it was just a bit of a pain because neither of the brood boxes had enough space. So I was— there's probably, there's probably a reason for doing it, but it didn't, it didn't seem to add any value.

Um, I wonder if the reason is, um, if you've got 2 weaker colonies and you just want them to start filling supers. Maybe that's where he's going with the question. But no, in that instance, I haven't merged 2 colonies to fill the same super. No, it just seems a bit of a logistical nightmare for me.

Yeah, you can add it, you can add it to your list. I'm going to call it a day there because it's quarter past 10, and I need to go. I'm going to go have some dinner. Thank you so much, Andy, for coming on though. We'll definitely have another chat at some point in the future. And let's do a collaboration. The world's largest swarm in the Porsche has got to be done at some point. So we'll borrow someone's 911. Yeah, let's do it. Let's get Porsche sponsor it. Let's get involved, and then we can have a Porsche to take home each as well at the end of it. How about that? But yeah, thank you so much. If you haven't done so already though, definitely go over to Andy's YouTube channel, Pure Yorkshire Honey, and subscribe. Really good channel. I enjoy watching all of his videos. If you enjoyed this stream, please do give it a thumbs up. It helps with the algorithm, and we will be back at some point in the near future. So thanks for watching, everyone. See you later.

Cheers.