Black Mountain Honey: Let's Talk Bees With Laurence Edwards - Episode 11

Right, so I think we're back. I've had really, really bad internet reception today, so hopefully you can hear me, hopefully you can see me. I have changed the settings on my webcam, maybe a few more pixels in there as well. We do not talk about football, this is strictly beekeeping only today. So I'm going to go through some questions and I'm going to, I'm going to whiz through them in the hope that there's not loads and loads of questions that come through on the chat, but I will answer the questions on the chat as well. I'm just going in there now. I can see a few people have dialed in. Sorry that it's so last minute. I did say I would try and squeeze them in as best as I possibly could, and, uh, it's always the way that I got like about 10 minutes notice and then that's it, we go live. So I'm going to start answering some of the questions that have come through on the website. If you want to ask a question for the next live stream, if you go on to my website, there's a link at the top that says ask question, and then you can ask any question you like on there. The first one, probably my favorite question I've ever got, uh, so you have to try and beat this one, which was— I won't say who it's from, the name— but they tried to place an order for, I'm not sure whether it's Queens or Honey, um, couldn't go through, and they just want to know why. But they live in North Dakota, so unfortunately we can't ship to North Dakota. I wish we could tap into that US market, would be very, very profitable, I would like to think, but unfortunately no, we do not ship to North Dakota. Next question, great question this next one. Again, I'm no expert here, so I'm struggling with some of these questions, but it's a really good question. So this week there was a lot of hype around the use of pesticides on sugar beet. I've heard this. Do you think the increase in beekeepers has driven the need to increase growing UK sugar beet, therefore increasing insecticide use? So I think I could probably categorically say it's not the beekeepers that are getting through that amount of sugar. Like, beekeepers do a fair amount of sugar, but UK-produced honey just accounts for such a tiny amount of honey production in this country anyway. So no, I don't think we're having any impact whatsoever on demand for sugar and therefore insecticide use. I think it's just global pressures. It's just Brexit. It's never been particularly profitable, I don't think, growing sugar beet. And then the issues that we've had more are the conditions, the climatic conditions, so the weather and the drought conditions that's made it very hard to grow sugar beets. Next question from Graham says, lots of posts and videos of colonies out flying in the current unseasonably warm weather. My bees haven't ventured out at all. still alive and taking fondant. Do some colonies not bother until closer to March? And he's in the Northwest. So yeah, some, some don't, and it comes down to genetics a little bit. Not to say that kind of AMM will fly at low weathers— sorry, at low temperatures— and Buckfast won't, but it is down to kind of on a colony-by-colony basis. And I think it comes down as well to the size of the colony that you've got there. If you've got a very, very small colony and they've got sufficient food and you're feeding them fondant, so they've not really got any reason to go out other than to go and maybe forage some water. And if they've got access to that through condensation in the hive, then there's no real reason for them to go out. But it is always a little bit concerning, I think, if you've got other colonies that are flying and then you've got one or two that aren't flying. It always makes me think there's something maybe a little bit up with that. But I wouldn't worry if all of them are not flying. I would just say it's too cold, and also take into account the wind as well. If they're exposed and it's windy, they're much less likely to leave the hive. Next question from Edland Butler. I will get on to the questions in the chat in a little bit. I'm going to try and do maybe an hour today. I know I say that every time and then end up doing 2 hours, so I will stay until the questions dry up, but I just want to quickly get in here, answer the questions. Maybe we'll do about an hour. So next question from here, from Edlin Butler, saying, once you've come to the end of making your soft-set honey in your creaming machine, what temperature can you heat this honey up to to make it easy to bottle? So the process that we use here, and can't use the R word again, definitely not with soft-set honey because you do heat up soft-set honey. So the way that we do it is when we're making soft-set now, exclusively oilseed rape honey because it makes the best, smoothest soft set that you can get, like by far, and is the easiest. So we put the buckets of soft set into our honey warming cabinet, heat them up to 40 degrees for about 48 hours, maybe like 42 degrees if they're being a bit stubborn. We got to 42 degrees with the soft set until it's completely liquid, and then we pour it into this, uh, into the creaming machine, and then we leave it in the creaming machine because we've got an insulated creaming machine. We leave it in there for about like 4 or 5 days depending on the temperature without it churning, just to kind of leave it to, to cool down and just start to crystallize on its own. And then we turn the churner on and you can churn it for kind of weeks depending on the temperature. Top tip here is get all your soft set honey done in the winter. I've done 6 batches so far, 6 batches of soft set in a 200-liter creamer. You get about 1,000 jars of each. So I've got 6,000 jars of soft-set honey in the jar ready to go because making it in the summer is a nightmare. And you get a bit of— it's called like flash frosting. You see it on the jar around the edge of the jar, but we've got quite a big label so you can't see it anyway. Right, so back to the process. We put it in, leave it for about 5 days, turn the creaming machine on until it gets to the point where the creaming, like the the paddle doesn't really want to go around anymore, and then we— you can leave it in the creaming machine kind of indefinitely at that point. It's just a sealed container. So then the question here is, what temperature can you heat this honey back up to to make it easy to bottle? So we go up to 40 degrees. 40 degrees is, is more than enough to get it back to liquid. And what we do is we turn the temperature on at about 40 degrees, leave it for a couple of days without the paddle on, and then When you come back after a couple of days, turn the paddle on for like maybe 12 hours just to kind of break it down, and you'll see it goes back to liquid again. And then that's it, you can bottle it, let it cool down a little bit, bottle it. And then because you've not gone up over— I forget what the— there is like a temperature, probably around 55, 56 degrees where you reset the crystals. So all those crystals that you've ground down and taken the time to ground down to get the nice smooth mouthfeel, if you go up to like 60 degrees, you reset that, but 40 degrees is where we go to. So I've got one more question from Matt Wootton on the Ask Me Your Questions, and then I can close that down. So I'll answer that one first. He says, hi Lawrence, thanks for the fantastic videos, very informative, and he's learned loads from them. Cheers, Matt. He's just overwintered his first 2 colonies caught as swarms last May, and he's been offered an area to move his hives to right in amongst a load of cherry, plum, and apple trees, blueberries, and a few large eucalyptus trees acting as a bit of shelter for the fruit. Very nice. There is also rape nearby. I believe these all flower around the same time, so my question is, what do you think the chances— what do you think the chances are of the bees concentrating on the fruit rather than the rape? He also seems to be an Arsenal fan, which is, which is good. So unfortunately, you've got really got no chance. So you see a lot of these orchards, they spray in between the lines like really bad. They kill everything on the ground, so there's no clover, there's no dandelions, just because it's trying to force the bees to go and pollinate the orchards. So the kind of the apples and the plums, because the nectar of them isn't, isn't that good, it's not particularly high in sugar. So the bees will kind of go for whatever they can over fruit trees, specifically apple. And the same with the rape, like the rape, they love it, they always go for the rape. if they can get it. So I would embrace it. I think obviously rote honey is really nice and makes the best soft set by a million miles. So just get it off quickly, don't let it go in, don't let it set in the frames, and then you've got yourself a very nice soft set. All right, so that's all the ask me a question questions. If you do have a question, like I said, go on the website, ask me a question, I'll answer it in the next live stream. If you find these streams useful, always appreciate a thumbs up. Right, so let me go through some of the chat questions. So I see Jim Jim, -29, is that Fahrenheit or Celsius? He said -29 this morning, he put a blanket over my hives, do you think it will help? So yeah, definitely, if it's cold, any sort of insulation will always help. Just make sure if you're insulating any beehive though, that at the top above the cluster is the— that's where you put your best insulation. Don't insulate really well around the walls and then not insulate above, because all you'll end up doing is making the underside of the crown board the least well insulated. So then the condensation will form there and it drips on the bees, and then you're in real trouble. So as always, I've got a cup of tea, never get through it. Hi from the Cotswolds, bees flying well today, a small amount of pollen coming in. Good to see. Always nice to see when the pollen comes in, isn't it? Martin Hutchinson says, "Hi Lawrence, looking at buying a blower for clearing supers. Can you recommend a good powerful one please?" So the one that I've got, the Makita one, is is good. Four stroke Makita one is good. I've seen other people though with the backpack steel or steel, however you want to say it. They're so much better. The backpack ones are loads better because when you're clearing loads of supers. it's like the heavy ones where you've got all the weight actually in the super, it becomes like quite heavy if you're doing it all day. It's really painful. Um, so if you get the backpack ones, you put all of the weight on the back and then you've just got the wand to blow them out. And I think they're quite a bit more powerful as well. So I would go with one of those. It's probably like 4 or 5 times more expensive. They are, they are very expensive. But I think with all things beekeeping, just, you know, put the money in because it pays, pays you back when you're doing your job Uh, Joe Murphy says, hi Lawrence, how do you get around feeding fondant with the Payne's polynucs? It's a real pain this year without being able to get it above the cluster. It is a real pain. So 2 ways. One, you can buy the ekes. They do sell ekes. Um, they're very expensive and I wouldn't buy them just for feeding. 2, I would just make yourself a piece of cup— get a piece of Sellotex, cut out a circle on the Sellotex and just put that directly on the frames and then just put the fondant in the circle, put your crown board back on, put your roof back on, and just strap it all together. Like, it doesn't look very neat, but it's perfectly usable and the bees will work it. And that is what I do, and it's good. You get the insulation upstairs as well, which is good. Uh, man was saying he was watching a YouTube video last night on a Turkish beekeeper who was making a winter varroa treatment. He made it up and put it in a normal spray bottle and then sprayed it directly onto the cluster. And then it says, he was— and it's like, you've left me, you left me hanging there, man. So you have to finish that one. The live streams are a massive help. Thanks for putting them on. No problem. Definitely sets you apart from other YouTube channels. Will the longer videos be making a comeback though? You loved them. Well, I filmed 16 videos last week and they are all edited and they are all on YouTube now, so they are all on the members section. So I know, shameless plug, if you want, if you want to watch them all now, you can become a member, £4.99 a month, and then, uh, you can watch them all now. And yeah, so the longer videos are back, they're all around 10 or 12 minutes. I made the decision to not do many this winter. A, I just kind of fancied a bit of a break. It was, it was quite difficult season, so, um, I had a little bit of a break. And B, there's just not a huge amount of content that you can do. Like, I don't have a workshop So I can't be making huge amounts of things. So I will be doing lots and lots more long-form videos, and I'm going to completely change my strategy this year. So last year I would film like a long video, I'd film 10 or 15 long videos in a day, and then I would just kind of like edit them as quick as I possibly could because I just wanted to get them onto YouTube, get them out. And then I'd watch them back and I think I could have I could have probably edited that a little bit better. So see if you notice what I'm doing. I'm putting in tons more B-roll. Like, I know, awful pun, but lots more kind of like cuts, not to make it awkward to watch, but just you get like more close-ups, more slow-mos, more stuff going on as opposed to me just talking. So hopefully you like them. But I do the live streams because For a couple, couple of reasons. Um, one, it's good for the algorithm, definitely is good for the YouTube algorithm. But B, I know what it was like kind of being like a beekeeper and not— and making loads of mistakes. And put it as simple as that, being a beekeeper and making loads and loads and loads of mistakes. And mentors are great, and I recommend everybody to kind of join your local beekeeping association and get a mentor. But I always just say to everyone, just be open-minded, be as open-minded as you possibly can, and ask people. You will get loads of different answers, but I just think it's important to kind of give something back, and I enjoy answering the questions as well. Right, next question from Powell, I think it is. What are you thinking about giving water in jars inside hives in early spring? Is this boosting development? So I'm guessing you're thinking about sugar syrup. I wouldn't— I definitely wouldn't give them water inside the hives, um, because in the UK they can just— they'll just go out and get water. But definitely 1:1 sugar syrup, kind of middle of Feb, maybe end of Feb onwards, and it really does help get them going. Uh, Joe, straight in, you, you do want some— Joe definitely wants some beekeeping business videos, so he's doing the live stream questions. Joe's question: Would you recommend starting a B business as a sole trader, then progressing to a limited company? I'm just concerned you can't register a legal name with sole trader, but I suppose I could trademark. I wouldn't get too hung up about trademarks. Like, who's gonna nick? Who's gonna nick your name? And if they did, just change it. Like it's not. You know, someone came along and and nicked Black Mountain Honey. Can't can't nick it. It is trademarked. But if someone came along and nicked it and it wasn't trademarked. Like, I think I just, just like change my name, go to something else. I really don't think that's too important. Um, limited company, the, the bigger one is, you know, you're just detaching yourself from, from the company finances is the big one. That was the big appeal for me. Um, it costs quite a lot more, you know, to do. If you're, if you're making maybe like 5, 6 grand a year, something like that, like the jump from sole trader to a limited company is a big dent in your kind of accounting fees. Like, as a sole trader, if you're kind of good with the spreadsheet, you can pretty much do your tax return yourself. It's what a lot of sole traders do, especially with beekeeping where it's, it's relatively simple tax kind of accounting. Um, but with a limited company, it's difficult. There's no way I could do my own books, and they're not, they're not complicated books, but limited company accounts, so you need to know what you're doing. Doing. And the difference— I think I was paying like maybe like £400 or £500 to have a self-assessment sole trader done with 2 jobs, and it's like I need £2,000 now to have the accounts done for the limited company. So I would, I would stick with sole trader for as long as you possibly can because I don't think you're getting a huge amount of benefits becoming limited. Uh, Lynn says checkerboarding from San Francisco, I'm going to try it. Any special advice? So I don't— I'm not sure, like, I can give advice on checkerboarding other than I did it last year, followed the video, and it did say you could. I followed it kind of to the letter, to the book, and it did work. So I would just say follow the book. You're supposed to do it early. I think they did it around Christmas this year, Christmas or the end of December, which is madness. I know it is madness. You get people saying you're going in and disrupting the bees too early. and I'm one of them, 100% agree it's madness, but it did work. So special advice is just, yeah, follow the book. Hi from Holland. Hi, Harry. It was 5 degrees but said didn't matter about opening the hive at this temp. What's your take on this method? So I don't know what he's spraying them with, but there's no issue with opening the colonies up at that temperature. Like they'll very, very quickly build up that temperature back again. So you can, you can open colonies up for 10-15 seconds, put it back on, it's all good. Our bees are very active at the moment but no pollen coming in. Temperature is around 10 degrees Celsius and the upper brood chamber is smack loaded with bees. Very good, that's what you want. Dan has a very Snazzy new badge because he's a new, our newest channel member. So hi Dan, shout out to you. Am I going to keep on doing weekly live streams during the season as well? So I will do my very best to sneak in at least a half an hour live stream every single week. It is difficult though to like to plan them. So like next weekend I'm thinking I've got, I've got stuff on next weekend, so it'll probably be Friday night next weekend and then the following week. It's probably going to be like late Sunday evening, that like I'm just kind of thinking realistically when I can squeeze things in. But yes, I will, but it will be like today, it'll be proper last minute. I just can't plan them in. I can't, I can't tell you next weekend what time it's going to be, um, that far in advance because my life isn't, isn't that well planned. But I will do them, so don't worry. If you've got questions, you can come here, you can ask questions. I'm not always going to be right, I just kind of give you my opinion. Hi, have you got enough time to overwinter a split in a hive if you do it in March? Oh yeah, like if, if you had one— if you had one colony in March, like I did this last year and I started it like back end of April. If you started in the middle of April, big massive colony, double brooded it, I reckon you could get 80 nucs. I really do. You have to add queens in, you have to add good quality mated queens in Again, we sell queens, but the reason I put the good quality in there is that, like, when you're adding queens in, you're still going to get like a rate of queens that fail. So the more queens that fail, the more difficult that's going to be to do. But I do— I think if you've got one colony of bees and you feed them constantly and you add mated queens in and you make small splits and build them up, you can go from one colony to 80 in a year. I'm gonna have to do it again, aren't I? Because I got, I got to 20, and I got to 20, like from 1 colony to 20 in the middle of June. And I could have just— all I needed to do then was like 20 to 40 and 40 to 80. So 2 more splits. So I'm gonna have to do it again. I'll give it another go. Uh, Simon G says, hi Lawrence, glad to hear you'll be in Telford. We'll look out for you and say hi. Definitely, as per my video, which came across— I watched it back— came across as like the biggest ad advertorial in the world. I promise it wasn't an advert, that was just me getting all excited. But yeah, anyone come over and say hi, I'm happy to talk to everyone, and I'd be really happy, like really glad to see people and talk to people. Like, it's made me quite proud, you know. So do come over and say hi. When you see bees in your garden, do you ever smugly think to yourself, those are probably my bees? I know I would. Um, so So not so much in the garden, like if I see a single bee. I'll tell you what is interesting is seeing the different types of bees, and I find like— and you get loads of trouble saying this— but if I'm in an area where I know I've got bees and then there's a bee and it's really orange, I'm probably like, that's probably my— one of my bees. But I get more, um, the big pride comes from going into an apiary like on a properly warm day. In April. If you get like a 25, 26 degree day in April, which is rare, but beginning of the season, and you just get that first day where there's just bees everywhere and you're getting kind of splattered with bee poo, but it's that first day where you're just like, all right, we're back. That's the day where I feel like really, really pride— proud even. Uh, DSDS says, looking at Soul Trader 2, would, um, would registering for VAT be a good idea? I found £900 worth in VAT invoices in the past 3 years alone. So I'll always caveat this, which is get advice from an accountant, um, but it's just a no-brainer, I think, like that for beekeepers. The only challenge I think they would potentially come back and is and say, ah, you hear, you hear mixed advice on this. And again, this is why I say get advice from an accountant, but there's— I've definitely heard advice by people saying Oh, unless you're gonna actually ever pay the VAT man back VAT, then you can't register. So you wouldn't be able to register if everything you sold was zero-rated and everything you bought was standard-rated for VAT, which, which is the case for beekeepers. But I just— I don't like— all, all bee farmers are registered for VAT. Like, why wouldn't you be? It's so kind of on your side. And they wouldn't have started any other way. So I don't know whether that's one of those myths that isn't true. I know when I registered for VAT, like, we were, we were a very small business with a turnover of like less than 10 grand and making like loss, making big losses every single year. Um, but yeah, we're not, we're not anymore. Like, it's turned, it's turned right around now. So, but it's an interesting one. In terms of, I hear a lot of people saying, oh, definitely gonna register for VAT, and I would say, yeah, if you can and you've got a genuine business. You can't do it if you've got a hobby. If you've got a genuine business and your aim is to make a profit, and I say that 'cause you could have a genuine business and just make a loss every single year, they probably wouldn't accept that. But if you're a genuine business looking to make a profit, looking to build a business, then yeah, register for VAT. And you— it's interesting you say the past 3 years alone because you can retrospectively apply, so you get 3 years back. So if you're not VAT registered now and you apply, you can go back 3 years with valid expenses and claim the VAT back on things that you can claim the VAT back on. But it makes a massive difference. You get it— like, we do it quarterly and it's a sizable sum every single quarter that we get from HMRC. Oh, take a breath there. Right, I'm gonna have it. I'm gonna have a sip of my tea. I do it. I do it every time. I don't drink my tea. Right, Simon G says, been putting together a national brood box, waterproof glue and clamps, then the rails with more glue and clamps and stainless screws. He hates nails. Very nice. I was thinking it was going to be a question. There's no question at the end. Yeah, it takes ages doing that. I like it though. So you're doing it with— oh nice, stainless screws. Do you know what? I'm so lazy when it comes to woodwork. I do that. I hate nails and I always split the wood, so I use glue. I don't bother clamping it though, and then I use screws and I don't drill pilot holes, and then it splits and then I get really angry, and then I buy ready-assembled ones. But it's— I'm, I'm not going at DIY, and I'm very impatient, and I rush everything. And whenever people see like my hives, they're like, shocking. Uh, Joe says, are we going to get any more competitions this year? I know there is the Nuc comp, but any others on the horizon? I guess I could do some more competitions. You know what, sometimes, sometimes people don't claim the prizes. I've still got like 2 prizes that from competitions that I've chased and chased and chased the winners And they're just not giving me their address, so I might redo those again. One, one will be very interesting, or 2 actually. One, one is the Zest Hive, still not managed to get through to the winner, so I'm gonna have to recycle that as a competition. And the other one is the stainless steel honey, uh, wizard, whatever it is, the drill bit that no one claimed. So I will have to, uh, I'll have to redo them. But in terms of other competitions, I guess, I guess I can, I I could do some queens. I've got the nuc competition. I want to do like a— I want to do something else. I want to do a bee beard competition, but every time I try and do a bee beard competition, um, I get told off for being irresponsible and then kind of think that's probably, probably wise. Don't encourage people to do bee beards, but I want to do a bee beard. Uh, but I will, I will do more. I will do more competitions. I'll have a look around. It's nice if competitions are sponsored by people like manufacturers, but we will see. Uh, DSDS says, even though honey, nucs, and queens are VAT-free. Uh, yeah, so, so everything, everything you sell as a beekeeper is VAT-free, so you don't have to charge VAT on it, which means HMRC don't take a slice of everything that you're selling. And then everything you buy, everything you buy has VAT on it for beekeeping. And you get to claim your whatever is back, your 18% or whatever it is, 17%. Uh, Mem says, on splitting hives without introducing mating queens and just letting them produce queen cells, have you tried this method, or would you do it? Maybe you can do it on a vid and see how many you get. So I've done it, I've done it a few times, walkaway splits. I don't like walkaway splits for a couple of reasons. One, because I don't like queens raised using that emergency impulse. I prefer to, you know, proper pump them full of royal jelly. Scrub queens from Emergency Impulse can be okay, but they're just— I don't particularly like them. But it's, for me, when you're making splits with them, it's the failure rate of those queens. And I don't like losing 50% of the resources, so I like to put mated queens in. But that's just me. Other people would definitely be the complete opposite, which is not spending money on a mated queen when I can get perfectly good mated queens myself. And both routes are valid, but for me, when my time is very limited and kind of my resources for my bees are very limited as well, I want to kind of limit the impact on both of them. I recognize the name. Says, hi Lawrence, I ordered a 6-frame pain nuc from you for April Plan is to buy a Payne's nuc roof and a feeder, take off the travel roof, leave until they're strong enough to transfer. Will that work? I need to read that again. So, so, uh, no, I wouldn't do that. So you get a 6-frame Payne's poly nuc. So what I would do is just immediately, like, leave them in there for a couple of days, wait until they've orientated back to the spot, and then just take it away and put your hive there and get them in a hive straight away. If you if you have a nuc at that time of the year, like you'll see when they come, they are full. They are completely full and they're ready to be hived up. And what you want to do is get them into a hive as soon as you possibly can, like after 48 hours maybe after them being there, and then and then get them in the hive and get them get them fed up. So that's that's what I would do. Sorry, I'm just reading the next comment down. Are you doing are you doing the the live stream at the same time as the England rugby match on purpose? So no, I'm off sport for today after Arsenal lost to Everton. Absolutely gutted. So I'm not doing sport today. So, um, sorry about that. I did watch the end of the, the Ireland-Wales match, but I'd be supporting England. They're my team in the Six Nations. Uh, Peter Sabba is here. Hi Peter, how you doing? Uh, Joe Creaser says, yep, send them my way. So I'll have to do another competition. I can't just give them out. Peter's saying he doesn't seem to get notifications for the live streams. If you go onto my channel page, there's like a little bell at the top. It's the top right. You click on the bell and then you'll get notifications for everything. Simon G says, "Can I buy a baseball cap from you in Telford?" Oh, that would have been a good idea. Unfortunately not, unless I couldn't. I could maybe get some. Let me let me see. I do have like my logo. my cap here, look, how's that? Um, I got my logo already sorted with the company. I'll have to just go and see if they can do me some. If anyone wants a cap, let me know, I will see if I can. Steve's Bees has got a new badge, so he's a channel member as well. Hi Steve, I think you may be a new channel member. If you are, thank you very much. Uh, Hi, when is a hobby turned into a business? I guess, I guess it's a fine line. Like, I, I consider mine like a hobby business, so it still, still is a hobby. But I think with beekeeping, because it's so— it makes so much sense for it to be a business and for it to be run like a business. And if you want to sell honey, you're kind of doing the formal stuff anyway. You're doing like food hygiene certificates, like you're doing the stuff that you need to do, and you run it as a business regardless. You might as well call it a business. I'm one question away from the end, so Joe Murphy better get some more questions out. I will talk, I can just ramble on without— but I will get to the point where maybe half an hour more. So if you want to ask more questions, I can answer them. Quick question, why are you selling off so much of your extraction equipment? So it's not been already asked. So I did sell off a lot of it. So the reason is I've got a very small limited space, and I'd always— we'd always planned to move from this house and buy a farm, and we've given up on that now, and I'm so relieved. It's like the best thing ever giving up on that because it, it changes, changes my outlook on life a little bit. So I bought all of this equipment on the basis that we're going to move to a farm and, you know, do what Richard Knowles is doing and build a, a big kind of outbuilding and have, have it all sectioned off and have the honey area there. And at the moment, I've got it in like a 3-meter by 4.5-meter log cabin, like pretty well-kitted-out log cabin, um, with like carndean floors and plastic walls. But there's just not enough space in there. And what I find myself doing is that like for one week of the year, maybe 2 weeks of the year max, I'm doing honey extraction in there. But for like maybe, I don't know, 20 weekends of the year I'm, I'm doing honey jarring in there and there's just not enough space. So I'm kind of like looking at stuff and thinking, do I really need that there? So at the moment I've got 200-liter premium tank, a 200-liter creamer, and then another 200-liter premium tank. And the idea being that I can, that I can do jar 600 liters of honey in a day. And it's just, it just takes too long when you do the cleanup. And also because I do it with my nephew If I've got one tank and he's got the other tank, then we both finish and then there's one tank to do. So it doesn't really work. So that's the reason I'm selling that tank. Best tank in the world, that is. Again, shameless plug for a tank that's for sale. 200-liter premium Lyson tank with a sieve, with a stand. I think, pretty sure, it's about £750 because it's the premium one with all those bits in. I'm doing it for £450 including VAT. You get a VAT receipt as well, which means if you're VAT registered, you can knock the VAT off that. So it probably takes it down below £400. Uh, the valve— the valve— I just had a valve left over, that sold. And then I'm selling my— this is the big one— I'm selling my loosener. So my Heather loosener is up for sale for £3,000, which is a bit— I'm gutted. I'm really gutted because it's probably one of my favorite bits of kit. But I'm moving back to doing— to using a hydropress because it takes up far less space, and I've just not got the time to process that heather honey properly. So I'm moving over to frames and feeders frames, and I'm just going to have a single— might even have a single 14 by 12 box per colony up at the Heather Apiary. So that if people don't know them, they are just black plastic molded, fully molded frames with foundation on. And I'm going to buy like a 90-liter hydro press, which sounds big but it doesn't actually take up that much space. And I'm just going to take the boxes, scrape all the honey with the wax into the hydro press, probably do like 2 or 3 presses and get it done in a day. And the beauty of that system is that because it comes off, you get like a fine mesh around the hydro press, is that when you're putting the buckets underneath and you turn the water on, you start getting the pressure up, the honey comes running out. It goes through the— it goes through this really fine mesh, so it's like perfectly filtered. And the big thing with the, um, the loosener, the loosener is so good because you maintain all of the comb. That's the big benefit of the loosener, but you still have to filter the heather honey. So for me, it's like managing that process, which is difficult unless you're like doing it on like quite a large scale, loosening the frames. tangentially spinning the frames. I've only got a 6-frame tangential spinner, so really like slow. It's very, very slow. Um, but then you've got to filter it at the end. So for me, it's just like I'm doing it for speed, whereas if you had like a 24-frame tangential spinner and you had like a commercial, um, header sitting machine, if one exists, which I think— which I think they do exist— then it would be a very, very good system. So it is being sold. Uh, Lynn says, did you see Richard Knowles' outbuilding? It's huge. I did. I love it. It's like a steel portal building. So for people that don't know, I'm like a civil and structural engineer— not a very good one— um, who, who moved very early into project management. So I'm like a construction project manager now. I love concrete. I love digging holes and footings and building stuff. So I was, I was really jealous and I've been watching on with great kind of pleasure, watching the build. I love it, it's great. And, and, and like, on the one hand, I'm really jealous because I want one, and then on the other hand, I kind of think, you know what, I'm quite happy that we're, we're not moving house. It's, it's taking the pressure off, like, financially, which is nice. Hi, Laurence, I have wooden National hives. Should Should I move over to an Abello Poly National Hive? I'm also rubbish at DIY. Very interesting question. So I love Abello Poly hives, and if you ask me what's the best poly hive in the UK, by far and away it's the Abello Poly Hive. Which one would I go for? I would go for the 12-frame. If I was like starting and didn't have any beehives, I'd just go for the 12-frame and get everything 12-frame. If I was kind of like had a few hives already, I'd definitely go with the old— the older ones with the shallow roof. I quite like the shallow roof ones. I know a lot of people prefer the deep roof ones because of the water ingress issue, but I've never had that, never had that issue. So I like the shallow roof ones. I've done a new video at the moment though. I won't give it away, but I address kind of what I would start off with and how I would build like a perfect hive, kind of mixing different little bits. I have covered it on previous streams, but there is a video on that. the channel's member section at the moment. Uh, Peter says, where is the equipment advertised? So it's on, it's on Twitter, it's on Instagram, it's on Facebook, and it's on the No Nonsense Beekeeping group, which again, if you're not on the No Nonsense Beekeeping group, good, good group to be on. They're a really good bunch of people, uh, and they're very quick and reactive and they answer questions, and I take no shit on there as well. So if anyone's being a twat, then they get blocked and banned. And no one is, it's great. So definitely join that group. Quick one, let's talk about the YouTube channel. Something crazy has gone on in the last like 3 weeks on the YouTube channel, and it's like, it's getting crazy, crazy amounts of watch time. So in the last 4 weeks, it got 3.9 million minutes of watch time, which which for me is like mind-boggling. And it just picked up, it just picked up a video and just went with it. I was very happy. Right, Joe says, tips on increasing numbers quickly? Would you feed ApiPasta plus pollen subs in March? So no, like around that time of the year you get so much like natural pollen, you've got like the willow and stuff coming out. I wouldn't bother feeding that. I would just— don't try and force it too much, rely on the bees Building up nice and strong, when they can take it down, start getting 1:1 sugar syrup into them and feed through. So what I mean is National Deep, put another National Deep box on top, preferably with drawn comb. If you've not got drawn comb, do it with foundation, and then put a feeder on top of that and feed them 1:1 sugar syrup, and then they'll start to draw out all of that foundation. But because you're constantly like trickle feeding them, so don't just give them 12 litres of syrup, just go like a litre a day, which can be a bit of a pain, but it does make a difference because it really gives the colony the impression that there's just like prolonged amounts of nectar available. And then they will get very, very quickly— so they'll get very big very quickly. And just make sure there's enough pollen in the colony, and if they are struggling, you could feed them some pollen supplements. like, it's not for me, pollen stuff. I've done it a few times and there's just— they feed on it for a little bit and then they just leave it. As soon as there's natural pollen available and it's warm enough, they go and use it. And if it's not warm enough for natural pollen, then you probably shouldn't be feeding it to them anyway. So there's kind of like a bit of a balance there. Where would you rank all the nucs in order? Best to worst. I need to need to write that one down. Let's start off with the best, and people say people say I'm a bellow fanboy, so I've proven wrong here. So I do think I do think the best one is still the BS Honeybees nuc. It is a very very good nuc, but you need to upgrade it. So you need to get it with the metal divider. With the Correx divider, it's it's no better than the Maysmore nuc. In my opinion, like exactly the same as the Mazemore nuc because that Correx divider is useless. But with the steel divider, I'd have that as number 1. Then I'd go to— then I'd go to the Abello nuc. But I really wish the Abello nuc did a bigger feeder. But I would put the Abello nuc next. Then I would probably put the Mazemore nuc after that one. Mazemore nucs are good. I've got loads of Mazemore nucs. And then probably the Pains. There's more nucs than that, but they're the 4 that I would use. And I know people are thinking, why'd you send them— why'd you send your nucs out in Pains poly nucs? Um, and we are going to stop that soon because it is becoming really expensive, but they ship really well, they go through the post really well, you've got the best mesh screens, and then you get the feeder included in it as well. So otherwise, if you put a mesh screen on, say, Amazemore or BS Honeybees, you have to take the feeder off. So it means if I send it to someone, I have to keep the feeder, which means you end up with loads of feeders which you don't need, and the person who's bought the nuc doesn't have any way of feeding them. So the pains work out actually a lot better in that respect. Right, it's time for some tea. If you have food shortage in your hives in February, March, do you open the hives and feed them, and how do you do that? So fondant, if it's cold, if it's kind of like single figures, just fondant and just open it up so you can see the frames. Rest some fondant, which is just like candy, directly onto the frames. You might need to put an eek on, and then the bees will just eat it. And if it's like double figures and the bees are flying, I would go syrup, sugar syrup, 1:1 sugar syrup. Joe Murphy says, would the Telford Q&A be live streamed on your account? So probably not, because I think everyone's going to want to livestream stuff and they're probably just going to say no, you need to be there. But I will do some livestreaming kind of like at the event, as I'm sure other people will be doing as well. Good morning from Tennessee, originally from South Wales many years ago. Interesting to see the difference and similarities in beekeeping. Hello. Joe Murphy says, got wooden hives but considering getting some Abello poly roofs and Ashworth feeders to add to them. Just concerned about using too much plastic. Wood is probably better environmentally. So yeah, get, get where you're coming from, but the— all I would say is that it's, it's a bit different from like a single-use throwaway plastic. Like, these are very, very durable and very long-lasting, and I'd already had a plan for what I was going to do with all my polyhives once they start degrading, but I can't do it anymore because I'm not gonna have a farm. But they'd be fine for like insulation. You could just cut them down and insulate a wall or something. Easy. Emma Wood says, hi, most of us carry a bee toolkit. What's in yours? So I don't really have a bee toolkit. I have a swarm catching kit. That's got got in my swarm catching kit. It's all contained within like a Payne's poly nuke with a mesh screen on the top. What do I keep in my swarm catching kit? So it's got frames in, frames with foundation in. Oh, it lives in a box. So a box that's just like a box that you would order it with. That would be good. Ratchet strap. I can't remember. It's too late. It's It's been too long since I looked at my swarm trap kit, but then I have, I have a truck, so my truck's kind of like my, my bee toolkit. So I have loads of stuff in my truck, got everything you would possibly want for beekeeping just kind of stuffed in any crevice anywhere, and in my bee suit as well. So I keep a lot of stuff in my bee suit. They were— they laughed so much when I had huge oversized pockets made with zips. That's the big one. Gotta get zips on your bee suit, otherwise every time you take your bee suit off, everything falls out. But I do it now, so I've got— sorry, I just, I'm just reading it here. Hmm, I wonder who that could be. So clearly my little brother. Hi Lawrence, I'm a massive fan of your channel. Could you please do your favorite tagline? Sending love from Canada. Right, so there's no way that person's from Canada, that's definitely, that's definitely my little brother. It's like, hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mans in Honey, welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping. People were gutted when I dropped that line, they really were. God, you're making me, Sam's making me feel awkward now, now that I know my little brother's watching my live stream. Right, I'm going to pretend you're not here, Sam. Right, so Mark says, hi, any advice on warming honey super frames for extraction? With some crystallization. So it's difficult. I've got this exact same issue at the moment, which is I've got about 12 boxes of honey and it started to crystallize. So I would say it's a tricky one to do. All I'm going to do is I'm just going to put it through the ApiMelter and just turn it into baker's honey because we have a good use for baker's honey. But you can get it to the point where you start melting it down, but you you just need to make sure that you don't collapse the wax, and it is a little bit difficult getting it like that. I know it does seem like shameless plugs for Abella all the time, but all of my equipment's from Abella, so it is where I have the experience of. But they— their honey warmers are the best thing I've ever bought. They've completely transformed my beekeeping, and you can get a whole national kind of super or a brood box in there So depending on what size you've got, I think I can get 7 brood boxes. That can't be 7 brood boxes, maybe 5 brood boxes in each one. And I've got 2 of them, and the temperature control is really, really like— you can get very good temperature control on it. So I'm gonna have a go. I'll put some in there. Where they are is like the darkest place in the world, so I can never do videos of them. All right, next question. Steve's Bees, do you use pollen traps and are they easy to use? So yeah, I've got a couple of different pollen traps and they are the easiest in the world to use. You just need to do it on a good day when there's loads of pollen coming in and just don't use them for more than like 24, maximum 48 hours. If you do it for longer than 48 hours, you can kind of get a real deficit within the hive and they sometimes struggle to get back from that when they're kind of— you're getting a certain amount of pollen coming in and they increase the rearing to compensate for that, and if you just take it all away from them, they can get themselves in trouble quite quickly. So just limit it to— I do 24 hours and you get a huge amount, and if you've got numerous traps as well, you'd be amazed how much pollen you can actually get across an apiary within like a few days. Me, Griff, and Noel, Richard Noel, should get a Spotify podcast going, that would be super successful. It would be. I would, I would like to do that. Should do it. Uh, More storms are expected in your area next week. Stay warm and safe. Love your channel. Cheers, Rick. Yeah, it's— we're in, we're in full spring at the moment, aren't we? Where people like me are being silly and going and looking at beehives. But I do it so, so you guys don't have to. But yeah, it's, it's getting cold and it's, it's not a good time of the year for it to get cold. This is when the Beast from the East came in, wasn't it? Like middle of Feb and lasted to April, and it was terrible for losses that year. A lot of people lost them. He's saying to do a podcast as well. I'm thinking, yeah, YouTube need to do some sort of podcasting, don't they? Because I'm— I am a one-trick pony. I only really do stuff on YouTube, but a podcast, I'd have to kind of like plan what we're going to talk about. I don't know how a podcast really work other than just having a little bit of a chat. So I suppose, I suppose I could do it. Uh, we are, we're one question away, um, from me getting to the bottom of the list. If you've got any more questions, stick them on the thing. If you're enjoying the stream, uh, give me a thumbs up. Joe Murphy says, have you got any recommendations for good website host domains like Google, IONOS, and also Honey Label designers, Fiverr, etc.? I love the, um, enthusiasm from Joe and the amount of questions. It's amazing. So unfortunately, no, I've not really. Fiverr is a bit rubbish. I don't think I've ever got anything from Fiverr that I've been like, oh, that was, that was good value for money. I've either like paid loads of money— well, yeah, whether I've paid loads of money for something or not paid that much money for something, I've always kind of walked away and thought it wasn't very good. Um, honey label designers, again, like, you kind of get, you get what you pay for there. And I'm kind of looking at mine at the moment and thinking, you know, maybe we do a rebrand here. I am, I am tempted to do a rebrand on Black Mountain Honey and just go for something completely different. But it is expensive, like, label design like that where they, where they completely design your brand. It is really expensive. Probably be like or 4 grand, I'd say, to do every— like a redesign. Um, and Sam, if you're still watching, I might, I might get you to do it if you fancy doing it. My little brother's a very good graphic designer. Uh, Rick Warner says, very cold in Maine today, in the minus 40s. And, and little fact, I don't need to ask whether that's centigrade or Celsius even, or Fahrenheit, because it's the same. Love that. Says, agree, you and Griff Griffin Richard should do some sort of an interview. Yeah, so we are doing that in Telford, but, um, it's difficult to get people to kind of commit to stuff like regularly. Like, I can't plan what's going on next week, so to get people lined up, it is difficult. And also, they probably want to do it on their own channel. Um, Steve B says, anyone been to the National Honeybee Show today? Is that— was that today? That wasn't today, surely not. I've missed, I've missed the comms if that was the case. Says do-it-yourself labels on Avery website. I, I'm not a massive fan of some of the do-it-yourself kind of print-your-own labels, you know, like the ones that's like that say Welsh honey or something and it's just like a standard design. I think it's just, yeah, not, not for me. I like a kind of professionally printed label. I think it does make a difference. Not if you're not selling your honey like commercially on a shelf, it doesn't make a difference. Just do whatever's the cheapest and just print it off. But yeah, I do think taking that next step up does like improve the saleability of your honey. What's your favorite pollen sub? So I've not really had huge experience. I've used BeePro, I've used Ultra Bee. They're probably pretty similar. I think most people go for Ultra Bee over those 2, but I'm not— yeah, I'm not sold on Pollen Sub in the UK. Just don't think it's needed. You can do without it, save your money, use it for something else. Joe says he's trying to find somewhere to print his honey labels en masse but seems to be super expensive at the providers I've seen. So we use Printed Easy. They're pretty cheap. They're really good. Where else did I use? Abby, Abby Labels, I think I used. They're more expensive, but they were good as well. Joe says, where did you buy the label rolls, the ones that go with your labeling machine? So any big kind of printing company will do it on a roll. It's the cheapest way by far to print on a roll. When you're doing it on sheets, they've got to like cut the sheets and stack them, and it's just not economical. When you're doing it on a roll, it just flies out the printer and gets rolled up. Anger says, thinking of doing queen rearing for the first time this year, which method would you recommend for a beginner? So I've not used tons and tons of different methods, so the method that I use, 10 over 10 method, is a very, very good method. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna do some videos this year showing how that can be applied a little bit better in a smaller setup. So probably do it set up the starter colony, get the grafts in there, get them kind of starting to accept the grafts and building them out, and then use it as a finisher as well and split them out into maybe like 5 nucs. So it will be a case of we'll be doing some splits and rearing some queens at the same time, and then you could condense them back down and start again. I think that's probably the way to do it if you're doing it on a small scale. Why? You don't need mini mating nucs. It's just a waste of time unless you're doing like hundreds of them. If you're going to make splits anyway, then kind of just combine your queen rearing and you're making splits at the same time. Is it too late to do a varroa treatment? So it's getting a bit late to do varroa treatments now, although you can do Apivar now if you've not done a varroa treatment yet. Apivar now is a very, very effective treatment. Apivar is effective all the time. But the constraints that you have with Apivar is that you need— it's an 8-week cycle, so you need to leave it in for a minimum of 8 weeks. But then also you can't put your supers on while the Apivar strips are in. But as soon as you take the Apivar strips out, you can put your supers on. So where are we now? We're like 4th of Feb. So if you went into your colonies now and put Apivar strips in, and then you take it out kind of like first, second week of April, it's going to time really nicely with Getting your supers on. So, so Apivar is what I would use now. You can do oxalic acid sublimation now, but you'd need to do multiple treatments. I do actually have an Instant Vap. I bought an Instant Vap about 4 weeks ago, and I've still not got around to using it. I did my winter treatment kind of the other side of Christmas with my Sublimox, so I'm not really in a rush to use it, but I have bought an Instant Vap, so I will do a video on that. Uh, Joe asks which designer did mine. I think it's pretty good. I like my design, but I do, I do like— I look at other people's jars and I think I want to, I want to change it up. Like, I definitely could improve the branding, I think, and it means going back and just changing everything. Um, it was a lady called Michelle Rose Innis, I think that's how you say it, who did mine, who also, fun fact, designed the Frankie and Benny's logo, which is just kind of her writing Frankie and Benny's. It wasn't really much of a logo, but she did design that. The labels that I like the best, my favorite one is Black Bee Honey. If you Google Black Bee Honey, I really like their branding. So I'm not going to shamelessly steal theirs, but I might do something similar. Brian Salt says, hi Lawrence, I'm getting my first nuc of bees from you this year and enjoyed your series on Would you recommend a beginner trying these? So, hi Brian, thanks for buying a nuc. I would recommend just trying everything with bees. All I would say is don't expect to kind of get like perfect success with them. And also all I would say is like, say if you've got one nuc of bees and you're putting it into one hive, like the way that I would redo that section of that video is I'd get a lot more aggressive putting it on early on in the year forcing the bees to use it. So I'd be kind of like almost sacrificing a colony and saying, you know what, they might swarm. So that, that's— there's the risk that you're going to have there. If you just, if you just put it at the top of a hive and put loads of supers on, they will just ignore it and you'll waste your money on it. Or if you put it on as a single box onto a brood box and let the bees get really big and go close to swarming, you run the risk of them swarming. So it's not it's not necessarily like not for beginners, but it comes with like a little bit of risk in it as well. I would just recommend trying as many different things as possible because that's how you learn. Some people use mesh floors and some people solid. How would you decide, and what do you think is best? So I've used both, um, and I've— I don't think there's a huge amount in it. I'll be, I'll be as simple as that. I don't think there's a huge amount in it. But for me, but the way that you have to clean both of the floors is you lift the brood box up and you just wipe the stuff kind of into like a tray. Don't just wipe it on the floor, wipe it into a tray. June's saying, is my tea cold yet? Yes, it is very cold. But it depends where you are. So in— I can't speak for America because I'm not an expert like on the climate at all out there, but a lot of people, they'll have a solid floor floor, and then they use top ventilation. And I've never been a fan of that for the UK. I much prefer to have like bottom ventilation and it's sealed on top. And I kind of understand like the thermodynamics of that to the point where it's like, it works for me. That's all I can say is it works for me. So all of my colonies now, I have open mesh floors and I have like good insulation above, and I find that works very well for the the UK. Uh, Joy Harris says, hi Lawrence, where are you buying your foundation this year? All suppliers seem quite expensive now Simon the Beekeeper is gone. Yeah, it's rubbish, isn't it? Like, it was really, really cheap foundation from them, so I had, I had absolutely loads. I've got loads of foundation and I do have a ton of wax as well, so I'm going to use, exchange all of that in Um, but I don't know if I'm going to buy it. It is expensive. It's because it's quite an energy-intensive process, I guess. Angus says he just looked at Black Bee honey label and it's a bumblebee. So there we go, a faux pas there. I've not noticed. Is it a bumblebee? I'm gonna have to have a look at this now. It's more like the branding, like, yeah, yeah, it's the shape of it, isn't it, that they've done? I just, I just quite like the the, the simple nature of it. There's not much going on, but yeah, it's definitely a bumblebee, isn't it? Rick Warner says, any chance of getting your honey in or around Peterborough? Um, well, we do— we send it all, all over the UK. Just buy it on the website, we send it out. Had everyone kicking off last week when I announced that we were wholesaling via Anchor Store. That got a little bit messy on Twitter, and I wasn't trying to annoy anyone there. But we, we have a Welsh wholesaler called Blazerfoid— my rubbish Welsh pronunciation— but they, they do the whole of Wales. But we don't have a UK, like an English wholesaler. So we now have Anchor Store to do that, and they had a— they had an amazing promo. They did a promo before which was for anybody buying the honey, you could have £100 off £100 order, and if you ordered £300 worth of honey, you got free shipping. But if you just ordered the £100 off the £100 order, so like zero, you've got £100 of honey for free, but you have to pay £30 shipping. So I posted it like for new retailers on Twitter. Oh, all hell broke loose. People were not happy, so I just took it down in the end. But we are still wholesaling through Anchor Store. So we'll see where that goes. Joe Murphy says, is it just me that thinks beekeeping is full of myths and old wives' tales that some people are way too stubborn about? Yeah, find it interesting from a science background. Yeah, I think with beekeeping, because there's so many variables, everybody's got their own little way of doing it, and because bees are so incredibly resilient, you might be doing something, these are like, oh yeah, whatever. But they think, oh, it's the best thing in the world. So the classic one is matchsticks, isn't it? People say you put matchsticks underneath the crown board on each side in winter, and it means that any moisture can escape but any wind can't get in. And it's just like, really? Like, okay, the bees will probably put up with that, but you know what, I'm going to do it next year. I don't know exactly what the bees will do. I've never tried it, but I know what the bees will do. They will propolize the gaps up shut because they'll just be like, why have you just put a hole up there, you weirdo? Just don't want a hole. Like, if you're going to put a hole up there, make it 8 millimeters so we can get in and out of it. Don't put a 2 millimeter hole up there. We're just going to stick it up with propolis. So I, I would like to do more myth-busting videos. I think we should do some of those. That's a good idea. But there's tons of little things like like that, isn't there? And people are making them up all the time. It's not just old ones, it's new ones. It's like people saying, well, oxalic acid is good for controlling varroa, so also I know a fact that— this is, this is the person talking— that rhubarb leaves are high in oxalic acid, so I'm going to get some rhubarb leaves and lay them on the colony, and then like, that's it, I've treated my bees for varroa. And then the bees don't die, and people are saying, oh, I'm vindicated myself here because the bees haven't died. That must mean that rhubarb leaves kill varroa, and there the myth has started, and that is just rubbish. There we go, ranting now. Joe Murphy says, is your borage honey yours or someone else's? Definitely someone else's. Chris Manton, we get our borage honey from. You do not get borage in North Wales. You get sheep, and sheep honey is not the nicest honey. I love borage honey; it is my favorite. Saud Hadi, I think that's how you say it. Hadi, I didn't hear or see any of my bees. You think they're all dead now? I hope they're not dead. If to give me a bit more info to go on, I hope they're not dead. Dead bees is not good. Simon G says, "Have you ever done any bee-related micro?" Microscopy. I thought I was going to say that okay there. Did a 2-day course and really enjoyed it. So no, I've never done anything like that. If I was going to go on, and I very nearly booked it this year, and I still might book it this year, but I think it's more something to do like if I ever quit work, and that is artificial insemination. So I want to go on a course and do that. I'm very close to booking that this year, very close to buying all the gear. I've been so good this year at not buying stuff. Like, I really like sitting on my hands and just saying, if I don't need something, I'm not buying it. So I was going to buy myself a new phone the other day when the S23 Ultra came out because I got the S20— S21 Ultra, and I didn't. I sat on my hands and didn't get it. And I've done the same with the AI kit, not buying it because I know what happens. I'll buy it and then not use it and then lose it, and then when I come to do it, I'll have to buy it all again. But that's something I definitely want to do, and I think I would do that before a microscopic— micros— you know what I'm saying, microscope course. There we go. But it is interesting, there was a lady, wasn't there, who died recently who was like an expert in terms of like pollen analysis. I would find that interesting. And the same with like Nosema and getting it under a microscope and kind of confirming like the spores and stuff. So I would find it interesting, but I don't think I'd do a 2-day course on it. Uh, Lei Quen says, I won't ever be able to keep bees, but I love watching your videos. Thank you, thank you. I'm sorry if I pronounced your name wrong. Uh, Emma says Instant Vac is great, try it and do a vid, you won't use anything else. Yeah, I'm convinced that it is good. I've seen the video, so I know it'll be good, and I've got some good batteries to go with it. As well. But I'm kind of thinking I'm just going to wait until next year and keep it clean. Joe Murphy says hi. Yeah, never got the matchstick thing. I've met some guys that are prepared to die on the matchstick sword every time. It's funny, isn't it? Like, and this, and this is the big thing. And do you know what, if I ever have to stand up in like a beekeeping conference or anything like that and they're like, what are you going to do? Like, your, your specialist area. And I'll be like, oh shit, I don't have a specialist area. I kind of don't like actually know that much about bees, but this is what I would do, which is kind of like not even myth-busting, but it would be like just try new stuff and don't like— don't get into arguments with people about stuff. Like, you like flow hives is another one. So people say, I hate, hate flow hives, they're the worst thing in the world, and they're just So negative about flow hives, and then you speak to them and just say, "Oh, oh, you must have had a bad experience with them or something," and they say, "Oh no, never spend my money on that tat." And you think, "Well, how can you be so passionate and comment and like say how negative they are, be so negative about them when you literally never tried them? You don't, you just don't know." So I just think everyone should just try as many things as possible and not get so like, "I have so much of an ego when it comes to like." your own opinion on stuff. So like the matchsticks, it's like that, isn't it? They've obviously got into an argument where it's like us and them, right? I'm part of the matchstick brigade, matchstick brigade, and you're not. And then it's like, right, that's my badge, I'm going to wear that with honor for the rest of my life. It's a bit weird. I, I just think just like let your beekeeping like mantra evolve with what works. and change stuff. And it's not a case of, right, you're— it's not binary. You're not like— it's not one or the other. You just change stuff all the time. Uh, Joe saying about, yeah, pollen microscopy. I can't say that as well. We'll have to learn that one for the beekeeping show. Microscopy. No, that's not it. Says forget matchsticks, keep the crown board warm to control condensation. That's exactly my point of view on that one. How to prevent fondant turning into liquid on the crown board? So you're making the fondant yourself, the bees will kind of turn it into liquid. This is what they do. So they can't eat solid fondant, they'll go out and they'll forage water and they'll turn it into liquid. If it's like, if you're getting too much moisture in the hive and your fondant starts getting sloppy and going down the frames. That tends to happen when the colony is not that strong, and it can be a bit annoying. You can get like sticky bees and a sticky queen. What I would suggest if you are getting that is to feed it like over a crown board, to put the crown board on with the whole inverted takeaway container on top of the hole, and it doesn't happen as much then because the— it's not so— there's not so much moisture above it making it all Joe, I don't know what these live streams would be without Joe. He's doing a great job of asking lots of questions. Um, thanks, Joe. So he's saying, started seeing beaks sugar dusting to get rid of varroa. What do you think of that? Again, it's pretty much been like proven that it doesn't do anything. Like, it is not effective for controlling varroa. You'll get like a few of them that will drop off, but you're not doing anything to the phoretic mites anyway. So even if you've got all of the phoretic mites like living on the bees to drop off, you still have all the ones in the brood. And then it's been proven that it's really damaging for open brood. So if you've got like eggs and larvae and you're sprinkling icing sugar in them, it damages a lot of them. So it's actually harmful for the colony. I don't know who— I don't know who did that study. Something like— I think it might be Randy Oliver, maybe. I don't know. And another one for Joe. He says he never understands why oxalic acid is only allowed once a year in the UK and not 3 times over 5-day intervals. That's just the UK just going mad and wanting to make everything like completely, um, what's the word, like where it's restricted and someone can make some money out of it. It's as simple as that. Like, they've done the tests in America and fine over there, isn't it? You can do what you want. you can do it with the supers on over there. But oh no, in the UK you must use sugar-filled apibioxal, and you can only use it for one treatment. It's just, it's just bonkers. Have I ever thought about doing the BBKA exams? Nope, I've never thought about doing the BBKA exams, and I would never do the BBKA exams. I'm not one for it. I'm not one for doing exams. I'm for squatting up. like, what would it prove? I'll probably fail them, but I wouldn't not do them because I'd fail them. But I would just— I just think with stuff like that, it's just experience-based. And if you're not holding your hive tool in the right way, or you're— I don't know, I'm going to go off on one now. And I wouldn't do the BBKA exams. I'm just not one for studying. I just find it a bit boring. £25 for 15 kilograms of api pasta Telford looks like a deal. I can't be turning— oh, you can't be turning down. I think the Happy Mix is at a really good price. So yeah, that is— that's pretty— it's pretty good price for Happy Pasta, I guess. Like, sugar— any sugar fondants are not cheap. So even like bulk baker's fondant this year is loads more. I've got quite a big batch of it still to go through, but, um, used to be like £8, £7 or £8 for a 12.5 kilogram slab. I think it's at least double that now. Oh, Lynn, thank you very much. That's good. Yeah, thumbs up. We like thumbs up on the stream. It surprisingly helps the amount of thumbs I can get up. So if you do enjoy the stream, thumbs up, always good. Oh, got Richard Noel online. Hi, Richard, how you doing? Gonna like Zap you in, and you can you can come and join me on a live stream if you want. Joe Murphy saying some of the arguments I see online on forums etc are crazy, especially the AMM versus Buckfast argument that seems to be a big argument causing topic at the moment. So I should probably stop like fanning the flames. Ah, Richard Richard is up for this. Why? I don't I don't know if I can do it on this one, Richard. I might have to stop the stream and get everyone to dial back in, but I am up for that if you want. If you want to do it, I can quickly— I can quickly load this up on StreamYard and, uh, R5. We can do a Richard Noel Lawrence Edwards version 2. I think we've got to do that if Richard's here. So if Richard— give me, give me the thumbs up if you're up for that. I will, um, email me your No, I will Twitter message you a link to StreamYard if you're up for it. We'll close this down, we'll come back on StreamYard. All right, okay, so everyone, all bets are off. We're canceling this stream and we are going straight into a Richard Knoll Lawrence Edwards version 2. So keep the questions coming, uh, and we will be back in 5 minutes. I'll see you in a sec, Richard.