Black Mountain Honey: Let's Talk Bees with Laurence Edwards - Episode 61

Hello and welcome to another episode of Let's Talk Bees. What a week it has been, as you can tell probably by the suntan on my face. So I have conveniently scheduled my video filming day to be on the same day that I do my live streams. I've had a bit of a shocker. I have filmed 30 videos so far today, and I think if I do a 3-hour live stream, I do not think I'm going to be able to talk for the rest of the week. So I have some Very, very bad news for everyone before I just quickly put my phone on silent. You can see I'm not at all prepared for this live stream, but I have some bad news. And previously, what I would do on a Friday night— so every other week on a Friday, I would stay until the last comment was asked, and as soon as you'd finished all of that, I would go. But I'm afraid I am changing. I'm bringing in a change, and that change is Let's Talk Bees on a Friday night will now be a maximum of 1 hour long. So I know that's quite a big change, and it means that I'm gonna have to handle the questions differently. I'm still gonna aim, and I'm still gonna do my very best to try and get through every single question that I can, but I might have to kind of compress that down a little bit. Um, the, the reason being is there's just not enough hours in the day, and I've still got so much that I need to do today, and I just can't do it. So I'm really sorry about that. The next one is, I'm aware that I failed miserably in my attempt to give away a free queen this week as well, so I thought I'd bring something new to the live streams, which is this. How exciting is that? So every time you ask a question If I hold that there, you get to guess like a grid number, so you can have like D2 or A1 or G4 or whatever. And I'm just going to select a little cross. I'm going to put a cross in one of these now. Every time you ask a question, if you put your guess in the front of it, I will mark you off, and the person who finds where I've hidden this red X will win a mated queen. So So let's put it there. There we go. See where it is. I'm saying it to the camera now. I'm saying it out loud to the camera in my head. There we go. For anyone who is a mind reader, let me see what you've got. In terms of queens, we are still sold out way in advance. The next batch is the 15th of May. I get a lot of calls by people saying, "I need a queen urgently." When is the earliest you can send? And I send the 15th of May, and they say, "That's way too. That's way too like long away." And I always say. It's not that long away at all. You know, if you kill the queen today, which is the 2nd of May, you can't really put a new queen in until the 10th at the absolute earliest, and we can send them on the 15th. So it's only 5 days, and leaving your colony queenless for that amount of time is not a big issue at all. Right, let's jump straight into the questions then. Sam Brista says, what is the difference between your UK-mated F1 Buckfast queen and your premium F1 Buckfast queen? So for anyone who's not aware, the premium F1 Buckfast queen is a new addition. Where we have taken the very best of our selected breeder queens and sent them out to Malta, and they're going to rear them en masse over there. So in short, the answer is they are very, very similar in terms of genetics. They are the best of the best that we absolutely do, and they're not going to get any better than that. The difference now only is going to be one's in the UK and one is bred out in Malta, but they are top-tier genetics, and you'll be happy with either of them. Uh, John Hayes says good evening all. Good evening to you too, John. Richard Mallion, channel member, says hello. Hi all. Hello to you too, Richard. Hi Lawrence, my inspections are on Saturdays. After going in on Wednesday for swarm checks, would you advise to go back in this Saturday for a routine inspection? Um, why did you go in on the Wednesday for the swarm check? Was you kind of like seeing something, some bearding, and decided to take action? I, I would probably just go back to Saturday inspections after that and, and stick to a regimented 7-day inspection. You've done absolutely right there to go in if you think your bees are swarming and have a look, but I would go back here, go back to the Saturday inspections just to make sure that it's a time that you can actually go and manage those bees. Nigel Lavender says, evening all. After, after a hit week, a hot week here in Norfolk, today the temperature dipped. Not sure what the bees will think to that. I'm quite happy that it's gone down a little bit and there's not been that much foraging activity today in my hives. The bees will take advantage of that and they'll just use that for a bit of hive tidying up and compressing down all of that nectar, putting it to where it needs to go as well. So I don't think they'll fussed about it at all. Richard Mallion, channel member, says, have a 4-year-old queen I think I should replace before the winter. Is the beginning of August not too late to requeen? So as long as she's not showing any signs of failing now, uh, beginning of August is a very, very good time to requeen. Very good queens at that time of year, um, but also very accepting of the colonies. That is when I like to requeen majority of mine. Chasing Shadows, channel member, says, hi Lawrence, hope all's well. What queen marking pens do you recommend? All-based ZR ones that you have previously recommended aren't available on Amazon more. Thanks, Luke. Uh, the ones that I always fall back on that are available, the pens, are the Toma. T-O-M-A. Very good oil-based pen. Says, the queen I ordered turned up from you today. Amazing service as always. Thank you, Dale. And thank God. Um, and the hive she is going into is so aggressive. Need one more queen for another angry colony, then I'm on all Black Mountain honey queens in all 7 hives. Wow, gonna be some very happy, nice calm bees, and you'll get a lot of honey, I'm sure. Arctic Beekeeper says hello from the Arctic. Hello to you too. Says picked up a small swarm today in East Devon, should I requeen, and if so, can I requeen a hive of local bees with a Buckfast queen? So it's up to, it's up to you whether you want to requeen. I always think with a swarm, might as well wait and see, like, what— as long as it's not in a garden apiary, and if it does go a bit wrong, you've got a backup plan. But I always like to see, like, what they do, you know. You might, you might find some really good genetics in a swarm, you never know. I did— I'm doing a video at the moment of a cutout Um, and it's a, it's a beautiful golden queen in there. God knows where it's come from, but it's a really, really nice queen, really nice colony as well. And that was just a random colony that I found in someone's roof, so who knows. I would definitely give it a go, give it a couple of rounds of brood in a quarantine apiary to make sure it is disease-free. And then the next bit of the question says, should I requeen, and if so, can I requeen a hive of local bees with a Buckfast queen? So you definitely can, but the, the darker the bee, the closer they are to AMM, the more difficult it is to requeen, and the higher the chance that they'll try and supersede the new Buckfast queen, even if there's wrong with her. So I recommend going back in, um, every 3 days after she's out of the cage, taking down any supersedure cells that they start to make. And as soon as you start getting the daughters of the queen that you've put in there, the Buckfast queen, then they will stop doing it. Uh, right, let's jump on here. Oh, got first one on, right? So Graham Thomas says D2. Um, I'm gonna put people's guesses in green. So unfortunately it is not D2. You do have to ask the question at the same time. You can't just come in with your, with your D2s. I'll take that down to Uh, PK says hello. So after that, you've got to put your question in with your guesses. Um, right, where did I get to? Channel member says, hey bud, hope all's good. I bought the Mini Plus hives. When are you going to stick the video up, the starter finisher? Oh, did I say I was doing that? The problem that I've found myself in this year, I've got like 25 videos on the go. So I've started filming 25 videos, just standard YouTube videos that everyone's going to get to see, but none of them are close to finishing yet. and potentially got months on some of them. So it will just be one video a week, but I appreciate that it's gonna miss quite a lot of the season doing it that way. I am also trying to squeeze in just a small extra 150 videos this year for a little project called HiveQ. There we go, first name for that. Got the t-shirt and everything. Um, but I will put up as much content as I possibly can. For their guess, went for D7, and that was not correct either. This is good fun, isn't it? I love this. We'll do this more. easier than getting people to post pictures of their queens, which was fantastic, by the way. Thank you everyone for posting your, uh, your pictures, much appreciated. Would a demerare work with a new queen, or should you be better double brooding? Uh, it would work perfectly well with a new queen. Excellent. The thing with the, the thing with the demerare is it tricks the colony into thinking that there's 2 different parts of the swarm, so they work kind of like twice as hard, both parts, but particularly that bottom queen right part. So the demerare has a negative impact on queens, like in the long run. So where a queen might last for 3 years, if you consistently demerare them, they're probably going to last 2 years, which you might think, well, why would you do that? Because you're reducing the age of your queen, but you're massively increasing the amount of honey that you potentially can produce. So it's, it's like a trade-off. So no, demerares with young queens work very, very well. Is lemongrass a good swarm attractor? Very good, very similar to queen pheromone. Then I'll start making splits in a month or so for next year, and we'll be using your queens for the splits. Completed 2 demarays today as well to hopefully prevent swarming. Many more to do over the weekend. I think a lot of people are in the same boat. It is going to be a very, very busy weekend, this one. What are our options for creating more space in a Flow Hive? Supers are on, double brood, split last week, but if things carry on, they'll be out of space in a few weeks. So very, very difficult, and that is the challenge with the Flow Hive. It's how do you increase space. Double brood is the biggest thing that you can do, and your bees will thank you for that. The only other option that you have in a flightway— I've got another couple of options, but the main option that you've got is just regular tapping of the honey. If you can regularly tap the honey and then— so you regularly tap the honey in the supers and then go into the brood box and bruise any of the cappings, put them in between the brood, and then the bees will move that up into the super, which, as long as you keep on tapping it and giving space up in the super, will alleviate any congestion in the brood box. That is about the best thing that you can do without resorting shortage of just putting on a standard wooden super and trying to extract some honey in the normal way. Betty B. Brewski says, hey Lawrence, thank you for your patience with my questions. Elizabeth, my pleasure, Elizabeth or Betty B. Brewski. Uh, Graham Thomas says, with this exceptional start to spring, do you think we'll have an early June gap or a gap at all? So I was talking about this on the channel member exclusive videos the other day. I think the impact of this really, really good early weather is it is going to compress the season together like that. That might result in an early June gap, it might result in no June gap and an overlap. What it is, once 100% certainly going to end up with is a mega gap come the end of the year. So normally, kind of like, you get like the last bits of the bramble and all of everything's kind of dying down as you're feeding up. That's going to come like back end of June, I reckon. And we're going to have a— probably gonna have like a month-long gap of not that much, um, unless we get some rain. And no, a couple of weekends or a weekend of rain will make all of the difference here. So we— I never want to be the person that's praying for rain, and at the moment I am more than happy it to continue just being hot and sunny every single day because I love it. But on the whole, for beekeepers, we want a little bit of rain. So maybe it can just like a couple of thunderstorms at night saturate the ground, let it sink in, and then that'll be very good, I think. Uh, F8? It's not F8, no. Um, but this is good fun. Uh, Nikki says, is it a good idea to vape new splits with oxalic acid? Um, no, no better than Um, just like vaping colonies with oxalic acid. I wouldn't say there's any benefit to doing it when they're young. It's definitely a good idea to vape swarms that you catch with oxalic acid where there's no brood there whatsoever, and you can just blast them, kill all of those phoretic mites. Very, very worth it at that point. Shell says D4 and it's not D4. She says, hi, what age do you think is suitable to have kids in the apiary? I've offered to give a hive to 2 neighbors. They visit each week with one of their parents. One is 10 and one is 5. Um, I would say as long as their parents are kind of bought into it and their parents are happy to take like ownership of the beehive and then they'll let their kids get on with it, then I think, I think that is okay. But you do need, you do need a responsible adult there, I would say, at all times with, with colonies of bees like that. Uh, says queen's arrived today, perfect, thanks. My pleasure, Kerry. Steve's Honeybees channel member says, doing splits over the weekend, is it best to feed straight after the split or leave it 1 to 2 days? So if the weather is like it is at the moment My mantra with feeding is this: if you do not need to feed, do not feed. Simple as that. I do everything, absolutely everything possible to avoid feeding my bees. So I'm thinking at the moment, splits, no chance they're getting fed because it is just like sopping with nectar coming in, so there's no need to. If you— if it was cloudy and rainy, I would say yeah, get splits fed pretty much straight away. Uh, on the basis that you're moving to a new apiary. So if you're moving them to a new apiary, you can feed them straight away. If you're doing splits in the same apiary, I would wait a good 2 or 3 days before starting to feed the split that you've taken out, otherwise you can cause all sorts of robbing. Even waiting a few days in the robbing season and you can, you can get yourself caught out with that. Good evening, Laurence. On average, how long does it usually take for the bees to cap the honey supers which are full? On my last inspection, my supers were full. So It's a, it's a, um, you can't answer that question perfectly because say for example it goes like rainy but quite warm for the next 4 days or something like that, and you've just got these beehives full to the brim with bees, absolutely full, and the weather's nice and warm but they can't go out because it's raining. All of those bees will just work on, all the bees that can work on it will work on capping over those supers. If it's just beautiful sunny weather, 24 degrees, and all the bees are out collecting nectar, they prioritize that over, over capping it, so they'll just be going out. bringing in more nectar, bringing it in, and they're not like fanning— well, they'll be fanning it down a little bit overnight, but they're just coming back more nectar. So it looks like all of our hives at the moment, which is every single cell is full of nectar, but give the bees a chance and they'll fan that down and reduce the volume of it down significantly, and then you start to get some space savings. So all you can really do at the moment is just hope that you've got enough space in your beehives and give your bees enough space. They will eventually fan it down and start capping it over, but it is dependent on the size of the colony and the weather. Channel member says, are some bees just not as good as others, where produce less honey even though they are still strong colonies? Oh, 100%. Some colonies do not have a good work ethic. They just go out and just like— I was about to say something I shouldn't have said there, but just go out and kind of like wander around and don't really do a huge amount. There's definitely work ethic when it comes to bees. Some are good and some aren't good, and even the ones that are big and nice and strong don't seem to collect the same amount of honey. Very interesting. Richard Mallion says J6. It is not J6. Next one says, evening Lawrence and all, Mark and Sharon at Borough Bees, have a good weekend. Good weekend to you too, Mark. Steve's Honeybees says B1, not B1. Andy, channel member, says— why is that down there? Evening Lawrence, installed the Black Mountain Honey Queens today but still had backfilled brood nest with stores despite 2 supers on. Not capped and no room to lay. Any suggestions? So the only thing you can do is put more supers on. I know if they're not moving it up properly, they will, um, and as soon as that queen like really wants to go and lay, they will clear it out. So you just need to make sure that all of the stores downstairs in the brood nest is not capped over. If they start capping it over, just keep on uncapping it and then give them enough space in the supers and they should eventually move it up. Whoa, right. I think I lost a swarm last week. Took down all of the capped queen cells and left the best looking open one. Luckily had someone with me, so I I didn't panic. That's what it's all about. The Net chose E6, and it is not E6. How crazy would it be if we did 99 squares and no one got it? I would definitely call it a day there. I mean, not really. Uh, says, hi Lawrence, I know I keep asking you about this one. When putting the tainted demerary brood box underneath the current brood box, do you wait until the honey is capped or put it down there whenever? I put it down there. I try and wait until it's not capped. If you wait until it's capped, it's more work. So just put it down there when it's open and then they'll definitely move it up. Is it, uh, is the only way to calm my bees after a swarm replacing the queen? They chase across 3 acres, it's a nightmare. It's the only way to do it. And people tell me, they're like, yeah, but you'd say that because you sell queens. And it's like, well, I don't really see any other viable options there. It's quite clearly the genetics of the colony, which are all daughters of the queen. So if you've got an angry, horrible colony, you do need to kill the queen and replace her with a new queen. A kind of simple fact. Channel, uh, not channel member, says, so, so swarms, I think we're all having a strong Swarming spring. When making a split, can we leave the queen and take a cell and the and bees, or will they still swarm if the cells are capped? I'm just reading that again. When making a split, can we leave the queen and take a cell and bees, or will they swarm if the cells are capped? So you you definitely have to take. You have to take the queen and just leave one cell. That's the only way that I ever do the split. I never try and kind of like interchange it or do it any other way, or or try and be clever and kind of say, "Well, I've got six frames with six swarm cells on. I'll make up six splits." it's just 6 times the disappointment, I think. So I, I do try and keep it simple. I think I'm missing what you're saying here though. When making a split, can we leave the queen and take a cell and bees, or will they still swarm if the cells are capped? That's, that's the bit that's throwing me. If the cells are capped, they swarm, they've gone, gone already. So you won't be getting the queen. You have to reword that one, John. Sorry, I'm missing it. Hi Lawrence, great to see you. What's your view on everything being so early? Mine are filling frames so fast it's going to crash with the early dearths. even though it's tempted to pull frames of honey. What I'm saying to everyone is just make your hay while the sun is shining and get your honey off as soon as it's capped and just keep on filling up those buckets because it will end very, very early and abruptly this season. It can't continue going on like this and I think we'll end up feeding our bees a lot in the winter to keep them alive, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. It will cost you some more money but overall, trust me, you'll do quite well in 2025 when it comes to honey versus feed costs. and it builds nice big strong colonies going into winter, so it's not the end of the world. If I had— if I could write down my perfect season, it wouldn't be far from what we're getting at the moment, maybe just a little bit more rain. Right, PK says hello. Hello to you too. Also says, how many splits have you made already this year? Your guess is F1. It's not F1. I've probably a couple hundred splits for me this year. I leave the majority of the bulk splits to Richard, and when you see Richard's apiary, you're just like, Whoa, there are some seriously serious splits down there. Evening from northern Spain, missed a few weeks, hope all is well. Glad to hear you are well, Margaret. Good evening. Hello to you too. So many bees this time, so many bees this time, mine are really stripy, almost like wasps this year, but super friendly, why is that? You've probably got yourself a good quality queen and the bees are slightly more orange. Eggs and Honey says B4. It's not B4. She says, would a demerit work with a new queen? We did that question there. I think we answered that one before. Andy is G9. It's not G9. Sorry about that, Andy. Charming Adventure, we're just going through all the ones for the questions, so we're doing catch-up. Someone's already done D4. It's definitely not D4. Popular one though. Steve's Honeybee says, what's the best way to cover the roof vent on the nucs we've received from you? So I just use a piece of like Kingspan or a piece of Celotex, something like that. Very, very simple. Keeps the heat in and keeps the rain out. Evening guys from Dunny Bee, still nice and warm here in West Yorkshire. Very warm, isn't it? Lovely. Hi, 4 weeks after introducing our first nucleus to our bees, we're getting swarm cells and supersedure cells. Why? F2? It's not F2. So the colony is just expanding and they've probably been— haven't given— they probably haven't been given enough space early enough. or they're feeling that the foundation is a wall, so they're not respecting the space and growing out. So you'll just be getting swarm cells or supersedure cells. It will be one or the other, definitely won't be both. The way that you can tell the difference is if there's just like one cell throughout the whole colony, regardless of where it is on the frames, it's supersedure. I treat anything more than 2 as supersedure. 2 always throws me. Generally it's supersedure when it's 2 cells. If it's 3 cells, I treat it as swarming every single time though. So if you've just got multiple cells, then your bees are trying to swarm and you need to make a split. Hi Lawrence, what is Hive Q? Is that part of your membership? J6. Oh, somebody else already did J6. So Hive Q is my new online beekeeping course. So it's going to be 140 exclusive, never-before-seen videos that turn you from a beginner to a competent beekeeper in just 14 days. It is going to be released in October 2025, and I've got a lot of work to do on And that is the logo. HiveQ 14-Day Beekeeper is a part of HiveQ. HiveQ is an online beekeeping resource platform that is pretty cool. Sorry, badly worded questions. When doing an artificial swarm, so I always need to take out the queen, or can I leave the queen and just take the bees and a queen cell? So if you just take the bees and a queen cell and leave the queen there, it doesn't really do anything to stop the swarming impulse. So I would always take the queen out, knock down all of the cells barring one, and just leave one. Or if you want to make multiple splits, take the queen out and then split up the nuc accordingly depending on how many swarm cells you've got. But just make sure that you've got enough bees to actually do that. Russ says, we'll see D3. Where am I? No, A3. It's not A3. Ah, I've done it in red. I've ruined my lovely drawing now. Where's my green pen gone? There it is. End of the week. And I did it in the wrong spot as well. It's A3. There we go. Sorry. Right, David had— what did you have? H7. Riveting entertainment this is for everyone, just listening to me playing like kind of a weird version of Battleships on my own. Right, John Denham says, just requeened 2 hives with— where's my mouse? Oh geez. Just requeened the 2 hives with queens that arrived today from you. They look great, but they have backfilled a lot of the brood area with nectar. Will they move it up to the supers? G3. So it's not G3, but yes, they will move it up to the supers so long as it is open and so long as there is enough space up in the supers for when the queen needs to lay. If you've got capped frames of any stores down there, you need to smush and bruise the cappings and then put them towards the middle, and then the bees will move it up. Lawrence, it's been an insane spring in Suffolk, a number of hives on 5+ supers and each one full of bees, each super heavy and honey but not capped. Would you add another super or wait till capped? add as many supers as you possibly can get at this point in the year. I think if you don't, they're just going to swarm and they're not going to cap it until the weather changes or until we get closer to the June gap, is my guess. So space, space, space is the aim of the game. I had a massive colony from a queen I got from you last year. She's already laid up a double brood that's emerged and filled it up again. I'm struggling to find her with the amount of the bees in the hive. That is one of the problems with prolific colonies and, uh, Buckfast bees in general, but it's a nice problem to have. Rich Wild says D5, and it's not D5. Looking forward to my 2 Black Mountain honey queens arriving next week, looking forward to sending them mark. Any recommendation for finding a queen in between thousands and thousands of bees? So when your colony is small coming out of spring and you find your queen, mark your queen. That is a very, very good tip, and it does help. I've also found as well, even if your queen is marked, look for an unmarked Queen, and it becomes really easy to find the marked ones, like that mantra. Um, but apart from that, just practice. It does get easier. Margaret says, finally did my first demo after finding my queen. Do I need to inspect the bottom brood box as well as the top brood box of queen cells after 1 week? So no, there won't be any queen cells down in the bottom brood box as long as the queen is there. I like to go down and check just to see if she's making, uh, laying eggs though. Uh, JC— sorry, JSCFB says, I'm still in the process of replacing all my local queens to Black Mountain honey queens in my colonies. They outperform anything I Previously. A very apt choice of letter there as well, letter-number combo of F1. I love it. And thank you for the endorsement. Glad to hear that the bees are doing well. I do love it when people have kind of like persevered with bees that maybe have not been the best bees, but they were told they're the only bees that they should keep, and then they've not been getting much honey and the bees are swarming, and then they try some Buckfast bees and they're just like, what? Why have I been slogging away with these horrible bees for years and not getting any honey and just watching them swarm? when the Buckfast bees are just really nice and calm and chilled and produce loads of honey. Oh, right, John says C6 was his guess and it is not C6. Wow, it's a lot of guesses, a lot of guesses. Just before anyone guesses it here, if anyone guesses B3, you'll see a little red mark there, but that was the one where I put it in the wrong thing, so it's not B3. There is your clue. After a demerare, does the honey that gets put in the former brood box become impure because of the dark comb? So it definitely doesn't become impure because of the dark comb. The bees are constantly putting honey into that dark comb, or nectar into that dark comb, and they're moving it up. The, the amatraz that's in the Apivar strip does taint the wax, so you can't extract out of those combs, but you can move it in, you can move it out. Once it's moved out, it's no longer contaminated. He came on slightly late, but what's all the codes about? Giving away a free queen. So if you choose like A, B, C, D, all the way through to J, and then a number through to 10, it's on a grid and there's a free queen knocking around somewhere, so as soon as someone gets the right one, then they win a free queen. Fun, eh? New hive, it's filled brood box but not drawing out the super. I'm cycling out national frames from the Langstroth. Would it be an idea to put the chopped out comb into the super when I cycled out? Um, I wouldn't, I wouldn't put any chopped out comb into the super, no, it's messy. Um, I just leave it as it is. In terms of the bees not drawing out the super, there's probably just not enough bees to go up there yet. Give it a few weeks and they will be up there. John says, good evening, boss. Good evening to you too, John. John is the glue that holds this operation together. Thank you for everything you do, John. Uh, Tim Doyle, channel member, says, hi all, I added a super to make a brood and a half last weekend, added a super to 3 supers on. Is it too soon to do a demerit this weekend? G7. So no, if you've got the bees and you've got the supers, it is not too early to do a demerit this weekend. I am doing all of my demerits this weekend. Uh, Charming Adventure says, C4. It's not C4. Uh, says, hi Lawrence, what do you think of the GasVap and where is the best place to buy oxalic acid? So you're not allowed to buy oxalic acid anymore, you have to buy ethyl bryoxyl, which is rubbish. And I'm not a massive fan of the GasVap at all, it doesn't work very well. Um, it's, it's not a patch on the InstantVap at all. It, uh, if I was summing up the two or like comparing the two, I would go with a dribble and I would do an oxalic acid dribble instead. I was going to use it that way around. PJ Morgan, well, you asked what the game is. I think you got it before, and you are E2. It's not E2. You don't even need to know the rules. You're still playing. Adam 2484 says, hi, we started our first type of the nucleus, but getting swarm and supercedure cells. Why? Not big enough yet to do a split. F2, please. We love the shorts. I'm glad. I'm glad you love the shorts. A lot of people don't love the shorts. Probably should talk about that at this point. We officially my page, Plant Mountain Honey's page, officially went viral this week. We had one video, the Shorts video, you may have seen it with the foundation where I kind of like pull it up and it makes that wonderful sound. It got 19 million views in 24 hours. So that is it, 100% officially gone viral. Well happy with that. Oh, Harry Reynolds says, evening Lawrence, comp queen received today. Thank you very much. There we go, we are genuinely sending out some competition queens. A single new queen worth up to £50 every single week. We're going to do loads of different ways Today we are doing kind of battleships, aren't we? Markets at Walker Bee Honey says, I took a risk early April with the queenless colony by adding a broom of a frame of brood in all stages and left unsure if drones were mature enough to mate. Check today, queen's present with eggs. Gamble paid off. I think a lot of people are going to find themselves in a very similar situation. The, the couldn't have got a better spring. Absolutely perfect. Uh, Ian says, what am I missing with the initials numbers this week? D2, CR, etc. So we are playing battleships for a free queen. Harry Reynolds said, spring harvest today from 2024 Black Mountain Honey Queens doing amazing. 45 kilograms from 2 hives after a split each, 5 supers. Crazy spring, absolutely love it. John is asking what the comp is as well. You have to turn up on time to know that, John. I'm joking, I'm sure you've worked it out by now. Um, Graham Thomas says, currently have a BS Honeybees poly nuc but want to add a second brood box. I'm sure you've done a video on this, E5. It's not E5, you need to buy the Maze More extension boxes and cut out the runners to get the bee space to match. Definitely works though. Uh, Glenn says, F1, are you on your own? Mated queens only available for a dispatch on a Thursday in June. So F1— F1 has already been done, and they are— yeah, like, we, we've just become so busy at the moment that we need to— we're so regimented. I've got this, I've got this calendar here, and every day is regimented to the nth degree. And I just have to do— we do Wednesdays at picking up queens and going out and harvesting queens, and then Thursday is dispatch day for all of the queens, and then Friday is filming day all day, literally all day, and streaming. Um, there's no There's no other way to do it, I'm afraid. Flower Street Farm B says hello from Colorado. Hello to you too. L4 hit the like button. That's off the grid, so we're still going to put that on. That's not even on the grid, that one, Steve. You missed the 10 by 10 grid. Brilliant. Marcus Bug said, what's the earliest do you think is worth carrying out a second demeray? Would 4 to 5 weeks after the first be too soon? Desperate to stop them going. Difficult one, this. So I would normally say Like 2 demerays max in a year. If you can get away with it, just do one. I'm doing my demerays this week, and the demeray normally gives you 3 weeks of them not swarming-ish, something like that. So I'm doing them kind of like on— what is it, the 5th, the 4th of May? So 3 weeks takes me through to the 25th of May. The spring harvest is going to be over then, so I'd be looking at what am I doing for my June gap preparations at that point. Maybe I'm taking my honey off, going back to double brood, feeding up. That's probably what I'll do this year, and then make a decision on whether that double brood is going to produce any more honey, and if not, I'll split into 2. That is going to be my strategy, I think, for this tire for, for later on in the year. Uh, Sarah Jane Turner says F2. No, that was already chosen as well. Um, John says J48. It's not, it's not J48 or J20. Um, sorry, John. Uh, if the queen's— so, so G1, if the queen cell is sealed, does that mean the swarm has gone? So generally it means the swarm has gone. Um, but I, I've been into plenty of hives where they've capped it and then it's like raining. And then the swarm is still there and the queen is still there. Or if you've got a clipped queen, then the clipped queen will still be there and they'll swarm with the first virgin. So generally it does. I would say 9 times out of 10 you'd be right there. And you chose G1. It's not G1. Uh, George Payne. There we go. George Payne says, hey Lawrence, hope all's well with you. One question, one of my hives is bearding out the front but otherwise fine. Lack of space? Love the videos. So it can, can be lack of space. Can also be just Too hot. Maybe they've got— maybe you've got the ventilation board like in, and if you take the ventilation board out, they can kind of like cool down the hive a little bit better and they won't need to beard as much. Can also be a sign of swarming, um, can also be a sign that they have actually swarmed and a queen has walked kind of like over the front of the hive. Might be a virgin that's done that and they just left some pheromone there and the bees are just reluctant to leave. So there's a few different things I would look to just give sufficient— give a little bit more space and give some better ventilation, and it should stop it. Matt Page says, good evening, my man. I'm listening in constantly while playing good old battleships with my daughter. Brilliant, that is perfect. Daryl Hancock says B6. It is not B6. Oh, I love this, right? Margaret says, I wanted to— I wanted my bees to move honey from the tainted frames up into the super drawn comb. Brood cappings put on the brood box, needed to wait a week due to rain, went back and they recapped frames. Any advice? So there's probably not enough frames upstairs for them to take it, so they're seeing that as like good space. If they're not taking it up like that, the way you need to do it is to take the open frames of brood put it in between— sorry, take the open frames of stores, the bruised frames of stores, and put it in between 2 frames of brood. They'll definitely move it up then. They do not like that at all. Um, Martin says E6. Uh, E6 was already done. It's not E6. What is the latest a split should be made? It does depend on whether you're using like mated queens. If you're using mated queens, you can make splits kind of right up until the end of the year as long as you've got enough bees. Um, for open matings in the UK I don't like doing kind of any queen rearing into August, so I get mine done kind of back end of July at the latest. Hi Lawrence, I've inherited a beekeeping operation and we have many frames of foundation in which have lost their smell. My mentor says this foundation is not attractive to the bees and he recommends that we discard the old wax and buy a new foundation. Do you agree? No, I do not agree. Old foundation, as long as it's proper beeswax foundation, even though it loses its smell and loses its color a little bit, if you heat it back up again it brings all of that back. So you can heat it up with a hair dryer just to get it back and nice and fresh, but you know what, the bees don't care. The bees will just work it anyway once they get enough warmth into it. I would do the easiest thing, which is just do nothing and continue to use it. It'll be fine. Uh, John's gone with SN4. It's definitely not SN4. He's working all the way through the, the number-letter combination puns. I love it. David says G5. It's not G5. Uh, Thomas says, evening, Laurence, we just bought our first Black Mountain Honey Queen. I'm very excited. Great to hear. Um, it is exciting, Brian, your first queen, isn't it? And getting it in. I love, I love watching people's or hearing about people's transformations with good queens. It is very good. Uh, right, where are we going next? Rosie says, good evening, Lawrence, hope all is well. Put a super on the brood box last week, checked today and nothing has been done to any of the friends in the super. Is there anything I need to do? No, but just go back and just remember kind of how it works with the brood box. When you put it on, you're kind of going to have a 2 to 3 week gap before you start seeing lots and lots of bees in the super. So you could argue you could put the super on a little bit later, but you're putting it on into— in order to ensure that there is sufficient space in that colony. And you'll just come back one day and it will just be like there'll be loads of bees in it. So patience is the aim of the game at the moment. Hi Lawrence, just wondering what polyash forth feed do you use on your hives? Thank you from Ireland. So I only use the polyash forth feeder from Abello. I got rid of all of my other polyash forth feeders because they were nowhere near as good. I should also say with the beard in question, they have plenty of space in the supers but not the brood box. So I double-check the ventilation thing. I suspect it will be you've got the ventilated screen in and maybe they just need that taking out. But all colonies will beard when it's warm like this, it's nothing to be majorly worried about. Good evening, so I did a Demerara split exactly as you did and my bees won't pass the queen excluder. Has this ever happened to you? So if they won't pass the queen excluder, there's almost certainly nowhere near enough bees to do the Demerara split. You need a brood box full of bees and a minimum of 2 supers full to the brim with bees. If you've done it and you end up with like loads of bees at the top, loads of bees at the bottom, and nothing in the middle, there's not enough bees to do the demerare there. I would look to remerge the 2 brood boxes as soon as possible. Right, where do we get to? The Jizz Wizard says, I accidentally killed my best queen. I put her— I shouldn't laugh, sorry. I know we said we'd call you the GIS Wizard. but all I see is the Jizz Wizard. I accidentally killed my best queen. I put her into a Hope to See Queenless hive and let my other hive make a new queen, but the queenless hive killed her. How did you put her in? Did you cage her or did you just like drop her in? Oh, that's not good. It's nothing more annoying than a failed introduction. Hi Lawrence, I have an overwintered nuc and I hive them up with drawn-out frames which they have filled the frames with brood and are bubbling. When should I do the demerite? So for me, the demerite, you need that brood box full, 2 supers at least full, ideally 3. I would say if you can push it to 3, even better. And then and only then can you do it. Uh, has gone for F9. Kind of built that one up, didn't I? It's not F9, sorry. Um, he says, are you— are your own breed queens— sorry, we've done that one. Yeah, so they are only available for dispatch on Thursday all the way throughout the year. Hi Lawrence, your nucs are built up really well. Uh, sorry, your nucs are built up well, really strong full-size hives now. Found queen cells, so have followed your most excellent video and carried out a demerare. Oh, I, I hope— ah, I feel bad, Andy, I do. I might have confused you with that video. So for me, the rule is if you find queen cells, you have to do a split, an artificial swarm or some sort of split. The demerare cannot be done if there's any sort of queen cells there. It generally ends up with them swarming if you do demerare, like, reactively when you see swarm cells. If they're still there, I would go back there, I'd pinch the queen out, and I'd put the queen off in a nuc, and I'd reduce it down to one cell and merge everything back together again. and that is the split that maybe should have done in the first place. Sorry if, if any of that was confusing. The bees will be fine if you do that, but go back in and protect your investment, which is that queen. Hey, hey, how are you? I'm very good, Brian. Hope you're well. Long time no see. Uh, David Brea says, do you use asphalt feeders upside down when using fondant? So yes, I do. And on the, the normal, the first iteration, the first version of the Abello one, it works upside down. If you're using the 12-frame iteration, it doesn't work upside down. So you need to have a separate way of doing it for fondant. Uh, John says, I definitely needed Hive Q, lost a swarm 2 weeks ago, have 5 queen cells, virgins, hopefully to get out and get mated. Well, you couldn't have better weather for it, could you? Uh, G— George Payne has got G6, not G6. This is amazing, no one's getting it. Hi, I can't find a poorly laying queen. Would it be worthwhile putting a tin foil protected cap queen cell to see if the new queen will replace the poor queen? Yes, you can do that. It's like a forced supersedure. Definitely worth giving that a go. Do hives do anything strange when you cage their queen? Um, I'd say they'd get a little bit stressed. So yeah, I think you would see signs of distress if you cage their queen. Cycling out of my national nuc frames out of the Langstroth hive that isn't drawing out the super yet. Could I place the cut comb from the cycled out national into the super to tempt them up? I wouldn't I wouldn't do it. It's really messy, and they will get up there and they'll turn your foundation frames in the super into lovely drawn-out comb without any strapping in in a matter of weeks. So I would just—I would hold tight. John Hayes says H2. It's not H2. I've just lost my lid, which is very annoying. Lost my lid. Believe it. Marcus says A4. I missed the start. Not sure what people are guessing, but it's fine. I love it. A4 is not the correct answer, but good guess. Hi Lawrence, last week I discovered brood of all stages in 2 of my supers. Queen was below the queen excluder, but I'm not sure if it was a second queen or laying workers. I shook all of the bees out, and since there is no more new eggs, what should I do next? And is it okay to extract the honey later on? I had to get rid of the queen as well as there is a ton of drone brood. A new queen is coming from you next week as a replacement. So I, I wasn't 100% sure what was going on until you said that last little bit there, which is there's loads of drone brood. So you've almost certainly got laying workers. I would say they're 99% certain that is laying workers. You drop me a message and I will send you a video and an instruction on what to do with laying workers, like a bit more detailed than the answer I'm going to give now. But basically what you need to do is shake out all of the bees and just let them go into the neighboring beehives and then make a fresh split from somewhere else. F8, is it best to checkerboard when doing a split? So F8, someone's already chosen F8 and it wasn't that. I, at this time of the year with the, the temperature and the weather as it is at the moment, with the amount of nectar coming in, I like to do some minor checkerboarding when I'm doing a split. Yes. Uh, Syme67 says, new beekeeper, my 2 Buckfast nucs doing incredibly well, but I can't find the queen in one of them. No queen cells, the bees are happy, tons of capped brood, but my sense is she is in there. I would check for eggs. If you're seeing eggs, she's definitely there. If you're not seeing eggs, I would double-check for space, make sure there's enough space. And if you're not seeing eggs and there is enough space, the likelihood is she has gone, but hopefully not. Uh, Lynette says, how hard do you press to bruise cappings to try and get the honey moved up? I7. You're the first person to choose I. How weird's that? Out of all of those guesses, you're the only one who's chosen I, but it's not I7. Um, you, you press quite gently. Basically, you don't want to take the cappings off, you just want to smudge them, and that is a technical term, a smudge. which means like that. I don't know, I don't know the way how to describe it, but you don't, you don't want to uncap it. You're not trying to like take the honey off. If you're getting like honey dribbling down, you've gone too far. You're just kind of like running the hive tool over it to break it up a little bit. Technical term is a smudge. Should I just let it play out a bit longer as I don't want to panic into a bad decision? I think that's generally good advice with bees, is just kind of like take a step back sometimes and not, not jump in. Paul Fisher says A7. It's not A7. He says there seems to be a spate of chilled bee colonies suddenly getting one or two kamikaze defensive bees this week. Is this due to oilseed rape? I found when the oilseed rape finishes, which is like— it probably is finishing kind of like this week or last week around now, um, they, they flick a switch. They get really annoyed. So yeah, it's almost certainly the OSR finishing. Uh, John says J8. It's not J8. Gary says, "Is that I four? It's not I four." Dunny's Bee says, "J nine." It's not J nine. It's gonna be the last one that anyone guesses. PJ says, "B three three B." It's not B three. No, that was the one that I accidentally marked. Karen Evans says, "Evening all. Last Saturday you kindly helped with advice on the queen right side of a split that was seemingly starving. So pleased to report that they have recovered and our beautiful queen is laying again. Thank you so much for the." advice. B6. So it is not B6, and I'm glad the advice was useful and you got the colony back on track. Brilliant news. Hi, so I condense my hives and feed them syrup, but wondering how they go with dry sugar winter prep in New Zealand. Dry sugar is just much more work for the bees, it really is. Invert syrup, last couple of feeds of the winter or the late summer going into autumn, and your bees will thank you in the spring. Channel member, says, I did a split last week and they are booming. They have drawn out the foundation in a week filled it with nectar. Is this a problem if they run out of space before the new queen has been emerged and mated? So it's not a problem, but you just need to keep on adding that space above and bruising anything in the brood nest so when that queen is ready to lay, she's got space to lay. Uh, Ian is I8. It's not I8. Harry, not Barry, love it, says, did a Pagan split, inspected the original hive 5 days later and couldn't see the green dot queen but could see eggs and larva and 2 new queen cells. Has the original queen done a runner? I think so. Oh, that— I hate it when they do that. But if you, if you did the Pagden split, then do you not take the queen out and make her into the nucleus? Did you leave the queen in the original location? I always like to take the queen out from the original location and just move it along a little bit. Um, it sounds very much like they've done that, but only 2 queen cells. That's not that many. Like, if they were swarming, I'd expect to see more than that. They're definitely swarm cells and not emergency cells. What my recommendation to everyone is, if you're not sure of something when you're doing it, just take a picture, take loads of pictures, and then when you're trying to get advice later on, the pictures are just really, really good for referring back to. So I'd highly recommend pictures. Uh, Jizz Wizard says i7, it's not i7. Um, he says, I can't get the queen, if I win give it to the next one, leave a chat message. That's a good point, if you win it and you're not in the UK, you'd have to gift it to someone because it is— I can only send it within the UK. We can maybe do a collaboration with someone in the US and get a free queen sent out that way. You can keep on guessing as long as there's a question. How many guesses do we get? H7. What you could have done there— H7 is already, already answered— you could have just said how, B12, and then the next one many, F4. You've got 5 guesses then. No, but every single question can have a guess. Right, D10. That is the first person to choose 10. It's not 10, but Steve says, "What a great start to the season as a second-year beekeeper. It really doesn't get that much better." Morley Bee Honey has gone with C5. It's not C5. Eggs and Honey says, "Got a great swarm in the apiary. Had to put it in a deep brood. I had left a standard hive ready and empty, and it and it swarmed. Not from one of my hives either." I know so many people who have said that, waiting for their nuc, set their colonies up, and a swarm has just landed in. Sharon at Borough Bees has guessed J1. It's not J1. Prishak, I don't know how to say that, he says, I'm surrounded by fields of oilseed rape and 2 production hives have got 2 false supers. I've just added another today. Can you do a demerit and have them fill the tainted box, then nadir it under the new? Exactly what I do. Perfect, that is what I would do. I'm just reading the rest of what you said. Or is it better to just not do a demerit until the oilseed rape is over to avoid the problems of honey sitting in the frames. So in terms of doing the demerit on a colony that size, brilliant. In terms of all-seed rape, I'd just be inclined to take all of the honey off as soon as the all-seed rape finished. Get it off, get it, get it extracted, get into buckets, and then just kind of start again with some normal honey. Justin Big says, hi Lawrence, introduced the queen I had from you a few weeks back. I've been in to check but found a supersedure cell and swarm cells. She has not been accepted. A1. So it's not A1. Um, highly likely what's happened there, Justin, is that you're trying to requeen like an a darker colony, so an AM colony. They've accepted the queen and said, yep, she's good, and then they try and supersede her because they want to preserve their genetics somehow. So what my recommendation is for people doing that is to go back in every 3 or 4 days, knock down all of the superseder cells— and it will be superseder cells— and after, after a few weeks, and once the brood starts to emerge, they will stop doing it. But it is, it is a frustration and a nuance of introducing Buckfast queens. We have drawn out frames from a dead-out hive— sorry, we have drawn out frames from a dead-out hive and the bees don't seem to use it. Is there a reason for this? Would you melt them down? B10. So it's not B10. Any deadouts, I melt them down, and there's no excuses. Any— like, that is all I ever do now. Melt them all down. Best way of doing it. Harley says, L, uh, I4. It's not I4. Someone else has had that. Evening, Lawrence. Got a strong nectar flow and they're struggling to get into the supers even though they are rammed. Remove the queen, exclude it for the moment as undrawn. When I— when can I add back as they've drawn 50%? So I would, I would put the queen excluder back on. I don't think that's the reason, it's just very, very unusual conditions at the moment with so much nectar coming in. So I would just continue to give them additional space upstairs and make sure that all of the stores in the brood box are uncapped. Smush them if you need to and that will make enough space for them. It's not J10. Um, Chris at the Honey LM Home says F7, any tips for keeping cool in the I love it, absolutely love the heat. I don't need to keep cooling it, I just go out and bask— bask, bask, how do you say it— in the sunshine. But a vented suit is quite helpful, and also having like a paddling pool in the garden that you can just come and dip your, dip your hair into is quite nice as well. It's not E8. This, this is crazy, we're well over— I reckon that's well over 50 guesses and no one's got it yet. Definitely on there. Hi Lawrence, sorry I'm late, I'm in work. Bees are absolutely booming, honey supers are half full already. Excellent to hear that. It's not I3. Uh, David says, I've noticed that it's not— oh wait, put it up there. Uh, I've noticed that it's not too bad when you get to double figures of hives, that some build slower, some quicker, not all hands to the pump at the same time. It's very true, and the sooner you realize that and accept that, the easier beekeeping becomes. Uh, becomes. You know, my mouth, my mouth is going. 30 videos plus a stream. Whoa. Uh, Danny B says, I was watching one of your older videos about a demerare, and you stated if that— if there was one super full of bees, okay to demerare. I'm sure a recent comment you said it needs to be 2 supers. Definitely needs to be 2 supers. I, I leave it— I, I always ensure there's a minimum of 2 supers, preferably 3. That is what I go for now. Simon says, hi Lawrence, both hives doing great, plenty of space. What a spring. So it is not J5, but that, um, is, is— that was a good guess. Uh, it was a very, very good spring indeed. Someone's gonna win that queen. Says, hello everyone, can you sterilize old frames with a blowtorch like you do with the hive? Uh, thanks. Also J3. So it is not J3. Um, you can sterilize old frames with a blowtorch. Just make sure you get into kind of all the nooks and crannies, and also make sure that they're not coming from anywhere diseased. My recommendation is just burn all your frames and start again. But if you do, if you want to scorch them and kind of go through the process of doing it, you can do it, but it's not my recommendation. Sorry, tried to delete the F1 guess as it was already mentioned, so asked the same question with a different guess. Hi, J8. It's not J8. Choose J10. It's not J10. What's the best way to clean the inside of a poly hive? So just scrape it all down, and I like to clean it up with soda crystals. That's the best way here. Hi, transferred my first nuc on Saturday. Checked today, 2 of the 4 empty frames are drawn out and full of stores. I've been feeding 1:1. They filled 2 frames already on another brood box of flow super. That's good to hear. I would stop feeding now. I know, I know the recommendation is to feed until it's until 80% full, but with the weather at the moment, I would say you're safe to not feed at all. Do you use clearer boards when taking off supers? H4. It's not H4. And no, I use a petrol blower, I find it much easier. Uh, has gone for G1. It's not G1. Has gone for F6. It's not F6. I love this. Has gone for I7. It's not I7. Has gone for A1. It's not A1. Uh, Simon, channel member, says, hi Lawrence, which one of your queens would you recommend for Heather and why? Interesting, that one. I know Murray McGregor, who is like the biggest bee farmer in the UK and basically does like exclusively colonies for heather, he likes his Carniolans for heather because of the slow buildup and the fact that they don't become too swarmy early on in the season. Now I'm not sure my Carniolans have read that, that rule book because they're, they're big and strong at this time of the year and I'm struggling with some of them to keep them kind of in the boxes, but that, that would be the standard answer I would say. Go for the Carniolan, slow buildup but then reach like critical point late on in the season. JSCFB says, used to think buying queens was a con, but it's the best thing I have done. Changed everything for me. J6. So it's not J6, and that is a very good endorsement. And I do— I think a lot of people think that. They think it's just a con, he's just trying to sell queens, there's nothing like good about them. Or people think, oh, they're imported, like they're carrying disease. And it's just— no, they're just really, really good queens that produce lovely, calm, gentle bees, reduce the swarming impulse a bit and produce huge amounts of honey. They pay for themselves many, many times over each season. Steve's Honeybee says, J9, what do you do to add— sorry, what do you add to 1:1 syrup to stop it going mouldy? So it's not J9. Um, I don't add anything to it, and I'd add it in just small amounts. You can add Hive Alive to it though, that will stop it going mouldy. Thymolated syrup, so thymol crystals added with an emulsifier, will also stop it going mouldy. Not supposed to do that. one though. Uh, Brian Homewood says swarm cells intercepted last weekend, queen removed to nuc and all swarm cells removed, secondary emergency cells also removed. When is it re— when is it safe to recombine without the risk of restarting swarming? So not until like August at the earliest, I would say. I wouldn't be merging any colonies together, especially not with it at the moment. They'll just go straight away and they'll go bigger than they went the last time as well. So I definitely wouldn't do that. Uh, I think says hola. Hola, I get it completely wrong. Hello. Aspley, Aspley, April says C4. It's not C4. Brian Baker B says hello from Southeast Louisiana. Hello to you too. Hegru Farm Honey says I bought 10 of the green plastic queen excluders and now have noticed they are faulty and no bees could get up to the supers. What excluders do you find the best? I5. So it's not I5. I don't mind the plastic molded ones, but that is an issue. There was a batch that we had in the UK maybe 10 years ago now that the same thing happened. The bees couldn't get up through, cost people loads of money and swarms and stuff. But I find if you can get the plastic ones in the correct spacing, they're fine. Failing that, I would go with the wire framed ones. They're probably the best ones. Hi Lawrence, I don't know if you remember me, but my bees are doing amazing and already adding a super. Hello Owen, I'm glad you're doing well and glad the bees are doing well as well. Right, let's jump into some of these. Chris says, one of my colonies has chronic bee paralysis virus. I have heard to give them more space. Any other advice? I think that's the biggest one, is give them more space and then hopefully they will get through it. There's not a huge amount that you can do and just hope that they do get through it successfully. J8, J5, E7— E7's not been marked— and I4, none of them are right. Unbelievable. Karen's gone for A2. No one's chosen that one yet, but it's not correct. E10 is also not correct. Taken down swarm cells a month ago, queen emerged in my hands, couldn't bring myself to kill her, took a punt and put a couple of frames in a polynuc, walked her in the front door, one month later eggs. I3. It's not I3, but I love, love to hear a story like that. It's brilliant. Uh, John Stewart has gone for B12. There only goes up to 10. But good guess. Marcus has gone for A3. It's not A3. Marcus here has gone for I8. It's not I8. Andy Bryson says queens are clipped, Lawrence. Would that make any difference regarding finding queen cells than the demeray? No, no, no, no. We just whenever I find swarm cells, I don't I don't ever do a demeray. Demeray is like a preemptive measure. You have to do it before there's any sign of any swarm cells at all. E4 has not been. Not been suggested yet, and it's not the right one. Stanley Bees has gone for E3. For anybody who has not followed Stanley's amazing Facebook page, go over and follow Stanley's Bees Facebook page. It's brilliant. Amazing videography, amazing photography. I love it. Helen P. I5 is not I5, and you did not win, I'm afraid. I9 is not correct either, but no one had chosen that one yet. Gary Smith has gone for C7. This is this is crazy. H7 is already chosen, and that is not the right one. I'm just going through what everyone's going on. Going F4. Um, nope, it's not F4. Hi Lawrence, what did I miss you're giving away? I'm giving away a free Buckfast Queen worth up to £50. Hello beekeeper friends, greetings from Istanbul. Hello to you too. Feels like it is warmer in this room than it is in Istanbul today, I'm going to say. Says J1. It's not J1. It's not I5, it's not I3. You can't just— you can't pepper it in, there's no way. If anyone does that, you're not winning. Sorry, Ian, you're barred. You can't just chuck in loads of guesses like that, you have to have questions. So I'm not going to answer any more that are just, um, numbers like that. You have to ask something as you go. Right, Flower Street Farm Bees says, gotta go super up some bees. Good luck with that. It's not F10. No one's guessed that though. He says, how many 2-frame splits can you make on a prolific hive before it affects the honey production? production. Did one 2 weeks ago and they're looking packed again with 2 full supers and the third nearly full. So each time you make a split, you're going to reduce the amount of honey that you can possibly get. Doing it earlier on in the year with smaller splits can have a much smaller impact, so that is what I would recommend. I've fed them so far since the summer, and on the last month of autumn, when should I stop feeding syrup? I give them 2.5 liters every 4 days. Is that good? Um, if you're in the UK, I wouldn't— I've not fed since— I've not fed yet this year, um, at all, because the bees don't need it because they're getting tons in. So I would say you probably can stop feeding completely. Uh, C3 has not been asked, and that is not right either. Question, I caught a swarm yesterday, I put them in a box and put the box next to a very weak hive. Do we think they are robbing it out? Is there more? Would I— where have we got to on there? Here we go. Or would it be they moved in with her The swarm has a queen excluder on the entrance, so I wouldn't. I wouldn't worry too much about that when when the when a colony swarms they reset their orientation as well, so they'll go anywhere within the apiary. I wouldn't worry about them robbing the next door neighbor. It's not C four, so I said I'm not I'm not answering any of the ones that are just guesses on their own. Sorry, you can't do that. Bupul says how many days can you queen bank in a hive? So if you set them up properly, it can be months. If you set them up incorrectly. It's seconds. Um, so I wouldn't, I wouldn't recommend it. Um, get them into the hive straight away. John Hayes says, what is the capital of Peru? B4. That doesn't work either. Um, sorry, we've got to be strict because otherwise everyone's just going to turn off because it gets a bit boring. This is about— you've got to ask questions, and if you ask a question, you can have a chance. Phil T says I3. So it's not I3. And he says, I noticed oxalic acid strips were available very cheaply via AliExpress. Have you ever tried Chinese products? Would you stay away? I certainly would stay away from those products there because you're not allowed them in the UK, and if you were allowed them in the UK, they were very, very cheap to make at home. We're not doing just guesses on its own. Do you ever feed bees with birch sap early in the year? So I've never done that. I really want to tap the birch tree in my garden though, just to drink the birch sap. So you have to ask a question to get a guess. We've done that one there, same with that one, same with that one, same with that one. Do you put a water source in your apiary for your bees? Gee, G8. So it's not G8, and I don't put a water source in my apiary, but I find it really important to have local water sources nearby. Luckily for us in Wales, it doesn't get that dry, so even now the bees have got plenty of places to go find water. Says D9. It's not D9. Um, he says give it to someone that gives you the best bee-related dad joke if I win it. Okay, that's a good shout. I like that. Drink some tea, D5. You can definitely have a guess for a drink of tea and hit the like button. As long as people follow aboard. So it's not D5 and it's not H6. Nope, it's not H6, but someone— no one's chosen that one yet. You can't— you have to ask a question. David Briss says, are you getting nicely tanned lines with that headband? Yeah, a little bit. Oh, but you can see, you know, it's shocking hair, but it's just all down in front of my eyes now like that, so Take it off, but it's not—it's not too bad. I come back home and I even it out a little bit. It is warm in here today, though. Nikki says, "By the way, thank you for your help over the last few weeks. Really appreciate it as I know how busy you are." Definitely can have a guess with that one. Thanks, Nikki. It's not E7, though. Jackie says, "Hi, all. Hello to you too." PK says, "Are you definitely giving up on plastic frames and foundations? F9? It's not F9. I'm not buying anymore, but I will continue to use what." I have. Um, you have to, you have to guess, you have to guess, you have to guess, uh, you have to guess, you have to guess. I say you have to guess, you have to ask a question. Um, how much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? I5. It's okay to be impressed with my ability for that tongue twister. It's the only tongue twister that I know. Uh, George Payne has gone for J2, but it is not J2 either. But that completes that one. Uh, Burrows B says, looking forward to receiving our nuke next week. D8. We'll let you have that D8. I, I honestly can't believe how long this is taking for people to get. Uh, Nano Creighton says, what is your favorite national hive and nuc? So my favorite national hive is the Abello Polyhive, the non-12-frame version if you're using it with wooden supers, and then the 12-frame version if you're going kind of like all out. And then my favorite nuc, um, I'll go with the Payne's nuc because I like it for sending out bees. Uh, I6 has already been chosen, it's not that. Uh, PJ Morgan says, can I have a pee please, Bob? Blockbusters. Karen's gone for J6. It's not J6, but we weren't doing those anyway. Uh, Richard says, thanks for everything you do, been a great help this year. Thank you, Richard. Uh, Chris has gone for C10 for his last question. Not C10. Uh, we— you have to ask a question. Hi Lawrence, I don't know if you remember, we already did that one. Um, your guess was H9. Uh, Glenn Hillidge says, is it best to do 2-frame splits or a demo race? So I wouldn't say that they're just the 2 exclusive choices that you've got. Um, for production colonies, I like to do— I like to do a demerit. Uh, F5. No one has chosen F5. No one's chosen this grid number yet. It's unbelievable. Uh, Lynette says, can you rub a wax block on a plastic frame, or do you have to melt it? Just realized I forgot to wax some that I already took to my apiaries. I5. So it's not I5, and yes, you can do that, and like my video that I posted midweek. Uh, Titan Games says, petrol blower. Can you explain this device? So it is just like a power tool, fill it with petrol, and it just fires out air, and then you can blow the bees out. Adam says, what gloves do you wear? I use the Pro-Tech Latex HD long-cuffed gloves. There we go. I think I got that all out. Matt Page says, huh, I didn't realize you were playing Battleships. I was playing it with my daughter. I know, that's absolutely crazy, isn't it? That Graham Thomas is loving the game. J4. And you know what, even though Um, even though I said that no, you can do that, he did say loving the game. The correct answer is J4, so Graham Thomas won it! Look at that, look how many guesses before we got to the— where is it— the, the red J4 over there, which was the correct guess. So you are the winner, Graham Thomas, congratulations! Drop me an email, blackmountainhoney@gmail.com, and I will send you a queen next week. So all other guesses are now null and void. Sorry if anybody else got that. I'm gonna, I'm gonna ignore anything with a guess in it now. For polyhives, you should finish cleaning with a soak, 20 minutes dip, uh, sorry, 20 minutes min in a 0.5% sodium hypochlorite solution. The household bleach is 3 to 5% sodium hypochlorite, so you work out the calculations for yourself. The calculation that I use ends up in a solution that is way, way stronger than the NBU recommend, but because it's stronger, you get like a really nice bleaching effect with it as well, which makes the boxes look brand new. So I use a 4 to 1 ratio, 4 parts water, 1 part sodium hypochlorite. That is 15% strength, and then it ends up— I think it ends up at like a 3 or a 5%, I always forget. It's way more than the NBU say, but it's highly, highly effective. Uh, Kieran says, if I catch a swarm, how long do— how do I go about requeening? Do I need to let them rear brood before killing the queen? Um, no, if you can find the queen and kill her before then, then great. Just be aware that there can be multiple multiple queens in a swarm though. Here in Spain we have sweet chestnut and bramble bloom through the end of June. If I demeray now, should I repeat it immediately again? Um, not, not necessarily. It's difficult for me to know exactly kind of like what the different flows are and the different gaps are in Spain, but I like to have a little bit of a gap in between the demerays, at least a couple of weeks gap. Uh, so like do the demeray, 3 weeks cycle it out, have a couple of weeks off, and then do another demeray if needed. Would you expect to get honey from any splits at this time of the year? So depending on the size of the splits, if you've got double brood and you separate it into 2 single brood colonies and the weather stays like this, you're going to get 4 or 5 supers come the end of the year. If you make a 1-frame split and go and put it in the corner of an apiary and come back in autumn, you're probably not going to have any honey at all, so it is dependent on the size of the split that you make. On there again, you can just get a wax block and rub it over. It's quite, it's quite difficult to do, quite quite time-consuming, but it does work. Uh, I've got a queen that is laying 2 to 3 eggs per cell, never seen more than 1 larva, so I guess the workers remove the extra eggs. Would you requeen or just leave her to it as the amount of brood seems okay? So if it's early on in the queen's life, they do do that. They have to kind of get into a bit of a rhythm. Um, it doesn't— it's not something that bothers me. As long as I see nice brood pattern, then I'm happy with it. Uh, Phil says, if there's only one book you could recommend as great reading, what would it be? I'm not one for books. Other people have given their recommendations before. I've never read a single bee book. I'm just not one for reading. The Haynes Bee Manual is the one that you see often kind of touted. Um, so Graham Smith, it is over now unfortunately. It was battleships, kind of battleships, and somebody found the winning queen. Graham Thomas, I think. Uh, Margaret says regarding bee paralysis virus that someone mentioned, I had it last year, double brooded, removed the floor and put soapy water underneath so sick bulls fall in and die quick. This year my strongest colony Excellent, love that tip. That's really, really good. So you're kind of like isolating that disease in the soapy water. I'm going on holiday for 2 weeks in 11 days' time, prime swarming season. Any tips on preventing this? All queens are clipped. Was thinking of just caging the queens. Honey crop is not essential this year. So if the queens are clipped, you're going away for 2 weeks, I was gonna say if the queens are clipped, you've basically got 10 days from your last inspection as long as there aren't any cells being made. I'd probably be inclined just to push it and see if you can get through. It's only one week. I know that's famous last words. The only other option is, is just to make a preemptive split and just put them off somewhere else. Caging the queen is, is basically just going to do the same thing that clipping a queen does, which is if they start to swarm on day 1, they'll be gone by day 8, and that queen can't go, so they'll go with the first virgin. So it turns it from like a 7-day inspection to a 10-day inspection. So I would, I would just wing it, I think. Do you recommend queen excluders on the doors? Um, as in like on the entrance and the exit to the hive? No, definitely not. So the— if you put a queen excluder on the entrance to a hive, if that is what your question said, then all that happens is the queen's— uh, the colony swarms with the virgins and the virgins can just get through. Um, Jackie says, why did my queen arrive pretending to be dead then came alive once I added her to the hive? They do that, don't they, bees? Like when you, when you lift up a cage, like you can shock a queen and they can faint. And I've seen it before, you're holding a queen like my hand, like she's dead, she's definitely dead. And then you look at her and she kind of does this, and you're like, I swear she just looked up at me to see if I was still here. And then she just looks up again, she's just like, yeah, just chilling out, just having a rest. Um, they do that occasionally, they do faint. Um, says, what are your opinions on Carpathian queens? Thanks for answering my questions. I inspected my one and only Carpathian colony the other day and it was fantastically calm. I was amazed just how calm it was. It was on the treble Langstroth deep, and it was super, super calm, so very, very happy. When is the latest time we can double brood? I wouldn't double brood any time after the June gap. If you're not double brooded by the June gap, just run it out on single brood. So yeah, coming on from the last one, you could cage her, could cage her in like a proper style queen cage, could be good. I've heard that a number of bees can accompany a virgin on a mating flight. Can this look like a up a small swarm. Very, very often that you see that, a little mini mating swarm where they go out with the virgin. Thanks, Lawrence, appreciate the channel. Uh, Danny's Bees is finished now, says, but don't forget to take a drink. Thank you very much. How long should I wait before inspecting a new Black Mountain honey queen to see if she is laying? I just go back in 7 days after I pop the tabs. That's kind of like my system. Hi, Lawrence, I did my hive inspection on Wednesday. What would you recommend doing one on Saturday as well? I'm always good with the hives on Wednesday, from Andy in Hampshire. I would go back to just fall in line with 7-day inspections, so go like 7-day, 7-day. If you've shrunk it down to 4-day, wait 3 days, get back to your 7 days, and then stick to your 7-day cycle. Hello Lawrence, what is the— what is the approx— what, sorry, what is approximately the largest amount of honey you have harvested from one hive? Can I please take a punt on H10? So it wasn't H10. Largest honey crop for me is probably like 100 and £140, £150, nowhere near as much as the people who get down south, but North Wales. J4 was the correct answer, but unfortunately you, you are too late, David. Do the bees recognize you? I reckon they probably do recognize you, but I've seen studies where they say they do recognize you as well, but I don't know. It is finished, J4 was the right answer. We'll play that again, that was good fun. Graham Smith, the winner, no, it was Graham Thomas the winner, wasn't it? He says, 4 of my hives are full, I can't add any supers because I've just removed Apivar. How can I prevent swarming, please? If you can't add space, I would make some splits. Splits is going to be the best way of doing it. You can make small splits with the queens, and that will reduce the swarming impulse. Both my hives had sealed swarm cells, but in both the queen was still there. How unusual is this? So it's not that unusual. It is more to do with the weather and the time of the day that you go in. If you— bees like to swarm kind of like on the warmest part of the day. You'll find it's between like 1 and 3 o'clock or midday and 2, something like that. So if you go in on the morning that they're going to swarm, you'll find capped swarm cells with the queen. So it's like a timing issue as well. How do you start beekeeping? I had 2 swarms land in my back garden and I was pretty much immediately hooked. Have you had success with the, with the solar wax melter? It's interesting, I literally got that out today and I put it out into the apiary and we will have a go with it. Um, David Brea says, do you switch out the blocks on the Abello hives when it gets hot for the air filter block? So no, I just put the black ones in a big bucket somewhere and never ever use them and leave the solid ones in the whole way through. Had a dry summer and autumn with no flowers for 4 months till last week of April. Been raining since, that's why I'm feeding them. By the way, the videos are good, I use you as my reference. Okay, I, I understand that now. You're somewhere completely different to where we are, that makes complete sense. I did a split on Monday, when would you check to see if they've created queen cells day 6. Um, so if you've done a split and you know the queen's not there, I would just go back in on day 8 because that's the day that you should take down the queen cells anyway and just assume that they have made them. Uh, Can you explain how to introduce a queen for us newbies, please? So you, you chose J4 as well. J4 was the correct answer, but it has already been claimed. So I'm knackered, I'm, I'm 8 minutes over the time that I said, but I am really keen to get through there's not that many questions left, so be kind and don't put any more comments on. Um, introducing a queen— you need to find the existing queen or make a split. So you need to remove the existing queen, wait 8 days, they're going to create emergency cells across all of the hive. Shake off all of the frames, take down all of the emergency cells, take your mated queen, place it into the beehive, leave it 24 hours, pop the tab, leave it 7 days, introduction is complete. Recently went to the Beverly Bee Auction where nucs were going for around £60, £70 pounds. Auctioneers are shocked. Do you think this was purely down to the amazing spring? Uh, it's, it's only down to the, the amazing spring. Yeah, it's absolutely crazy. Um, I've been to bee auctions and I've seen the quality of nucs at bee auctions as well, so it doesn't surprise me at all. Uh, Matt says, should I remove the inspection trays on polyhives or leave them in? Definitely remove them in this weather. Uh, Graham's talking about frames tinted with Apivar. Artem says, hey Lawrence, good to see you live again. I know so many people ask this, but what do you do with the Demerara box treated with Apivar once the bees have moved the honey up, i.e., nuc brood super? So that's a good point. So I, I take it back and I mark it as my demerary box and just go and put it back into storage, or I double brood with it if I'm going to double brood that colony for winter, because then it's going back in where it's going to be re-tainted with Apivar anyway. Looking at a new out apiary tomorrow and thinking of trying different queens like a Pramorsky or something, what would you recommend for something different? My favorite different one at the moment is the Caucasian I had a customer message me saying he's got 5 Buckfast in his apiary, they've all come through winter exactly the same, and he's got one Caucasian there as well. All of the Buckfast have got like 2 or 3 supers of honey on, the Caucasian has got 5 supers of honey, absolutely full. They have found something that the Buckfast colony has not found, and the reason they've done it is that their tongue is considerably longer than the Buckfast, so they have access to flowers that the Buckfast bee can't get to, which is brilliant. I love that. So if you're thinking of bumper honey crop, they do produce a lot of propolis as well, and they're nice. They're quite a nice dark kind of gray fuzzy bee. They're cool looking bee. I would go with the Caucasian. John Hayes says, currently building a honey room. We're looking for plastic paneling for the wall. Cost very hugely. Do you have a recommendation? I, I don't, I'm afraid. I, I need like— I just got it off a random place on the internet and, and it was okay. I can't remember where it was from. If you're really struggling, I can maybe search through my inbox and see if I can find it, but I think it's all much of a muchness. Uh, Terry Endersby says, hi Lawrence, hope all is well. Can't wait for the queens to get here. I have lots of queenless boxes waiting for them. I— they're not going to be long. Did— I'm not sure. I don't think I did send them out. I think you're on— I think you're on next week's batch, Terry, for those. I think I saw it come up today though. Uh, David Crushed got it first but didn't ask a question. Oh, did you— was it up there again? Oh, sorry. I knew— I knew I was going to cause wars by doing this. Next time, David. Next time. Glitch Thunder says, how do I start my own hive? So if you want to start your own hive, you need to catch a swarm. Facebook Marketplace or Facebook is the best place to get alerts for swarms. Graham Thomas says, absolutely awesome, many thanks, like button firmly smashed. Excellent, drop me an email, we'll get your queens. Liam Jennings says, what are your thoughts on Varomed? So I've used Varomed, it definitely worked when I used it, but it's not my favorite choice of varroa treatment. I'm not a fan of drizzling stuff. So Varomed is like a combination of formic acid and And oxalic acid, and you drizzle it on your bees, and apparently it has one of the the shortest withdrawal periods. So yeah, it does have a use for kind of in season if you've got a really bad case of varroa. Liam G says, "Hi Lawrence, I don't know what it's like in Wales, but over in Suffolk has been absolutely unbelievable. I've never seen a season like it. I've had to put the fourth super on my hive today. The third was full. Brilliant, isn't it? Everyone is going to be stacked up with honey." Tupulo Stud says, "Newbie Langstroth or National Polyhive for a beginner, and what?" brand do you recommend? In the UK, I would go with a National Polyhive from Abello. I would go with the deep roof version. That's my recommendation. Tim Sherlock said there's a caveat with the Chinese products in that if they hold the EC food safe, they're perfectly fine to use. Typically features a cup and a fork icon. Good shout, Tim. Tim's got lots of experience importing, as we all know. Titan Gang says, Phil T, I recommend Bee Husbandry Australia or Practical Beekeeping New Zealand. 2 good recommendations for books there. I haven't read either of them, they sound good. How many frames of brood need to be in the nuc before you sell it? So we, unlike the majority of the people in the UK, actually still sell 6-frame nucs. A lot of people in the UK sell 5-frame nucs, and we sell our nucs in a permanent Payne's poly nuc as well, as opposed to either a disposable or a homemade option. Generally, it's going to be between 2 to 4 frames of brood and 2 to 4 frames of stores in our 6-frame nuc, but as people will attest, they are They're pretty good nucs with lots of good bees in them. Right, where do we get to? Uh, Nigel Gibbs says thank you. Graham Thomas says, can the wax from frames tainted with Apivar be used again or best thrown away? So it can be re— it can be used within the beehive. I wouldn't be using it for anything else. Uh, Titan Game says cheers, Lawrence, have a good sleep. Right, we have definitely reached the end. 1 hour and 13 minutes. We got to the bottom. Graham Thomas won a queen. We'll do some more games next week, but I am off to go and have a shower. And to go and have a little bit of a rest and to rest my voice. I hope you enjoyed the live stream. We're going to do this every other week, so the next live stream is not tomorrow but a week tomorrow at 10:20 AM, and then 2 weeks' time we're back here at 7:30 PM BST. I will see you all then. I hope you have a good weekend, and I hope the sun continues to shine on all of you. Good night.