Black Mountain Honey: Let's Talk Bees With Richard Noel and Gruffydd Rees - Episode 13

So we finally managed to get Griff and Richard Noel together onto a live stream, so thanks both for being here. Griff, do you want to say hello first?

Yeah, hello everybody, glad to be on the channel, thanks for the invite, I'm looking forward to the stream.

Nice one, cheers Griff. And Richard next.

Hi everybody, nice to see you all and it's a pleasure to be with the other 2. Hope you're all well tonight, you're all busy I know and we're all going to be talking about hives shortly. So, um, away we go, I suppose.

Excellent. Right, thanks Richard, thanks Griff. We are going to be here for 90 minutes. I am aware that Arsenal are losing already, so I'm glad that I'm not watching the football. Uh, we're going to go straight through into comments, Q&A, and we're going to try and keep it short and punchy and, and not go off down any kind of rabbit holes, although I'm sure we'll be dragged down some. So I'm going to start off at the very top and I'll direct the questions out. Question first up from Aaron Cornish, who's a channel member, who says he's left his crown boards on top of the poly Ashford feeders. He's gone inside them and there's a lot of funky surface mould. What can he do to clean them up that is bee safe? And I'll chuck that one over to Griff first.

Well, bleach solution is a known good cleaner, you know, say you get foulbrood or whatever in polyhives, a good strong bleach solution is what's used there. And then you rinse it out with cold water afterwards. That basically is going to kill anything, a kind of moldy or bacteria type residue in there. And even if it's, you know, if you've got no like foul brew issues, it's just a little bit of mold, I mean, fair liquid and water and a good scrub and then the hose down would probably do it. What I like to do at home is I've got a hot wash pressure washer. I just turn the pressure down on that and everything gets a good clean with that. And Get stuff like new.

Nice one.

I was going to say, it is good if you can actually have a second set of crown boards because often in the spring you can change. I do this with floors. We've got these plastic floors, and if you go into an apiary and you find a few that are dirty, whip them off, put a clean one on, and then you can take that one at home and do it at your leisure. And then you kind of build those clean ones to take back to the next lot, and so on and so on. It's kind of building up a way of handling that issue. quickly, and then you're not spending hours in the apiary scraping it off. I've done that quite a few times.

2 excellent answers. I'm not going to add anything on top of that. Right, so next question, and this can go to you, Richard, from Mark Barrows. And this is a bit sad, this one. Went into winter with 10 hives, and his plan was to go from 10 hives to 50 hives. Due to idiots running into them with quad bikes, he's now down to one small nuc. What would be your plan for recovery?

Well, depends on a number of things. It depends what you want to do. If you really want to get that recovery up quickly, you're not going to be able to split that one colony 10 times, let's just face it. So you need to go in the hives, be ruthless, clean them all out, sterilize the boxes, just be proactive. Go and get some nucs from someone else, or use some of the good frames to make a few swarm traps as well. That does work. But it's not going to cure the problem. And I will add that I don't think quad bikes would have really killed the bees. It would. There's loads of issues that could have been the reason. I mean, we can all point fingers, but think about buying some nucs. I know it costs a fortune these days, but I know someone who's got a load for sale. I know two people have got a load for sale, and they're right in front of me right now. You just have to be organized and. Griff was talking about this the other day. You get losses, it can be a pig. You just have to kind of be— just get— the quicker you clean out your dead hives, the quicker you move on. You know, it's the saddest thing, it's hard, but you've got to just get that mindset around it and try and work out why they died and then move on for next year. That's all I can say, because you cannot split what you've got and hope to recover with that. You can't split a colony 10 times. It's been tried. You end up with maybe 6 or 8 nucs at the end of the year if you're lucky, and then you're challenged to get them through the fall and winter with no honey. Think about buying some bees, that'll be my advice.

Good advice. Griff, anything to add?

No, I think the advice there is spot on. I mean, if you're down to 1 hive and you want to go up to 50, you're gonna have to buy some bees in, you know, maybe just buy 5 or 10 nucs. Hopefully, you know, I'm not saying you've got to come to us to buy, maybe people retiring around you selling them a lot cheaper, get some kit in like that. And even if they're rubbish bees, you know, come May, you've got good queens coming through the system, just split them, put new queens in. And, and just this year basically is a year of recovery now. So yeah, you're not going to be where you want to be, but you've got to recover and then go into winter with a lot more than 10, uh, hives and have those hives maybe spread over 2 sites so you eliminate the risk of, uh, vandalizing, uh, happening to your nuc again. Uh, that's what I do. That's the same as anything. Say you had a fleet of lorries and 5 lorries got crashed in the snow and ice. Well, the first thing you do is go and buy more lorries, you know, and it's the same with bees. You can't be in business unless you've got bees, so definitely you want to get some bees in spring straight away and then just constantly split them and get your numbers back up.

Good advice. Right, next one, I'm going to split this and you can definitely both answer this one. What is your preferred swarm control method? And we'll go to Richard first.

Well, for us, we have such large colonies that I don't have spare brood boxes to do Demarais splits and stuff like that. We rely on really changing our queens regularly and regular inspections in the spring and having good ladders in the van. So It's not like that, honestly. Honestly, it isn't.

But so what do you do if you see, you see like charged swarm cells?

Yeah, exactly. This, that's a very good point. If I see charged swarm cells, I'm going to make a split from that queen, and I'll take the queen away in another box and give her— I will literally take the queen away and I'll find another queen to replace it with, or I'll leave one cell, or I'll do something like that. But I will never leave a charged queen cell, if a charged queen in the box, and just take the cells away because I know she will go. She will go anyway. So that's kind of mine. Griff might do something different.

I'll just jump in on that point. I think it's a good one to note though, and a lot of people do say that they'll go in, they'll see queen cells, and the advice is knock them all down and put the colony back together again and it will all be okay. And I don't know when that's ever worked. I think that's really bad advice.

They always end up going. You might delay it for a week, but because you get lucky with the weather and it goes rubbish weather for a week, but You come back and there's bees hanging out the box, and you just think, why didn't I do something while I had a nuc on the truck before? I always carry nucs with me, and you just make a split and give that queen room. I actually do. I do actually go through my apiaries anyway in the end of April, early May, making making a whole load of splits anyway, and it stops my swarming. When I look at the nucs I've got at the end of it, they don't all work. They don't all get mated, but I've stopped the swarming, and I've still got the queens I took the colonies from. In the boxes, that's the key to it, you know.

Very nice. Griff, what's your go-to method?

Yeah, I do something similar. I don't do the demaries and stuff, I keep a load of nucs in the truck. If I see a nuc or a hive wanting to go, I take the queen out, make a really small split, 2-3 frame job, get the queen out of there. I'll cut all the queen cells out and I'll just come back next week and then I'll cut all the queen cells out again and leave one. That's what I tend to do, but moving forward, because we're doing a lot more nucs now, I try and split strong hives, take a nuc out of them before they get to that stage, and basically that would be my swarm control. And if, you know, sometimes I won't get back there for 2 to 3 weeks, and chances are they're still going to be there if you've done that, just taking the strength of them just before the big spring peak. But, you know, sometimes you still lose some. I'm trying to get away from inspecting my bees every 7 days, you know, and just by trying to do preventative type work and take, just take the split out of them before wanting to go on. You know, that's the problem we got with National Hives, that the box is so small, you know. If you don't do that, you know, the chances are, like I learned last year, you know, a lot of stuff is just going to swarm. Where, you know, with Richstone in France, you've got much better boxes, they're the day-dental Langstroths. Bees tend to stay put in them a bit more than the nationals.

Good, so similar methods from both of you. Like, I know I'm a one-trick pony with my demerays, but I do preemptive demerays kind of back end of May and find them very effective. And you do need an extra box, but it buys you a bit of time. And if you do a focused rolling demeray through kind of last 2 weeks of May, first week of June, I seem to keep most of them there. I used to lose loads of swarms and started doing that, and it was very good. But you do, you need the extra box. Cool, well, next question then. Sorry, go on, Richard.

I'll just add, I think a lot of people who are new to beekeeping find this a big kind of the really difficult thing to understand is we're still doing it and we've been doing it for years and we still don't really know the best way because some years it works well and then you try another method and other years that works. And you've really got to just keep trying till you find a method that you find that works the best for you. With a lot of these things, that is the same answer, but you've just got to be aware of it. That's the thing. Try and educate yourself with as many methods as you can, just so you could say, well, I'll try this and I'll try that, or I'll just go back to doing regular inspections. I mean, you know, I think the DeMare is a really good way, and I know people like Murray use it religiously. and then they reunite at the end of the year and let the queens fight themselves out. You know, it's an amazing thing, but that's someone who's found that works really well for them, and they've done that particular thing. So, you know, fair play to everyone who finds that. If you find a thing that works for you, stick to it.

I think that's top advice, and I would agree and say change and try as many things as possible. And what I would add is the demaray, like, I think it's great, but then people say, I couldn't lift that box that high. And I think, you know what, it is actually really difficult lifting like a full brood box that's backfilled with lots of honey up kind of 6 foot. It's like, it's pretty difficult, so it's not for everyone. But yeah, try different things. Right, next question from Steve's Bees, hopefully a simple one. He's saying, when is the best time to change from fondant to syrup? Is it temperature related? Should we go with Griff?

Yeah, I go with temperature. I mean, even though it has been quite warm last 2 or 3 days, still sticking with fondant for now, but really, you know, unless, unless we're into like 12, 13+ degrees constant, I mean, I wouldn't, I wouldn't be even tempted with setup now because you, you can trick yourself, put setup on now thinking they'll take it down and they'll just stuff just because a bit of cold weather will come and, you know, they're not going to do it. So that's, that's the kind of time I change the setup, especially when they're building, starting to build in wax. you know, they're up in the crown board, they're up in the super drawing, you know, that's the kind of weather they'd be taking the setup. So it's still a little bit too early for me at the minute.

Griff won't plug his own shop, I'm sure he will later, but if you want good quality fondant, good quality syrup, get onto Griff's website, which will be on his social media handles. But all I would add for that as well is that you don't always need to feed. Like, I would say 5% of my colonies at the moment might need feeding, and the rest of them are nailed to the floor still. So it's not a case of you must feed, just get used to hefting, and if they don't need feeding, you're better off not feeding them. Anything to add, Richard?

Yeah, I would totally agree. I was going to say that because I'm one of these people where if I go into the winter and I worked hard to get my nucs heavy enough and they die over the winter because they died of starvation, I'm like, did I really want those genetics in my apiary? You know, you get sometimes bees that just seem to eat and eat and eat, and I'm like, fine, I'm not wasting time having to go back every week and mess around Are they getting enough? Have they got enough? If they're never storing it, they're just consuming it. I don't want those bees. So I'm like, I kind of haven't done much on my nucs this winter, but I went in there today. I drove into one of my nuc yards, almost all flying. I think about 98%, and I would question. I would well not probably okay. 90% are all flying really well, and I will question the madness. Well. the method of going through and spending hours checking nucs over the winter for feed, because I think if you actually just walked away from them and left them, you would probably come back to very similar amounts, because I just think we all worry too much. And there's actually nothing really you can do, because sticking a big slab of cold fondant on a tiny ball of bees isn't going to save it. In fact, it's probably going to kill it because you're getting that heat going from the— you know, you're better off just leaving them alone in the hope that that small colony will carry on. because they've all got plenty of food, they've all been put to bed properly. That's what we do all year. We basically build them up and stop working them at the right time so they can build up for that autumn and for the winter. And if they can't get through it, I'm like, well, it is what it is, you know.

That's my favourite time of year, once you put them to bed, get to September, they're fed, and you're just like, ah, right.

Yeah, yeah. And like you say, go heft them. Fine, if you know you've got a really— fine, if you've got massive colonies they've gotten— gone into the autumn on huge clusters, then okay, there's— that's a good idea to keep on the weight when you start to get this time of the year. But you shouldn't have to worry about them in January and early February. It's only when they start to really start brooding into February, March. If then you're, you know, you've got a hive and it's light and you've got a lovely colony, you don't really want to lose that colony then. That's when, you know, another one would say, oh, you should put it on before, but I'm like You know, how much, how much care do you have to give your bees? We all need a break. They should be perfectly capable of withstanding what they've built up in the autumn and winter and what you've given them.

Yep, I'd agree with that. Right, next question then from Ben. I'll go to Griff first. Do you tend to reuse frames from deadouts after freezing, or do you get rid of them and start fresh?

That's a good question. It all depends. Say, you know, I've made a batch of nucs And all fresh frames from nature, and I fed them syrup, you know, artificially making nucs, and queens fail or something's not caught, or they, they die within the next 3 or 4 months. As long as I'm happy there's no foul brood or anything in there, I'll use those frames straight away. You know, I, I take those frames out, I'll put them on a double on, on the nuc next door, that type of thing. Now say I go to an area and I know there's foul brood in the area, then I get a dead out. I don't mess around there. So the whole box, whether it's new frames, foundation, I melt that out. But sometimes you come in winter in an area where there's no foulbrood, you just got to look at what's in front of you, you know, take the frames out. If you can see there was a drone layer in there, well, you know, disease isn't the reason these bees have died, it's because it's a drone layer. You know, there's only drone cells, only drone brood left. So, you know, then that is fine to reuse. But I know I also go on colour. It's once something starts going black, then, you know, take that out the system. You don't want those old frames, you know, take them out, melt them out. You know, we build new frames every winter to use in the season, whether you're making increases or, uh, you're doing your own comb change. I think, you know, we try and do about 10%, um, in the hives that we've got that we don't take nucs out of. You know, obviously making nucs, you, you comb, you add a fresh comb quite a bit through a nuc, so that's quite a good way of, you know, getting new fresh frames into the system. But yeah, you know, it all depends how old that frame is. If they died out and that's looking black, just melt it out, get new frames in.

I would totally agree, I've got nothing to add to that, I totally agree. But there's nothing wrong with using frames. I was looking at a video, Jamie Ellis was— Professor Jamie Ellis, University In America, I think it's Florida University was talking about using old frames. As far as he's concerned, there's no actual evidence to say that any old frames harbor disease. They just become less efficient over time, so it's good to rotate them. But obviously, if you've got foulbrood, if you're worried at all, melt it down. But if the frames are clean and they've got some honey in that you know has been stored, nothing wrong with it whatsoever. Nothing wrong.

So I'm going to go in a different direction here. And as with beekeepers, we always do things differently, but as you'll both know, we had a couple of cases of EFB this year, and because my operation's relatively small and it's not my full-time job, I've made the decision that not only would I melt all those down at that point, I'd probably just burn them, to be honest, because I'm not melting them down because it's too much money to melt them down, but I'm not even swapping frames of brood. So I'm not swapping any frames of brood from any hive to another hive at any point in the season, and any deadouts just get burned, uh, melted down or burned. And that's kind of— we take a bit of a financial hit on that, but we can't take the risks with EFB. So that's the tact that we're taking now going forward.

Yeah, you get hit bad with the EFB. You've got to take it dead serious, and you know, that's the only kind of stuff you can do. You know, when you're not in a foul brood area, you can be a little bit more laxy and, and, uh, you know save the cost. But once, once, you know, EFB will sit in hives, you know, asymptomatic, not show nothing, um, you know, it's— I feel, you know, EFB is worse than AFB because you don't know if your EFB is gone. It might come back 2 years later, you just don't know.

Yeah, it's always a worry, right? Um, a similar question, I'll ask Richard this one. How often do you replace your frames? Is it based on the age of the frames or the state of the comb?

No, nothing to do with the age. They basically all get rotated within 2 years because I make nucs, and then I— obviously some of the nucs you make don't make it, they get melted down, but then some of them I sell, they get rotated out the system, but they're not old anyway because they've been rotated, but then they go out the production hives, new frames come in. Yeah, within 2 to 2 and a half years, probably less. I mean, if I'm taking— I do 2 splits a year And I'm taking 3 frames of bees and brood out of every— that's 6 frames. And the following year, so within 2 years, they're all mostly recycled.

Making nucs is the best thing in the world. It gives you great swarm control, and it gives you that recycling of your frames and keeping everything nice and fresh.

And it gives you sustainability. It gives you a cycling of the nucs. It also, I think you get lovely strong bees in that nuc as well when you make the nuc, you know, and Gets everything worked, you know, really well, and you get colonies that are clean and vibrant, and that's really good.

It's great having other people on this chat because I can drink my tea while you're talking. Go on, Griff.

And I was just gonna say, like, what me and Rich does for swarm control, you know, when I drive around with nucs in the back, the nucs are full of fresh frames and foundation. So, you know, every time you do a swarm control split or whatever, those new frames go into the apiary. So even though if I weren't doing that, I'd try and do 10% every year. I'm way more than that just because of the fresh frames and, you know, being swapped in in the apiary. So, you know, all that stuff is good, you know.

At the end of the year, we take out our 3 frames to do our last split in July, and then we don't replace those. What we do, we put 1 foundation and 2 partitions in for the winter, so they overwinter on 7 frames. So come the spring, you take the partitions out and put the fresh comb in anyway. So as I said, within literally less than 2 years, you've changed all the comb easily, and we'll do it. I mean, because we're— I think when you actually are working bees regularly, you do it without realizing it. Like Chris says, you're always putting in combs, and you get— you're working them harder all the time. It is a little bit difficult when you're maybe— if you've got less hives and you're doing less things like queen rearing, because you're not using those resources as much, and things don't get swapped around and stuff like that. So if you're kind of maybe 4 or 5 hives, it can be a job to rotate stuff. If you're worried about making nucs because you don't want to split those colonies, you don't want to run the risk of it not requeening, it is a job to rotate your frames, I agree. But you just have to be a bit ruthless sometimes and just take a few frames out, stick them in, they'll soon rebuild it, you know, especially in the autumn when the autumn flow starts. They'll build out all the frames that you put in and you'll have lovely combs for the following year.

Good stuff. Well, I'm jumping around a bit on questions here because some of them are a little bit similar, so I'm going to go to Joe Murphy's question on what are your thoughts on Clarkson's Farm season 2? Anyone watch it? Like it?

Yeah, I love it. Yeah, I love it. I reckon the council there have done a misjustice on Clarkson. You know, farming is hard. He was gonna create 50 jobs create a market for all the farms around and sell his— sell, you know, their product direct. They have a good price. And basically the council doesn't like Clarkson. And, um, you know, I'm not— I'm not sticking up for Clarkson, what he said about Michael McClellan and all that political stuff. I'm looking basically, he bought a farm or he owns a farm, he wants to farm it, he wants to diversify what the government tells farmers to do. You know, I diversified on my farm. because he's got the, got the big profile and, you know, he's Marmite. You either love him or hate him. And yeah, he's a bit of an idiot and stuff, but, you know, with the class of farmer, I think he does mean well with farming. I think he really likes British farming. He's proud of this country and the food that, uh, this country produces. And, and he's been, um, he's done way more to farming than what Countryfile's ever done. I'll say that straight because Countryfile is just showing joking farming and and more showing more about the vegan side of farming than the, the, the true scale of farming in the UK with the sheep and the beef. Um, you know, and Clarkson showed the, the dark side of farming, you know, with TB and the lack of money and the crops going to waste. I think, I think that, that program was probably one of the best programs on TV, if you ask me.

I think, I think we found a fan there with Griff, with Clarkson.

Do you know what, I've been there as well.

Have you been there as well?

Yeah, I've been to Digby's Farm, spent a fortune on overpriced items, but you know, yeah, it's good. Fair doos to Clarkson. He's, what is he, 60 years old, still going at it, still working. You know, retirement's not for him, so good, good on him.

Yeah, I'm, I'm, I, uh, I've not seen it. I've seen like the trailers. I think it's definitely a good thing for farming. And my light's gonna go off. Oh, gutted. Um, But I'm not a massive fan of Clarkson, I'm not gonna lie. He's, um, it's, it's his view on climate change that, that does me in. He's just, he's a denier. But we like him for his farming. And, and Richard, you've not, you've not seen it?

No? No, I don't, I don't, uh, I don't have that luxury. And we don't even get iPlayer over here, which is a pig. But we're gonna get it soon because I'm soon gonna have fiber and we can then have a proxy server. We're gonna— that usually our speed is that low that we can't get all the additional things when you can, like, you know, um, scam it, do you know what I mean? But we can't do that. So, um, but I think it's a really good show. And like Chris says, I totally agree with every word he says. I think it's a really good program, and I think it's made a lot of people more aware. They've taken on board actually what it is like to be a farmer.

Yeah, I do.

And also, it's funny, it's fun, you know, we can all have a laugh about it. And, you know, yeah, good stuff.

Right, next question then. What are your thoughts on the rose beekeeping idea? While I fix this light. I'll ask Griff.

I don't know what the rose beekeeping idea is.

Oh, Richard, you know what it is?

No, I don't. I was going to say, I saw that question, I was thinking the Rosehive. I've heard it, I've seen it once before, but I'll be honest with you, I'm not very familiar. I'm sure you could refresh us, Laurence, on the Rosehive.

I'm Googling it as we speak.

Do you know what, I was going to Google it, but I was thinking, am I going to lose my screen?

I genuinely don't know the ins and outs. I know that it's like a single box system And I know that I'm going to have a go on doing a little series on it this year, but that is as far as it goes. So you, you've come across none of us knowing the answer to that one, so we'll have to do some homework for next time.

I think that there's quite a few hives out there that many people like to champion, and if they like them and they work for them, that's great, because at the end of the day, it's all beekeeping. We all support it, we can all benefit from it, and they can benefit from it by championing what they get out of it. And that's the key thing, is when we're all sharing stuff and participating in ideas. If someone has an idea, it might not be for everybody, but it's always worth listening to it, and that's the most important thing.

So on that note then, because I know this is of particular interest to you, Richard, what do we think of concrete beehives?

I was totally the first person to say, what the— you know, are we even entertaining the idea? But I know Ross really well now, and I think bunker hives are Really, really good, I think, because they're not actually made of concrete. That's the thing, they're made of concrete and hemp, which is actually a really good insulator. And they probably won't be for me, but you know what, they'll be great to have in the garden because I'll never need painting. So, and I think it's a bit of a novelty. It's like, it's the kind of same thing for me as a rose hive. If it works for you and you want to have them, great. But I might have one just to try, see how I get on. I just think it's fun try different stuff. I've got AZ hives, you know, I've got 2 of those. They're different. Um, I enjoy working them. I just think it's, uh, good to be open-minded and try different things, you know.

They are so heavy, believe me, they are very heavy, but they're good fun. Right, next question. This, this is a really good question, I think, one that I've not had on here before. Um, and I think we'll have it, we'll all have a different take on it. So it's from Adam Golding, says, good evening, I'm just going into my 3rd year of beekeeping and planning on creating a name for my honey label. The plan is to sell it locally. Do you think that a name that reflects the area he lives in is beneficial? And we'll go to Griff first.

I would say you don't want too local because never say never in life. When I started keeping bees, I never, I never planned my business to be where it is today. Now, when I named my honey I didn't want anybody later on to be able to steal or copy or come close to what my honey was called. So I thought, well, you know, being a Welshman, I must be like the only Griff beekeeper in the world. So, you know, I called it, uh, well, Bert's Bees, back way, way when I started. The Bert's Bees was quite big. So, you know, what's Bert's Bees in Welsh? Well, you know, Gwennan Gruffydd. Gwennan is bees in Welsh. Gruffydd is my name. So I used, um, Bert's Bees inspired me and I turned it into Gwennan Gruffydd using the Welsh language. And, um, that's been good. You know, we sell a French honey, we sell a British range, we sell my, uh, my Welsh range, so the Gwynedd Griffa. And having the, the native name, or, you know, similar to what Richard can do in France, you know, by using your local language, you're creating almost like a unique, um, you know, product which almost, uh, is luxurious. So, you know, when you, when you buy French stuff the UK, if something is in France, you instantly think it's better just because it's in a different language. So, um, I didn't really see a big problem selling my honey, um, you know, further afield than Wales by having it a purely Welsh name. But say, for argument's sake, you, you went and, you know, I live in Cortendry and you went Cortendry Honey, then everybody in the, in the village 4 miles away is not going to want your honey because they don't live in your village. And everybody tells people, you know, local honey is the best, even though, you know, local— the honey up North Wales will taste the same as in South Wales. You know, there's no, uh, you know, you haven't got a tropical paradise up in North Wales with, you know, 100 different flowers up there that we haven't got down here. So, you know, going too niche, I think, is going to affect you later on in life. You know, you want to broaden it out a little bit. I know, I know, I know that's not going to suit everybody, but that's my, uh, that's my take on it.

A very good take. Richard, what's your view?

I would agree with Griff, but I would say you can be local if you know your local catchment is quite big. That's the thing, you're absolutely right, Griff, you've got to be kind of a bit aware of the market and do some market research. Go and see what honey is out there first, see what labels other people are using, and see how much of a range their honey is selling at, and then that will give you an idea of where to aim and where to point your market at. One of my criticisms of that I'm— I found, and I'm not being critical of people individually, but I find a lot of people who are just starting make a lot of effort to sell a very little amount of honey when they could have sold it to friends. That's what I'm saying, is that there's no need to go to a huge effort to bring out a brand and a label and everything when you're only selling 400 kilos of honey a year, because you'll shift that easily to like Your friends and your mates, gone, finished. They'll buy it, and there's no rush to sell it. You know, whereas if you're selling a lot more, then you've got to really start investing in market research and a good a good designer. I'm bringing out a new label. I'm actually bringing out it's called the Miellerie de Corsel, which is I've gone with my French theme, and I've got a new brand and a what's the name? Not an icon, a badge and all that, and that's all going to be. coming out quite soon. But, but it's kind of local, but there's a lot of people in my area know that my village is quite kind of a famous village, so I kind of thought, well, I might get away with that. But I'm also aware of the fact that I didn't want to make it too local. I wouldn't like make it for my hamlet here because no one would know where the diddly squat it was and how to pronounce the name, let alone where it was. But, um, yeah, it's, it's— I, I've had to learn a lot and I totally agree, Griff. You've got to be— you've got to do market research first, you know, that's all. Have a look where you are, see what your buyers are likely to be.

So the bits what I had, we— I've gone on a different route from Griff there. So our original branding was called Hendra Foyle and Honey, which is the name of our house, which was a bit like no one kind of knew what that meant, and not even really people, anyone local knew what that meant. So then we rebranded to Black Mountain Honey, which is where a lot of the majority of our hives are kept. Not thinking that everyone would confuse it with the actual Black Mountain in Wales, not the little kind of hamlet up the road. But what I would say is I don't think the brand name makes a massive amount of difference. Go with anything. What I think makes a huge amount of difference is the design of the label. And I appreciate what you're saying, Richard, in terms of not putting too much effort in if you're not going to sell that much. I remember a guy, and I will give him a shout out, Damian O'Hare, was sending me on Twitter these amazing mock-ups of the labels that he put together with his new brand, and I was saying, oh wow, these are really good, how many hives have you got? And he said, oh no, I haven't started beekeeping yet. So it was like he was that far ahead because he just wanted to— he enjoyed it.

That kind of was exactly my point, and that's one of the biggest things in beekeeping. It's better to concentrate on getting the honey first than it is to concentrate on getting your labels. I mean, I'm sorry, but, you know, and it's a bit like people trying to do all these techniques for beekeeping and worrying about VHS. Learn to look after bees properly first, then start to migrate towards an area that interests you. You can't— beekeeping isn't simple. There's so many prongs to that fork with beekeeping.

I'd agree, but what I would say, I just— it bugs me, is like the poor quality, you know, generic honey labels. And yeah, you would sell them, but I just think if you put them on a shelf, one of the ones with a little Welsh cottage or something that says Welsh honey versus like a properly designed label, there's no doubt what kind of— what the consumer is going to go for. So, and you can do it in Canva, you don't need to do like a professional design, you can just design it yourself in Canva and just tweak it around and make it look cool. Right, we've spoken way, way too much about honey labels, so I'll go straight to Richard on this one. New queens or clip the queen's wings? So I'll widen it. What do you think of clipping queens' wings?

I think it's a good idea. I think it works for a lot of people. I don't clip my wings at the moment because I used to be against it, but I'm kind of going towards it now, and maybe this year I'll start clipping wings because I feel it's a way of stopping them going, and they will be there somewhere, but you do sometimes have that issue where there's a big ball of bees under the hive and And you've got to sort that out, and it actually might take you longer to just sort this problem out, you know. And I had— the problem I have is I have tyres and pallets, and often you don't— you may not be looking for the queen at that time. You think she's in there because you've seen eggs, but she's gone, tried to swarm 2 days after those eggs were laid. You knocked off the cells or whatever, for some reason she's come out or gone under, and then she's gone under that pallet and she's hanging there, and then all the bees come in, and then you come back 2 weeks later and there's a new colony under the pallet, and you've got to take the hive off, and you've got to take the pallet off, and you've got to try and knock the bees into another box, and then you— oh, it's just a mess. But I'm not saying it happens all the time, but that's one of the things I find happens sometimes.

And Griff, are you a clipper?

Yeah, I've got no problem with it. The guy who taught me beekeeping, he was a big queen clipper, and, you know, My argument is, you know, I'm from farming background, we dehorn cows and everything. I mean, we do way more grim stuff, uh, down that road than clip a queen's wing. There's no nerve endings in there. And, you know, sometimes you can be a goody-two-shoes and say, you know, queen clipping is really bad, then your bees are going to swarm, they swarm into someone's chimney, next day they're going to phone the pest control, and then 20,000 bees are dead the next day. Because you, because you lost, lost, lost a swarm. So every action has a reaction, and no action has an action as well. So if you, if you're not going to clip queens, then you really got to be on the ball with weekly inspections. But, you know, if they swarm, and I think something crazy like 60% of swarms die, they don't get to find a decent place to make a nest, or something eats them along the way, or they're hit with cold weather, or the pest controller kills them, or whatever happens, you know. So I personally, I, I've got no problem with clipping the queen's wing. But then again, I'm not going to tell people to clip their wings. It is purely a personal choice. If you don't feel comfortable doing it, you don't have to do it, you know. But if you are going to be commercial and be serious about keeping bees, then that is a good management technique available to you if you wanted to do it.

Queen clipping was the biggest change I ever made, and it had the biggest impact and kept the amount of bees that I didn't lose to swarming at an absolute maximum. So all 3 of us are in agreement there, um, that we think it's okay. Right, quick timeout to say if you're enjoying the stream, give it a thumbs up. It's always helpful to give the thumbs up. And I know these guys don't, don't need any more kind of like promotion, but if you haven't already, go over to both of their channels and subscribe. Right, next question from Joe Murphy, and this is a bit of a sensitive one. So, have either of you ever had AFB or EFB? What was your experience with it? Did it reappear after you tried to eradicate it, and was it quite easy to get rid of? So we will go to Richard first, if that's all right.

Okay, I've had American foulbrood twice. Once was in a load of It was 2 years ago in a nuc that was a big strong poly nuc, and it was the hive I wouldn't expect it to see in, to give you an example. So that's why it kind of catches you unaware. It was in a Mini Plus, and there was loads and loads of sunken brood, and it was all the sticky roping out, all that kind of stuff. Didn't smell. I picked up the entire hive after dousing it in soapy water and burnt the whole thing At within five foot of where I got it from, I dug a hole, burnt it. Never saw anything else afterwards. That was so that was one. I've had it once before in a nuke five years before, and I did the same. But it was a nuke that came that went into the winter not very big, and when it came out, I found the nuke would died late. What worried me was. Most worst. What worried me most was the the chance that these had rotted. So that was easy to control as well. So the AFB that was controlled, and I never saw any recurrence. But I did lock down my apiaries, which I kind of do anyway because when you go into the spring, you never know what you're going to find when you first open a hive, and nothing really gets moved around in my in my kind of on my watch until I'm happy that. Generally, everything's fairly healthy. Then I'll start moving stuff around and moving nucs to yards. European foulbrood occasionally you see a bit, and I'm pretty ruthless with it as well. I like to basically either do a shook swarm, but I honestly find that shook swarming is just is a waste of time. I would rather just kill the colony and forget about it, sterilize the box, and move on. It depends if you've got a really strong colony and it's early in the year. A shook swarm is kind of worth it because you can still do something with the bees. later on. But if you try and do a shook swarm for EFB and, you know, it's a bad case, just get rid of the bees. Don't, you know, don't hang around with them.

I'll just add on to that, that is illegal. So in the UK, I know it's different across— I think in Europe it's different, it's definitely different in America where it's just seen as a brood disorder.

Yeah.

And you can shook swarm to try and get rid of it, and it can be treated with antibiotics in America as well. There is, yeah. But in the UK, if you find EFB, you do need to notify The MBU, and you do need to destroy it in situ.

We have a bit of a problem with— sorry to interrupt— we have a problem here because we have no actual bee inspection at all at the moment. So kind of you're on your own, and there is a bee group I'm akin to, and they do run an inspection service, and I haven't been inspected in like probably 6 years now, and I'm part of the group, I'm fairly active in it, they know where I am, you know, they never bother me. So, and there's obviously the— I don't know if beekeepers listening, there's a course called DASH. I think it's DASH, the name of it, that you do, Griff, in the UK, that gets you up to speed with being a— well, do you want to elaborate on it, Griff, yourself before I make—

Yeah, so that ties me up in a nice— in my story, I suppose. So I've had American foulbrood once on one colony. The year before, I did DASH, so I became, you know, self-certified on disease up in York. I did the— basically, I think you do the part of the bee inspector exam so that, you know, they teach you to look for foulbrood, then there's an exam, and then you pass it, and then you don't get any inspections for a few years. I think every 2 to 3 years or 4 years, I can't remember exactly, then you get an audit. They go through some of your bees, and I learned there basically what foulbrood was. You know, I knew what it was because you look on YouTube and you read the magazines and everything, and you think, you know, but until you go to York and you spend time with the bee inspectors and you actually see live cases of foulbrood and you smell it, especially if it's AFB, and you could smell that death and rotting, you know, that was inevitable. But literally the next year then, I found American foulbrood purely down to the training that they had with the bee inspectors. inspectors, uh, phoned them up. Frank was the bee inspector back then, he's now retired. Um, and even though I was allowed to sort that out myself through DAS, I still asked the bee unit to come in because that was my first ever case of foulbrood. I wanted to make sure that I, that I dealt with this properly. Um, and you know, I know that in France you haven't got it, but you know, we've got the bee unit in the UK. I mean, it's like getting the vet round for free. I mean, I wish I had that for the sheep and cows, you know, get the vet phone the vet for the sheep, I mean, you guarantee a £200 bill every time. Well, if I'm worried about something with my bees, you know, I can send a photo, the bee inspectors will come out for free. I mean, that is an amazing service we've got in the UK. But anyway, we found the AFB. It was one— I can't remember how many hives there were, about 15 hives at the time— literally only one. It was in basically the strongest hive. It had robbed a hive out somewhere Uh, look, we literally burned that hive, burned the honey. I think I had about 4 or 5 supers on at the time, you know, devastating really, burning it all there. I sterilized the boxes, but I never used the boxes. And I was talking to a friend of mine, David, and he said if you ever get AFB, don't sterilize it, just, just burn everything. Just, you know, don't even, don't even try with American. For European, you can sterilize, but he said American, burn it to the ground. And that's what I did. And I remember that summer I'd get in every week automated foulbrood email notifications saying foulbrood has been found in your area. Basically, the bee unit was just tracking down where that foulbrood had come from, you know, boxes somewhere or a hive somewhere died, or, you know. Luckily, I did that and I found it, notified the bee inspectors, and then they found where it came from, stopped other people getting it. And I think That summer, I think I knew about 4 beekeepers in that area that had American foulbrood.

So, you know, I think that's brilliant that you've got a service. I didn't say before, we have got a service we can ring and we will get someone, we'll have to pay, like you said, to get that service up. And all it is is a vet who's a beekeeper as well, but not someone who does bees every day and has got massive experience. I'm like, so you think, well, I know what's wrong with my bees, I know what they've got, what's the point in ringing up to someone to come and tell you? Okay, it's paid as well.

So my, um, you did. Yeah, the, the one thing— so a couple of things that I'll add on to that is, yeah, the NBU, definitely the good guys. If you're not already registered on BeeBase, get your bees registered. So just Google BeeBase. you log where your apiaries are, and then that will trigger regular inspections. They probably only come around kind of preemptively, like once every 3, 4, 5 years, something like that, but they're great, and it's like a lesson when they come. They give you advice and things to look out for. And then the second thing that I'll add, that the worst sound in the world is pouring petrol on your bees because you just get a zzzz, dead. Every single one. It's the worst sound in the world.

And then I'll just add the quickest way.

It's, it's, it's, it's the most humane way, so you have to do it. I'll add one nice tip. So if you do find a colony with EFB and you, you want to kill it using petrol and you've got a ventilated floor, really nice tip is wait until it's pitch black at night, seal up the entrance, and then instead of doing what I was advised to do, which is seal up the entrance, open the roof and pour petrol on the bees, because what happens there, you open the roof and the bees fly out even at nighttime. Strap it up, seal the entrance, turn it upside down, and then pour it through the mesh. And I was like, what? When someone told me that, I was like, that's the best tip in the world. And not a single bee comes out, so you're kind of confining any infection that bee's carrying with them. I thought that was a very good tip.

You can use some sulfur strips as well, but that takes quite a while. And I find it's kind of like, it just, you're forever finding the odd bee that's still alive, where if you use petrol, it's definitive and it's like gone, you know, the fumes. And you know what, it helps the colony burn really nicely.

Horrible to say, isn't it? Right, let's get away from killing bees onto something more positive. Next question, what is the biggest challenge for bees and beekeepers in the next 5 years? I love open-ended questions like this. Richard, we'll go to you first.

I would like to think there'll be no more big challenges for us in the next 5 years. We've got just about everything. All we haven't got is small hive beetle.

So with—

I know someone's asked the question about what we think of the bee vaccines. I think in terms of that, there's a lot of help coming in terms of development coming in the future that will probably help us more than we've had to suffer in the last 10 years. Or 20 years. So I'm hoping that it's the, the kind of— what's the word, um, the expressions— I'm hoping the, the help will be there more than we're suffering, if you know what I mean. I hope the kind of tide has turned a bit and we're going to get— because there's a lot of people now doing some really cool research, B vaccines coming out that may well help a lot in the long term. I don't think the current one is going to help us a lot at the start, but there's apparently a lot more in the pipeline. that's going to help. And we've got Asian hornet, which is a big nightmare. We're looking at ways of controlling that. I don't really know, but all I know is that a lot more beekeepers now are talking and sharing more than we've ever done. So hopefully, like bees, as a community, we can work together to help things not get worse in the next 5 years.

I'm surprised you've not mentioned the weather. I won't steal Griff's thunder, but go on, Griff, you do yours next.

Yeah, so what was the question? What's going to happen with beekeeping within the next 5 years?

What's the biggest challenge for bees and beekeepers in the next 5 years?

So the biggest challenge we're going to see in beekeeping is if we get another good year next year, there's going to be a massive correction in the market. Massive. There's a huge amount of honey sitting in the UK at the minute. If we get another good year, it's going to be devastating to UK bee farming, you know. If that does happen, I don't know, global warming, whatever you call it, you know, our honey crops will be getting better in Wales. Yeah, we— I know I shouldn't say this, but we don't want a really good honey crop next year overall. I mean, I still want a good honey crop, but I hope everybody else Uh, only joking. Yeah, we, we don't, we don't want another bumper year next year. I mean, um, otherwise it's gonna affect everybody's matches massively, and we, we may be in a similar situation to what the New Zealand guys, uh, are gonna be in, but, you know, not so tragic as, as the case over there. Um, B's-wise, I mean, I think our road and everything is is on the right track of the graph. I know that there are spikes in some areas from time to time, but I mean, we've got the bee inspector, so I don't anticipate any big problems there for the next couple of years as long as we've got the bee unit. But yeah, I mean, I can't see big changes within beekeeping in the next 5 years. What worries me is just the price of honey. That's the biggest thing that I'm worried about. We've had really good prices, you know, since I started keeping bees, global prices and demand and the cheap honey coming in. The cost of living is another big thing, how long this cost of living is going to last. I mean, if people don't get pay rises and money is short and times are tough, you know, honey is a luxurious item. People are going to stop buying it, you know, they're going to go over to the cheap Chinese honey for, you know, £1 a jar instead of the British stuff, and it's going to cost more. So I'm more worried about the price of honey more than anything. Within beekeeping at the minute.

Interesting take that you're hoping for a really rubbish year. I wasn't expecting that, but I completely see the logic. And as you said, you're just wishing that you have the best year and everyone else fails. And then you said you were joking, but I know you were being serious. Right, I won't do my beekeeping challenge, I'll just say the weather. Next question, I love this question as well, this is a really good one. So if you were to start it all again, What things would you change or implement to make your operation more efficient or productive? And we'll start with Richard because you're kind of going through a bit of a revamp at the moment with your new shed, aren't we?

Yeah, it's a really interesting question and I've thought about it because I've thought about what would I have done. And you know what, I wouldn't do anything any different because I feel that it's like life. You can't say what if because what if has already happened and you only learn from experiences. I— and experiences I have had in beekeeping, I've been extremely lucky, um, and really enjoyed every single one of them. And I've learned from that, and I've had the chance to learn from those experiences. Um, there's always things you could say you, you do better, but, you know, I have kind of no regrets. I, I don't think I would do anything differently. I would certainly say that when you start, and if you want to be professional, Keep everything to one format. That's the biggest problem I had, was having a few different types of hive, different size supers. Go universal in everything you do because then it's just so easy, you know, especially if you're doing more than 50 hives. Get rid of anything you don't like, just uniformity.

Good advice, Richard the philosopher. I'm annoyed about stuff that I did last week and I look back and I kind of, what did I do that for?

That was last week.

I get that all the time as well.

I'll be changing everything.

Griff? Yeah, well, coming on, on the last, exactly the same with me. If I started over again, I'd start with Langstroth. But then it's easier said than done, and you can always look back and go, well, I should have done that. When I started keeping bees, I'd never planned on having a beekeeping business, so Nationals would have been ideal because you can buy National kits secondhand, everything, you know, cheap. People sell bees on National frames, you know. It makes it— if you're a hobbyist or you're not planning on having a beekeeping commercial business National is perfect. But if you want to be commercial, then Langstroth is the way to go. Now I'm too invested in National now to change, so, you know, it's too late for me. You know, I've got to stick with what I've got, and I'm not gonna buy some Langstroth kit and start having a couple of apiaries on Langstroth because I just— it's like throwing stuff in the pickup. And if I want to do it, I'll go to this site today now, and then I fancy going to another site on the way home. Everything's the same. So, you know, if I started again, I would have definitely started Langstroth. But, you know, everybody starting beekeeping's got the same problem. You start off beekeeping most of the time not planning it to be a business, and then it just turns into a business. You know, you're right, you're either a second-generation, third-generation bee farmer taking over the business, or if someone like me, fresh in, learn the hard way— it's taken me 12 years to reach where I am— and you just do everything the hard and the wrong way until things that work, and, you know, you learn off your mistakes as you go. So, you know, if my kids want to take over the business, you know, it'd be a lot easier for them than what I've gone through.

Definitely. It's interesting you say about the Langstroth, because I can see it from like a bulk honey perspective, and I've been asked that question a few times on the live stream. If you started again, would you go with Langstroth? And my answer was no, and the only reason was is that you you lose the ability to do— to sell the nucs. And because everybody else is on national, if you're on Langstroth, making up national nucs becomes very, very difficult, and you're like having to shake bees in, you're on different frames. So if everybody in the UK— if we just all started again, we'd say let's go Langstroth, everyone, like the whole world or the whole of the UK. But with everyone on nationals in the UK, if I started again, I still would go with nationals, and I wouldn't go with 14x12s, I would just go with a national deep. My other bit of advice to chuck in there would be just scale up. So everything kind of honey extraction-wise, just scale it up. And if you can only afford a 3-frame manual extractor, like a new one, go for a secondhand 12-frame. And the same if you can afford a 12-frame electric extractor, go for a secondhand 24-frame and just try and build in a little bit of contingency because I don't think anybody still uses their first extractor. the little Chinese £150 one that, you know, you do with your hand like that. And if you're buying it secondhand, it retains its value as well. So you can just shift it if the hobby doesn't go to plan. I love Griff's answer there. I love Richard's answer as well, that he wouldn't change anything. I would change, like I said, I regret everything. Right, I'm running through a few of these other ones here. Sorry if I'm not asking— we're not answering everyone's questions. I'm just trying to change it up a There's a few that are a little bit similar. Right, so next question. What are your thoughts— I'll go to Griff first— what are your thoughts on treatment-free beekeeping, and do you consider the type of bee and effective swarm control has on this?

I'm not for treatment-free beekeeping at all. I always compare it, if I was farming sheep or cows, I'd go, you know what, I'm going to go treatment-free. The RSPCA and the council will be down here and they do shut me down because you can— with big animals, you can see the stress and the pain they're under. Now, you can't see the pain, the stress the bee feels because they're so small. So I think a lot of people are going into treatment-free beekeeping thinking they're doing the right thing for the bee. I can guarantee you one thing: if you could ask a bee a question and that bee could talk, That bee would rather live with a beekeeper that looks after it, kills the mites that's chewing a massive hole in its back, feeds it well, than someone going, I'm going to keep my bees naturally, you know, if they die in the winter, they die in the winter of varroa, the mites are going to be on them all the time, you know. I just don't see, I don't see the logic in it. Varroa mites have only been here for 30 years. Evolution does not happen in 30 years. The bees are not going to evolve in 30 years. Now, if you want— number one, if you're selling nucs or you want to produce a lot of honey, you've got to treat the bees. If my cows have got worms, I treat it. If my dog is, you know, scratching his back along the carpet because he's got worms, I treat it. If my kid's got lice coming home from school, I'm going to put the proper stuff, not some herbal remedy, in their hair, you know. And if I've got a big intestine worm in me, you know, I'm taking a proper tablet to kill that worm, you know. I'm not keeping it in there treatment-free. So I don't understand people wanting to keep bees treatment-free, but any other livestock, it's not okay to keep them treatment-free.

Very strong views there from Griffin, I have to say.

Yeah, that's my view, you know, animal welfare. Just because you can't see the bees suffering, you've got to take into account animal welfare. And even if people say, like, people say they've got the varroa-resistant bee, well, if you did, that bee would be worth you know, 2 or 3 grand a pop. You know, why— why— if capitalism rules, if someone had these queens that were varroa resistant that you could buy, they'd be a millionaire. Those queens would be on the market, you know, but they're not. They're not. So, you know, where are they?

I love the passion. I'm with you. I completely agree. What I would add is that the thing with beekeeping though is you can make a decision. So right this year I'm going to go treatment-free and I'll see how many colonies I get through. And you might have 10 colonies and you say, you know what, I've got 9 colonies through winter, therefore treatment-free works. And then you get to the next year and you think, you know what, I've got 8 colonies through, treatment-free definitely works. And then it's that kind of 3 or 4 year cycle where you realize, shit, and then you get this massive varroa bomb crash. But you can see how people are kind of vindicated by not treating because they say, well, my bees are alive, But they're not necessarily thriving. But yeah, I'm with you, definitely up for treating. Go on, Richard, did your cat got anything to say?

Yep, yeah, I, I would totally agree with Griff. Um, Varroa control, he's still there, just about. Treatment-free has its place. People who work really hard— can you hear me? You lost it there.

I think you're back now, Gordon.

Really? We're back on now?

Right, we have temporarily removed Richard. I think Griff and Richard are sharing an internet connection, so we'll just give him a little chance to kind of get back on track. I'm going to go to another question. I think Richard's back.

Now I'm back in, yeah. There we go, are we good?

You're back in now.

Okay, go. Well, what I was going to say was I agree with Griff, but I think VSH and Varroa-sensitive hygienic stock has its place. I know a little bit about it now because I've been chatting to quite a few people over the years. I kind of know how it works because I've had some bees with supposed very good resistance. I bought queens that had supposed good resistance and seen none of it. In the queens that I bought, and I agree with Griff, you know, if you had someone that was producing queens and you're buying those queens from that person, why aren't you getting resistance in your apiaries? Well, there's 2 arguments. One is we're not capable of measuring that resistance that well, so it may be there and it may be coming in, so we can't mothball it. You can't say it isn't, and you can build Varroa, since just what Lawrence mentioned before, you can do it, but you have to be very proactive in doing it, and you have to know what you're doing, you know. So my attitude is I'm a treatment person as well at the moment, but I treat my bees differently. I cage my queen, so I allow my bees to help me in becoming— getting all the mites to become phoretic, so the queen stops laying, and I capitalize on that moment. That's what I do, but I'm not saying— no one agrees, everyone agrees it's not the complete answer, but what they're saying now is if you can bring some kind of hygienicness into your bees, and it may be up to 30-35% of the control against varroa, but that 35% with other things is a massive step in the right direction rather than not having that 35%, if you know what I mean. So I think we should be doing the two with an IPM, integrated pest management, and try and bring that in in some way. But there's some people like Corey Stevens doing fantastic work, you know, there's Arista Bee Research, all these people that— and it's not, you know, we should support them. And like I said about people with the rose hive, well, it's all something that we should have, we should be part of to look at and interact with because it's important. But I still think like Griff does, if you've got a bee that's ill and sick and it's making the colony sick, you've got to treat those mites no matter what. And if you can't do it through getting the bees to do it, you've got to give them a hand regardless, otherwise you're gonna have no bees next spring.

Interesting views all around there, right? I'm going to merge 2 questions next, just try and get as many as possible in. So first one, what are your top tips for starting a beekeeping business? And then what is the average amount of hives one person can manage full-time? So we'll go to Griff first.

So when you're thinking about starting a business, you've got to work out where you're going to make your money from. Are you going to be selling nucs? Are you going to be selling queens? Are you going to be selling honey? So you've got to do everything possible to build up product to sell. So if you want to sell honey, you need a lot of bees. If you want nucs, you need a lot of bees. So basically, you've got to build your bee numbers up and you've got to have something to sell. Now I see a lot of stuff online, you know, people going, oh, I'm gonna buy this new extractor, I can't wait to buy this. You know, you shouldn't be thinking about spending money, you should be thinking about how to make money. So, you know, you gotta, you gotta spend a lot of your time and resources building numbers up first, then have product to sell, then buy the stuff to make things easy. It's so easy to blow 6 grand on beekeeping kits, like nice extractors or fancy whatever, right? That's not going to make you money. What's going to make you money is either honey or have nucs to sell. So you've got to concentrate on having as much product to sell as possible at the start. So, you know, bees, bees, bees, bees— that, that's the main thing you want to be able to do. And say later on you struggle for money, you've got loads of hives, lots of honey on the hives, you could probably sell that honey on the frame to someone and then get those boxes back, worst case. That, or if you haven't got money to buy an extractor at that stage, you know, extractors are cheap anyway, you're not going to be in that situation. But that's the biggest advice I've got. You just got to concentrate on getting product to sell, otherwise beekeeping is just going to cost you a lot of money all the time.

Really good advice. Richard, you got anything to add?

Yeah, could you just repeat the first part of the question please? Because I didn't hear, it was all splattery when it—

What are your top tips for starting a beekeeping business? And then it's the total number of hives one person can manage.

Okay, number of hives, I'd say up to 250 is doable, but it depends where you are and whether you've got apiaries that are all isolated, that kind of thing. You need to be very efficient in what you do if you're doing it yourself. You've got to have it all worked out and streamlined and have all universal boxes and things like that and have regular queen changes, and you've got to You got to build in good management to that. Some people even run up to—I've heard some people running up to 300 on their own. In terms of selling things to make money, I would say just know your market. If you can sell a lot of nukes, then make loads and loads of nukes because nukes make some of the best money. But if you in an area where you can sell honey, we've got a load of retirees here. who all really like buying honey, you know. So that's kind of what I'm going into, and I've got campsites that I'm going to stock because they want to buy a present to take back to granny back in wherever, you know. You just need to look at your markets, but don't try and reinvent the wheel. Stick at something that's solid and look at what the possibilities are. It's very difficult to say because every area is different.

I think that's really good advice. I'll share a piece of advice that I got when I started my company that I didn't take, and I'm really glad that I didn't take. And they said, work out what you want to sell. Is it nucs? Is it queens? Is it honey? Is it lip balms? Beeswax wraps? Focus on what you want to sell and go in that direction. So if you're going to go for honey and you're going to be a bulk honey person, gear yourself up for bulk honey and don't focus on anything else. And I didn't take that advice, and I'm really glad I didn't take that advice because bulk honey and honey in jars probably makes up 10-15% of our business now. And I only found out what worked by kind of like trying different things and diversifying and then working out what actually where the market was. So I think that would be good advice to give people is to try things. Don't try and do every single thing you possibly can, but keep an open mind as to where your market is And don't try and target it before you've got a good understanding of that, whether it's through like some sort of market research or trial and error. And, uh, and that, that worked quite well for us. 250— do you know what, 250 hives would be hard work. It is. I literally cry when I'm trying to do like 70, 80 hives and it's honey extraction and I'm doing it on my own. It's a lonely place to be, isn't it? I know it's not going to be lonely in your new fancy shed. Richard's spending money like it's going out of fashion.

Spent, spent, past tense. Spent it, seen it, spent it, done it, finished. Yeah, that's it.

We said this in the last one, I'm so jealous. I've got like a log cabin, nothing in comparison. But it's a lonely place to be, isn't it, on your own doing honey extraction? It's not as glamorous as people make out.

No, it's like exactly that. When all the bees stop buzzing and when the lights go out and you're there at 2 o'clock in the morning thinking I've got to get some sleep, but I could just finish the next 20 frames, and then, and before you know it, it's 3 o'clock, and it's like, well, might as well carry on and just keep going. But you think, no, I can't because I've got to get some sleep. But it is very lonely when you're on the extractor because all your mates have gone who came and helped for 10 minutes, who weren't actually a help anyway because they realized how boring it was and left after the first 10 minutes, you know.

At least you don't have to filter heather honey. That's all I'm gonna say. Griff, were you gonna say something? Were you gonna add something there?

Yeah, I was gonna say, well, from an extracting point of view, I was still extracting in January, so you know, that's how lonely it was for me. But, uh, you know, go back to my point now, like Richard is— he's done this the right way. Like, going back to the question about starting the business, he built the business up, he built the product up, and only now he's spending a lot of money making everything easy. His business is good already. and now he's investing in the business, making things easier, you know. And that's the way to do it. We've got to get the honey, start selling the stuff, and then, you know, I'm not on the stage where I can build a big shed like as good as Richard yet. Hopefully one day I will. But now he's done it exactly the right way. Not get the big shed and the kit in first, where you're going to be inundated with debt, and then you're going to strain to get honey crops. Richard's done it the right way. He's taken a long time, but, you know, Perfectly. He's not financially strained, nothing. And look where he is now. We know everybody's jealous of his setup, and he's done a fantastic job.

And I'll contrast that with the way that I did it, which is exactly what Griff's just said there, is the complete wrong way to do it. And it links very nicely into the next question, which is spending way too much money. We never went into debt, but it's quite— when you can get like, you can offset it against your normal job and get your tax savings, it is It makes things a bit cheaper. Being VAT registered as well makes things a bit cheaper. But buying all of that stuff and then sitting there looking at it in the log cabin and thinking, I can't even move in here, there's just too much stuff, and I'm probably set up for 400 colonies and I've just not got the time to manage them. So the next question is, at what— at which point did you all decide when you needed to invest in big extraction equipment? Would it be advisable to buy an uncapping line if the business support it. So I'll answer that bit first, which is don't do it too early like I did. I'm actually doing the complete opposite now, which is selling a lot of my stuff because I don't use it. It's too difficult to clean, takes a lot of time to clean unless you're getting the throughput on it. And I'm just going back to kind of basics. Basic— I still use my own caffeine machine because I love that, and I love my bottling machine, but the sump— I don't use a sump anymore, I don't use a pump anymore. I'd use really basic filtering, and I've still got kind of like 100, 120 hives that's going through that. So for me, I would not need an uncapping line, but I'll open it up to Richard first because you are in the middle of it.

Okay, well, the reason why I've invested is, is a bit what Griff says, and thanks for his comments, by the way, Griff. Um, but I, um, I was in a very fortunate position where, well, kind of two prongs to this really. I had some money, okay, and I thought, well, what am I going to do with this? It's not like, what do I do with it? But I thought, I know what I want to do with it, but is it the right thing to do? But at the same time, the workshop I was in became no longer available to me. So I had to make a decision. Do I either buy all the separate items? In other words, I needed to buy— I didn't want one extractor, I wanted 2, because I wanted to build in some sustainability if I had a breakdown, or, you know, future-proof it a bit. And I would need— so you need 2 extractors, but because we're all beekeepers, we want to spend loads of money, we want decent extractors. So I would have spent probably 8 to 10 grand on 2 decent extractors if they were anything like Carl Fritz's ones. Then you need a sump, then you need all this, and then if you're running 200 hives, you need the equipment. You can't not have a decent— you know, you need a honey pump, you need all that. And then by the time you worked it out, the actual real cost of all these individual pieces, then you start thinking on the lines of let's get an extraction line. And then you're thinking, well, I can only extract in my veranda, my, my temporary extraction room, for so long. And I knew straight away, I did a year in there. But when you guys have talked about it before and, you know, what would we have done in the past to make it better, you almost have to go through those difficulties to experience what you will find in the future. But because you, you learn a way of doing it, and then when you get a better facility Um, then you can really make everything so much better because you've had experience of the problems before, of the mistakes you've learned from. And until you have those problems, you really won't be able to dream up something. What I'm putting together in there is not finished yet, and it's probably going to be, I would say, May, June until I can really get it finished. So I'd probably be extracting in there in a tent, you know, to the side or somewhere, or in— or using my old extractor till I'm happy, because I'm not in a rush. If I have to extract, but I'll still be in my new building. I can still heat it. I'll have electricity, everything I need. It just won't be how I want it, but it will be moving towards that because I'm just waiting to get things finished off. The problem I've got now is I've got I've got to do a floor plan, and I've got three or four things going on that same area. I'm waiting for one person to do a design, so I can't get the other person to finish that bit because I'm waiting on that, and it's just going to take a little bit of time. So I might not be ready for the spring. But it will come. But I'm in the building and I've got so much to do anyway, um, that, that's when you kind of realize that if, if you want to maintain what you've got, you've got to make an investment. And I was in the position to make that investment. You, you can't really— it was either give up beekeeping or invest. That's how it would be, because I would never want to go back backwards. I, I wanted to be able to move forward. with what I was doing. And the only way to do it was to build on what I had. And I've said to everybody before, one of the ways I was able to do it was to pull all the resources I'd had from all these people like yourselves out there who all got different things. And I've been able to ask them tons and tons of questions, you know, people like Ollie Nolan in Ireland, people like Griff, people like Jez, Sheffield Honey. They've all got different setups, you know, that's only a few of them, and I'm not naming names to name names, but I've been to loads of people's setups now and there's loads way better than mine. I mean, what I've got now is a good attempt at it, but I've seen some way, way better than that which just blow people's minds. And I'm sure you have as well, Griff. You know, you told me stories about the visits you've done with the bee farmers. But I'm just trying to put something together that's right for me, for my level, that's going to help me. Not necessarily means I have any more honey, it means I'm going to have more time to deal with my bees better because I'm hoping that I can process the honey I'm bringing in better and more efficiently and in a timely fashion that suits me. That's kind of what I'm working on, and I'm not going to make money to pay the building off. It's just an investment. I've just transferred money from one thing to another for the time being and use that investment. That's what I'm looking at it. You, you've got to look at finance. You've got to understand finance. You can't just think you're gonna that you can't think you're going to build a building and it's going to make you millions, because I've still got to pay— I've got to pay electricity on that now, I've got to pay rates on it, I've got to pay square meterage on the floor. There are more bills than I had before. So in other words, I'm actually running myself more debt, but I've got less hassle, and it's a better way of doing things, you know. It's, uh, it's a complicated thing getting a building. It, it's all lovely on the surface, but when you, when you look at it, you're like, oh my God, I've got this building now, I've got to manage it in a way to make income for me. You know, it's not like, well, that's done, and you think, well, what have I done? I've created a beast now, and I've got to tame this beast that's going to work for me.

A very good detailed answer. I think everyone here is enjoying the journey with your bee shed and can't wait to see it finished. Griff, have you got anything on uncapping lines? When do you think you kind of cross the line into needing one?

Yeah, so I haven't got an uncapped— like, the way I extract honey, my room is too small, my kit is very primitive. I've outgrown my building probably 4 years ago, but I'm still in there, and that's probably why I'm still extracting honey in January. But, you know, I haven't taken any debt on. You know, I'm making more honey every year. I'm not getting into debt. I'm selling my honey this year. Now, I will— I was supposed to do it last year, but the, the cost of material and everything went up so high that, you know, I just couldn't afford to set up my new, uh, honey room in, in the shed. So I thought, right, you know, I'll stick with what I've got for another year. You know, don't be rushed and tempted by all this. And I, I know I shouldn't say this because I sell this kit, right, you know, on the website, so it's going against my, my business really. But, you know, don't be in a rush to buy all this new kit. You know, I've been, uh, new builds with, with full car fits, extracting line, you know, literally state-of-the-art facilities in the UK, and I've been to— there's one guy, you know, 1,200 hives, there's no uncapper in there, they've got 2 extractors and they uncap by hand, either with a knife or fork. Because you— the problem with an extracting line is, I'm not talking down Richard's one because, you know, Richard's got a top-of-the-range system there, but if your uncapper breaks, then you, you can't extract honey, the whole system stops. Well, if you're still— if your uncapper is separate to the tank Say your uncapper breaks, or your fork breaks, or your little machine breaks. Well, move that out the way, get onto the fork until that's fixed. You're still going through it, you know. And as you said, with the 2 extractors, that's a really good idea. Probably you're better off getting— spending— getting 2 extractors before you, you buy a proper uncapper, because you're probably— you're gonna— Way, way faster doing it with it with a fork, you know, decent fork that doesn't bend. scrape the frames like crazy and get 2 extractors going, going into, into a decent sump that takes the wax off, and then sending the buckets straight in the barrels. I mean, that is better money for value than getting a posh, uh, you know, automatic uncapper. I know some people would disagree with me, but, you know, automatic uncappers are expensive, they're a pain to clean, things go wrong with them, there's wearing parts, you've got chains, you know, they're not as You're not going to save as much time unless you're on a massive scale. That automatic uncapper is not going to save you the time you think it's going to save. 2 extractors will.

Do you know what the biggest thing for me is in honey extraction is? Is having someone there to help. Don't worry about an uncapping machine. If you can get someone in there to help, it makes it so much easier because you can just have a chat. It's not— there's no You have to think about it, do you? You just kind of go into autopilot and you can just have a chat about stuff, whereas if you're doing it on your own, I find it's just so monotonous. But yeah, both really good advice there. Well, I am skipping a lot of questions here, and I will, I will just add final time, if you enjoy the stream, please do give it a thumbs up. And we have got 13 minutes left, so we have, we've flown through that. So I'm gonna do a few last few questions. Controversial one now. Going to upset some beekeepers now. When you get your honey supers off, blowing bees out of the supers or any other tips to get the supers clear? So we'll go to Griff first.

So I've done a video on YouTube, my channel, of basically every way to take supers off a super, but my favorite way is clear the boards, hands down. You know, that's my preferred way, and that's what I probably do 95% of the time. Put clear the boards down, come back the next day. I think That's less stress on the bees. The empty box is really good. Yeah, you've got to bring the blower with you for the times it doesn't work, but I find that is, for me, that's the best way.

Sorry, so clearer boards is the best way for you? Yeah, but with a blower as a backup?

Yeah, clearer boards, they don't work 100% of the time. They probably work, you know, a good 90% of the time, so you still gotta have that blower with you. But clearer boards for me, that's my thing.

And with rhombus escapes, I guess.

Yeah, rhombus, or they all work. Even the Canadian ones work pretty good, you know, the ones with the little cones. Yeah, I mean, any, any well-designed clearer boards, there's lots of ones on the market. I mean, the Rhombus Board, probably the most popular one in the UK, you know, they all work. And I think that's, that's for me is the best way, because, well, last year I almost pulled 1 ton of honey from one site. Well, that takes a long time to strip the boxes back to the the trailer and then back again, where, you know, I don't be blowing all that and carrying, you know, honey back to the trailer. That would just be, you know, Armageddon really. When you clear the boards, you can go there really early before the bees get up, you know, that's what I like to do.

Good stuff. And you, Richard?

Definitely the 2-up, but we use blowing in the spring because there's no robbing at the time we harvest in the spring, and it's So easy, but you get you need to have a good a good I've got a still hand leaf blower, but I've got the end modified so we've got a nice nozzle on it, and that's what I'd used last year and it worked really really well because I year before that I used to use clear boards, but clear boards in the spring can be a bit difficult when you get a set of cold weather coming through, and it can lead to a bit more crystallization. But if you've got someone help, I get some help in the spring. I got a guy who he holds the frames, I blow them off. into the front of the hives, and it's done in 2 days. The whole lot is pulled and back at the workshop. Brilliant. In the summer, it's always clearer boards. I use the rhombus Beescapes, the little lozenge ones, those ones here on clearer boards. Works absolutely fantastically, works really well.

I use a blower all the time, and a couple of things I'd add using the blower. One is that doing shallow boxes is so much easier than deep boxes. Like, yeah, it's tricky blowing out deep boxes.

Yeah.

And also get to get the spacings right. So if you're doing it kind of on like DM4 spacings, it's very, very difficult and you can have a nightmare uncapping. But if you're doing it on like Castellation 9s, it's just— they just come out. You give them a tap, blow them out straight away. Right, this is going to seem like a shameless plug from someone, but it is genuinely not. There is a question: which new bee show would you recommend a newish beekeeper to attend? That's a genuine question, so we'll go to Griff first.

Well, you've missed one, so you're stuck really, and you're lucky the best one is yet to come. It's the beekeeping show where the 3 of us are going to be there, and from all the beekeeping shows, this is the one to go for. There's loads of European guys going, the big manufacturers, Swanky, Thomas, I can't remember, there's Carl Fritz there, I know Abelo's bringing a huge nice range, Thorn's going to be there with the Carnigan stuff. I think this is probably one of you know the first time we're going to see a show of this caliber in the UK since I've been keeping bees anyway. I've never been to a show in the UK where they've got this many exhibitors going. Plug for me, I'm going to be there with La Ped, the Italian sugar firm, so I'm going to be there all day. But yeah, if anybody's thinking about starting beekeeping or wanting to increase or wanting to see what's on the market or just see what's out there, then the beekeeping show is going to be the place to be, hands down. There's nothing else this year that's gonna match that show.

Richard?

Couldn't agree more, Griff. Obviously keep your eyes open, but you can't experience something until you go to the show, to a beekeeping show, just to see it. I mean, the energy that these shows— people are there passionate about what they do, what they sell, having great products. You get great deals as well if you want to buy some kit, you can pre-order. Um, just go and meet the people out there and just, just ask questions. You know, we're, we're all going to be there, so that's another reason to go. So, you know, but no, um, if you didn't know, I've just been to that one in America, Hive Life, and it was the most amazing experience of my life just because it was such a different show. and such an amazing load of people there. Beekeeping shows are really good if you want to kind of network as well and get to know the who's who. It's funny, you meet people on different stands that are on the same stands in another country, and it's the weirdest thing when you turn up and it's the same people, and they're really nice in every country, you know. It's really cool.

And yeah, nothing really to add there from me either. Right, a couple more questions. I like this one as well. What are your favourite beekeeping myths? We'll jump to Richard first.

Oh, there's millions. What I mentioned before about people slapping on fondant in October, I mean, that's like— I suppose it's not really a myth, but I just think people just go so much over the top on feeding in the autumn, you know. I just think you get your bees up to thing and just leave it. just get away and leave them get on with being bees, you know. That's one of my biggest kind of myths I think is just rubbish, but I mean, I come across loads all the time, but I'm not gonna— because I get kind of really— when I start me on it, so I'm not going to go down that road. I'll open to Griff because he'll probably know more than me.

Well, my beekeeping myth is controversial, but Varroa-resistant bees, they don't exist.

You've got someone in the chat who's challenging, but I'm not going to start wars. You can look at the chats later.

Let me just quickly say that I just seen someone, he said he's got— Chris Humphreys. I don't feel like I'm attacking or anything, but 5 years keeping bees with 24 hives, and in 5 years you've only ever lost 4 hives. That must be a, a loss rate of probably 0.0-something percent. I mean, you've probably got the healthiest bees in the whole world, um, if you've only lost 4 bees in 5 years, or 4 hives in 5 years. I mean, I'm not saying I don't believe— well, I am. Yeah, I don't believe you, but you know, if I wish my bees are that good, you know. Yeah, very unlikely you've only lost 4 hives in 5 years keeping 24 hives. I mean, how old are your bees, you know?

There's so many ways you could analyze that guy's statement, and if he can do that, great. And as I said to you before, it is possible to run a treatment-free apiary, but you have to work it. You've got to constantly select, constantly manage those colonies really well. Okay, I know a little bit about it, how it works, and it's a lot of work. And perhaps that guy has done a really good job and he's managed to do it, and he might be in that percentage that had a certain type of bee that did certain— did well under those conditions, and they all flourished, and there was good drones for mating, blah blah blah. He didn't have queenless colonies. I don't know. What I'm saying is it's, it's possible, but it's a lot of work and you have to know what you're doing. And I was like, great, now do it with 150 hives. Yeah, when you've got a small amount of hives, a lot more is possible, you know.

Go on, Griff. Yeah, but what I'm getting at, 24 hives for 5 years, I mean, you know Are you not counting winter losses, or are you only, you know, where's the 4 coming from? You know, where's your winter losses on top, or are you counting winter, that the 4 you've lost is winter losses? Because, you know, everybody gets winter losses, you know, whether you've got 5 hives or 1,000, you know.

It does seem a very good rate. I guess there's variables that we don't know, so some bees can cope with it with no treatments because they're they're chucking out 3 or 4 swarms a year and then they get extended brood breaks, which means that the numbers don't build up. So I guess we don't know all of the variables. I'll take it away from something so controversial though. I'll go my 2 favourite myths. First one, matchsticks. That's the classic one, isn't it? Everyone loves the matchsticks myth. But my best one is that you can't put bees in woods because they don't like it when the rain falls off the trees onto the hives. Genuine myth and absolute bollocks. Because okay, I I do think bees do a lot better in full sun, but I don't think they mind that the rain falls off the trees onto the hives and it makes a tap tap tap on them and it annoys the bees. So that's my that's my favorite myth. Right, we'll do we'll do one more question. Let me see if I can find one more good question and we won't talk about Arsenal. Right, we'll do one one last question. But before that final one, if you have enjoyed the stream, do give it the thumbs up and do give everyone a follow or subscribe to their channel. Right, final question of the evening then from Steve's Bees. What are your thoughts on uncapping with a heat gun rather than a knife or a fork? I'll give it to Griff first.

You just lose out on a lot of wax using the heat gun. I mean, wax is worth more than the honey. Why would you uncap in a way where you don't get that extra bonus of having beeswax that's basically worth Twice the amount that the honey is worth. So I mean, yeah, the heat gun is good, but you're going to lose out on a lot of money in capped bins by not having that product to sell.

Good chat, Richard.

Yeah, I would agree. I mean, to me, it's not even a question of I could do it with something else. I do it the way that is the most efficient, and to me, it's quicker. to just slice it off either with a knife and have a facility where you catch the capping, and then you sieve it and you press it, and out comes your honey and out comes your wax. And you do the next frame and the next frame. A heat gun is fine if you're doing maybe 10 hives, you know, 20 supers or something, but it just doesn't work. Why isn't all the commercial guys using a heat gun? Because it just doesn't work that well. It's just not that good. We all— I wouldn't say we all, but if, if you want to find the answer, it's a bit like Griff said, where's all these VHS Queens? There's the answer, you know. It's like, why aren't people using it? Because it really isn't the best way of doing it, you know. The best way is to actually slice the comb off either with a decapper or with a decapping knife, and, and that makes it more efficient. But it's all personal choice, all these things.

I had to play around with a heat gun last year just to kind kind of see how it went, and it didn't even work that well. So it wasn't a case of, oh well, I'm losing the wax cappings. I couldn't get the honey out because every time I kept on doing it, the wax would kind of go down, it would re-solidify over another part of a cell, and then when I spun it out, not all the honey came out. And this was just like kind of summer runny honey that should spin out really easily. So for me, it wasn't a very good method anyway. But Griff's right, you, you want to keep hold of your wax cappings. Right, we've come to the end. I'm going to give both of you just like a, I don't know, a few seconds to say any last things. If you want to have a shout out for any social media or videos or your businesses or things that you sell, we'll start with Richard.

Okay, well, as you know, guys, I don't sell anything at the moment, but I do sell nucs here, obviously, to French clients. But I'm probably keeping most of mine because we lost a load of bees this autumn to Asian hornets and weak colonies, so It's going to be a hard year in that respect as well. But what I will plug is, if you really, really want to go to a good show, go to the beekeeping show. I'm flying over on the Friday, staying there. We're all going to have— actually, quite a few guys are getting together on the Friday night. So for us, it's a big social event for bee farmers. The Saturday, we've got the show. We're all looking forward to meet everybody there. So don't be afraid to come up and say who you are, where you're from, because we don't know who you are. And if you say, oh hi, I'm so-and-so from And it gives us an opening. I wanted everyone to have name tags like we had at Hive Live because then you know the person, even if you just say, oh, hi, so-and-so, they'll, oh, you know my name? You say, no, I can read your tag. But it's that icebreaker thing and it breaks down those barriers. But unfortunately we can't do that this year, but maybe it'll happen next year. But don't be afraid to come up and say hello. If you, you know, we've all got questions. I'll be interested to see, you know, and meet all of you there. So go Have a great time, enjoy it, just let yourself go and relax and meet people there, and that's what it's all about.

Nice one, thanks Richard. And Griff?

Yeah, well, if you're not following me on YouTube or social media, I am on @gwynningriff, and I also sell a lot of beekeeping equipment. So we're Thomas agents, Swainty agents, Thorn agents. We sell some lapet feed and Velcro socks, so make sure you check my website just in case you need beekeeping supplies. We've got very competitive prices, ship most of the stuff UK-wide, and I'm hoping to see you all at the show. We've just seen that Chris has messaged back. Yeah, definitely have a chat in the show about the varroa-resistant queens. Happy for people to change my mind on that, you know. I'm not like a denier or anything. Someone brings me the evidence, shows me it works, or shows me, you know, here it is, here's the records, it works, you know. I'm happy for my mind to be changed, um, but you know, it's going to take someone to change my mind. But yeah, we'll all chat in the show. Come see us, um, and you know, that's, that's a good thing about what we're doing here in beekeeping. You know, if we all agreed on the same subject, beekeeping would be boring, uh, you know. And it's the same in life, you know. There's, there's good ways of doing things, bad ways of doing things, and there's your own way of doing things. you know, it's very hard to understand, you know, what's right and wrong. You know, sometimes I say, you know, there's the right way to do something, the wrong way, and then the Griff Rees way of doing it, you know, and then maybe that's another wrong way of doing it, but who knows. But yeah, see everybody at the show. Thanks for coming on the Zoom here on Black Mountain Honey. Great to see Lawrence and Richard.

Nice one. Cheers, Griff. And then a final thank you from me, both for Richard and Griff coming on. Much appreciated. I hope we can do it again sometime. And then thank you to everybody who's dialed in, everybody who watches the videos and Griff's videos and Richard's videos. It's, it's you guys that kind of give us what we need to keep on posting these videos. So thank you to all of you. So we are done until the Beekeeping Show. We will see you very, very soon. Bye.