Black Mountain Honey: Let's Talk Bees With Laurence Edwards - Episode 1

Right, that is the biggest camera downgrade you're ever gonna get. So hopefully that's working now and you can hear me. I'm gonna have to give Sky a bit of a telling off about that not working, which is a bit frustrating. I can confirm in the comments that I'm not cutting out anymore, um, and you can see all 7 pixels that are on the screen. That would be much appreciated. I think it is just me and you, Ben, at the moment, so you've got a one-to-one session. Is that is that any better? I'm just on my laptop webcam now, so hopefully that can stream yard though. And I don't have any comments or questions or anything, so fire away if you've got any questions, or I could just talk about the people that I've been blocking. Yes, okay, it's good, excellent, right? That's good. But yeah, I've had, I've had a very interesting week in terms of doing stuff. Finished our honey extraction room, so that is completely finished now. But a guy doing stuff in there and it looks great. I've, I've cleared out all the stuff I don't need. Everything's down, the floor's down, the walls are done, the ceiling's done. It's like a shelf, big unit in there to put my Melaflow in and And, uh, means I've got loads of space in there now so I can do videos, which is really good. Um, update on the colony in that fallen tree? No, I need to go back and have a look at those. They're in a really awkward position, and it's not— but I'm definitely going to go back and try and get them out. I just— I want to— I want a reasonably warm time to go and go in there and get them. Um, that should have been good. Oh, I should, I should have gone and got a cup of tea, shouldn't I? I've got like an empty cup here, so I'll have to do that. Uh, I'll have to do that at the end of the night. I did it last time, coffee or tea, and it was, oh, it was cold at the end, but I was still drinking it. Um, yeah, sorry, it's the internet company. Do you know what it is? I think it's because it's Saturday night. I reckon there's people like everyone's watching Twitch or whatever it is they do nowadays. Um, how can you manage family, full-time job, and business? Really, really difficult at the moment. Um, I'm struggling quite a lot, and I'm trying to outsource pretty much everything that I can. So I'm trying to keep the numbers down. I started last year with 100 colonies, and I was like, right, I'm going to get down to 50 colonies. That's my target. And I got about 100 colonies still. So it doesn't matter how many I sell, I kind of seem to end up with 100. Right, here we go. What do you do with brood frames? What do you do with the brood frames filled with honey on a checkerboard swarm method? So they shouldn't really be filling with honey. Like, I'm not an expert. But on 12, I'm just following this book because I thought it'd be a cool video. Uh, but it'd be interesting to see how they run without a queen excluder as well. So I will, I will do regular videos on that checkerboard and we'll see how they go. Um, opinion on my pickup truck? That's, that's the first time I've been asked about my pickup truck. And once you get a pickup truck and pair You can't, you can't go back from a pickup truck because it's just amazing. And it's like, it's the little things like going to the tip and you just lob everything in the back of the pickup truck and go. Or, or you need to move your nukes, so you get 40 nukes in the back of the pickup truck and then you load the back seat up as well to get like 50 nukes in the truck. And the L200 is really good as well. I've never, I've never got stuck in a field I've come very close to getting stuck on the field though. Uh, let's see what else then. Do I recommend the Abello 12-frame hive over the previous versions, and will you be doing an update review? So yeah, I, I, you just need to go with what works for you. Like you heard, um, David say earlier, he doesn't like the rebate system. A lot of people don't like the rebate system. But again, it comes back to what you're used to and what everyone else is used to. And I know a lot of people don't like the rebate because of their fear of crushing bees. I really like the Abello 12 hive to use, but I'd say the value over the other ones is, is kind of small. Um, I like all the Abello hives, I really do like them. They're so much easier to use and they just don't break down. as much. Um, Andy, yeah, it's, it's hard. It is hard running that many grounds. Sleepy. I just— I had a big dinner. I went out today. I've been working all day and been doing stuff, and then I had a bath before I came on with my daughter. Um, she said she's only young, like 3, and then I had a big, big dinner, and I'm feeling the aftereffects of all the chips now. Insulated your hives this year but have read vastly different opinions on whether it's good or bad. What is your take? There's no possible reason ever to think that insulating a hive is bad. I just, I can't think of any reason why it would ever be bad. Whether you get the benefit over not insulating is another argument. A third of the way through it, which is— I stole someone's idea, completely ripped it off— but it's insulating, retrofit insulation of wooden national hives using cork sheeting. And it's, it's a cool little idea, um, and I think it works really well. It's all about getting the cork sheet to fit in the insert, and then on the inside putting in like cork Dummy frames, so you effectively get insulation all, all of the 4 walls, and then putting a cork crown board on top of it as well. So you get all of the benefits of insulation that you would get in poly, but with a natural material. I really like that idea. I think it's got only 1 inch of cork sheet is equivalent to 4 inches of cedar, 3 inches of pine, or the other way around. Cedar's more insulative than pine, but I thought that was incredible. So I'm going to have really insulated hives, and it's quite cheap as well. So I'll do a good video on that. Have I read the queen rearing book by Gilles? Good book. I struggle with books. I'm not like Pete Watt, who doesn't watch the videos but just likes to read books. Um, but I really struggle with books. I, I read books to go to bed. Like, if I really want to go to sleep, I'll read a book and I'll be asleep in like 5 minutes. I struggle learning through reading, it just kind of makes me very— What's the stance with buying in bulk honey from someone and then bottling it under your own label? I've seen people doing this. I've got no issue with that, we do that. You can't always get the type of honey that you want, So like we import, not import, we buy borage honey from Chris Manson. We buy it from Chris. I told you about a great bee farmer, very generous with his information. You should definitely, everyone here should follow his Twitter feed. His Twitter feed is like a gold mine of beekeeping tips. So if he sees a surge, I can say to him that it was because of my stream, but he's well worth a follow. But I don't see any, yeah, there's no problem with it. You just need to be Please cite on your labels as to what you're doing. Like, you look at all of the big companies like Honey Packers, that's just what they do. They don't— Hilltop Honey doesn't have any bees. The London Honey Company doesn't keep any bees. Black Bee Honey, I think they do keep some bees, but they buy honey from people all over the UK. Okay, for positive and say We buy honey from all over the UK and we trace it back to the beekeeper. And this is Dave from Norwich's hives and he's into tennis or whatever and turn it into a positive. So I don't think there's anything wrong with it. I think what there's definitely something wrong with is buying in honey and saying, or worse than that, like bloody getting, like John said the other day as a joke, I know it was a joke, buying supermarket honey and then trying to fob it off as your own because it's clearly not honey. So all comes down to honesty, but I would say it's kind of— and your business acumen as well. If you're, if you're clearing it out and then you want to get some more honey and you're honest about it, no problem at all. Oh, B Tradex, worth a look this year, or do you think it's going to be a bit of a damp squib due to some retailers not attending? I kind of— I have to be a little bit careful, I guess, with what I say. But I'm not going anymore. So if anyone thought I was going, what's the point? Like, who are you gonna— previously, shows like that, I used to go down there to meet people because there would be lots of people going. Everyone kind of beekeeping would be going, all the bee farmers, all the people that you knew. So there would be the— there'd be the draw of there's lots of people going. Which I don't think you're going to get this year, but bits of equipment and machinery there. So if you're after an extractor, when would you ever get the opportunity to go and see 15 different extractors and play with them and do things with them all at once and then make a decision on which one to buy? They're the main 2 really. I don't think you're going to get— you're going to get either of those this year. And the fact that Abella pulled out as well now, um, is Just the dog's trust. So I think it's gonna, you know, I don't want to put anyone off going because if, if I live just around the corner from it, I would definitely go, but it's about a 2 and a half hour drive for me, so I'm going to go to the Welsh, the Welsh one instead. Welsh convention. Um, Chris saying, I'm involved in a company that are in the middle of a hive installation prototype due in the UK very soon. I'll keep you informed. That sounds fantastic, thank you. Yeah, I'll be, I'll be well up for that. I've seen the foldaway ones from China, the little new mating ones. Um, Bishop's Bees is selling them now, but they're quite, they're quite expensive on Bishop's Bees. They're like £42, I think. I think it's a double. I think you get like a top. I was talking to— I think it's— I think— is it— I think it might be Better Bee. I know that's the US one. I was talking to the Chinese company about importing some for us, but they were loads more expensive. Yeah, I'm interested in that. Let me know, I'm always interested. This year grafting queens? Um, I will be grafting queens this year. Yep, I'll be doing loads of grafting this year. It'd be good fun. Uh, best time to put swarm traps up in the UK? I'd say kind of like anytime from now onwards, really. The only problem that you get if you put them up too early, uh, but anytime from March onwards. You'll— if the weather stays like this and it doesn't get cold, then you're going to get so many early swarms. I don't know if anyone saw— I know it's on the member section. So the, the one— the video that I shot yesterday was like feeding some colonies that are really light, and they're just massive frames of bees. And if it stays warm, they're gonna, they're gonna try and swarm in April. So definitely get them up before April. Um, Wade's saying the backyard beekeeping still have buckets of honey from last year. I hope they don't make that much this year. No, just you want them to make as much as possible. You can just store it. Um, everyone says don't buy nucs because it's diseased. Open feeding equals disease. Used comb is disease. What is the disease that all our neighbors have? AFB is so rare. Yeah, I tell you what, if you bought a nuc off someone and it had AFB in it, that's like, oh my God, I'd be so annoyed. But the chances of that is so incredibly slim. I guess the argument more is, if your frames are old, you're handing over kind of like a pathogenic load. This is what David was saying earlier. And then that over time can progress into unhealthy bees. Um, but I think, I think nucs, supplying them, open feeding— I'm not, I'm not a fan of open feeding. Big in the US, open feeding, but you don't, you don't— it doesn't get a very good rap over here at all. Um, we never open feed. I don't see, don't see the need to open feed really. Uh, Julian saying made underfloor entrances, uh, from my videos and have not lost See an update on the floor which take a Varroa board. So yeah, I will do that. I get asked that question a lot because the way that I designed it, like the way it's not my design, so Jenkins, Bryn Mawr, Emir, if you're listening, I'm being clear again, it's not— it's your design, but it does need, yeah, it does need a little tweak at the back to get over monitoring. With, with mine is I've just got like Correx sheets, and I just lift the hive up and just put a Correx sheet underneath, and then that works, works really well like that. Um, I've just had a little bit of an idea here. I thought that was going to light me up and make me look a lot better. Have you seen the insulating paint which promises to hold in heat? Uh, no, I've not seen that. Um, sounds, sounds a little bit dangerous if it's going to hold in all the heat, but I'm, I'm up for trying it. I'll give it a go. Send me a link, I'll have a go on that one. Uh, have you ever purchased Hive? I've come so close to buying stuff from them so many times, and oh my God, they sucker you in with their low prices, and then by the time you get to the point where they've added on delivery and then insurances, and then customs and duty and import and VAT. It, it's not as appealing as it originally seems. Um, uh, the little mating nucs that I bought, I was looking at them on Alibaba and it was, I think they're like £3 each, something like £3 each. And I was thinking, that's cheap, £3 each. I'll get, I'll get a few hundred because I think that's what they wanted as the minimum order, and then I could just sell some. And then by the time you got to like have to ship them all in each, and then I got them from Beer Equipment for £7.50 each including the VAT. So I knocked the VAT off and it took me down to below what Alibaba were going to get them in at. So I think unless you're ordering like tens of thousands and you're getting the price down at like pennies, then it's, it's not something that I can, I can really manage. Alan's saying you prefer Langstroth to Nationals, but what do you think of commercials? I've used them with National supers. So Thorn are giving me a commercial beehive to try this year. I've never kept them in commercials, but I know a lot of people do them. I'd say it's more common for bee farmers to use commercials than Langstroths over here. So I'm very popular, and the fact that you can use them with national supers is good because they're very close fit. So I've not really got a massive kind of opinion on commercials, but I will do because I'm getting sent one soon. Azadullah, if I pronounce that correctly, can I make a split and still get a good honey harvest? Definitely. If you make a split, without a shadow of a doubt, you really can. Like, for example, Rob, you're going to get a shout out pretty much every single stream. Um, but Rob Tallis, he bought nucs from us last year, and I can't even remember what the figures were now, but his stacks— his— he had 7 supers on a nuc. So he got a nuc in April, and come July, August, he had supers full. And I think it was like 150 jars of honey he got off it, and that was from a nuc. So if you, if you split a colony in April and take a nuc with a mated queen, you essentially end up with a nuc that you would buy from someone. Completely dependent on the weather and the climate and the forage, but you can. Just don't split them too hard. Potentially forming when making sugar syrup— how do you prevent this? So I don't make my own sugar syrup. Um, that's how you prevent it, definitely. And then when I make, uh, when I do make my sugar syrup I don't boil it, so I use the drill method, and then I put hot water into a drum, and then I add sugar, and then I just drill it. So your nebb, which is quite hot, it's probably like, I don't know, 50°C, you only really get HMF forming when you start, like, you've got sugar syrup on the hob, and you're like boiling away, and then it gets quite bad. But yeah, you can you can make two to one sugar syrup with cold water as long as you keep on little kind of recirculation pumps. Joe Joe's like so many questions. Love it. How many splits could I comfortably make in a year from one jumbo Langstroth? I don't know. I'd say the the format doesn't make a massive difference. Or maybe. Maybe it does. I do can from a 14 by 12 without a doubt. It's easier from a smaller. The shallower the frame, the more splits you can seem to be able to make from it. But I'm going to do a video this year. I'm going to do a video. I'm going to get one big. I'm going to choose a big strong colony, and I'm going to see how many splits I can make from a single colony over a number of cycles. So I'm hoping to go. In a year. That is my outrageous target, and we'll see where we get to. Uh, Ben's saying, how many breeder queens do I have this year? So I got 5— I got 5 2021 or 2020 breeder queens, and I've got 1 breeder queen from 2018 that just refuses to die. Um, F1 Buckfast from last year. So it's she just won't die. Like she keeps on trying to supersede, and then the superseder will fail for one reason or another. So I knock it back, and then she just carries on living. And then I think that's it. She's definitely going to die. And I go back in, and there's six frames of fourteen by twelve brood end to end. And I think, oh my God! And I'm going to get a bumper harvest. And then I go in, and there's just a cluster of bees like this. So she's really struggling because she's old. She's just running out. She's running out of eggs and then has a blast of eggs. It's really strange, but I reckon she's gonna go this year. Uh, could you use a circular saw to cut a slot for a board on the underfloor? Lawrence, I'll just— I'll run it on the table saw. Um, I cut my finger off using a circular saw. I nearly cut my finger off using it. So I'll just run it on the table saw, but it's more, it's more at the back how you'd, how you'd kind of get the access slot in. But I'll have a play around and I'll get it sorted. Uh, Joe's saying, yeah, Netflix rotten, I like that. Uh, Keith, uh, would I consider doing bee experience days? Definitely, but I just can't, I can't do them in my garden. Um, so it'll be when we move, but The way that the economy and the house prices and electricity prices are going at the moment, like, I might do— I might speak to some of the landowners and see if they're willing to let me do it there. I keep bees on some really nice estates and they've kind of got like farm shops and other things on there as well. I reckon they'd be up for partnering up and doing some experience days. Problem I have with it is that, like I work, I work Monday to Friday. So kind of like I'm trying to keep my weekend a little bit for me. So I don't want to start bashing out the experience days on the weekends as well. So I'd say for the foreseeable future, no, unfortunately. Although I would love to do them. I think they'd be really good fun. And I'm building up my especially, and I'm going to make it so you can come and try. All of the different hives, like every single hive that you could ever get, because nobody does that. And most people who do it are trying to sell you hives, so they're like, oh, come and, come and look at this fantastic— oh, by the way, I've got a good discount on Swenty hives as well. Um, but I'll be coming at it from a different stance, which is just come and have a look at all of these different hives and not try and sell you any. Uh, will your bees overheat in poly in summer? So no, it works the complete opposite to the way that it does in winter, in that the winter, it keeps all of the heat— it keeps all of the heat out, so it's a lot easier for them to maintain consistent temperature in the summer in a poly hive. Very thermally efficient. When's the grand opening of Black Mountain Honey Farm? I'd love it. I was speaking to my wife earlier saying we've missed the trick. We've had so And she's like, oh, but there's not— there's a— the bus stop's only 200 meters away. It needs to be within at least 170 meters. Like, these are the kind of restrictions and requests she put in place. She's going to kill me if she hears this. But, um, we've— yeah, we've not managed to secure one. I wish we did. Uh, Andy's saying you're going to move over to commercial but find 14 by 12 work just so well, you can't justify the change. Yeah, I'm not like— it's not— I'm not a fan of 14 by 12. I just, I do regret moving over to 14 by 12, as discussed before, mainly to do with making up some control. Yes, I was confused which— which is— yeah, Rich is saying about, yeah, sliding it in. Yeah, it would work fine. It's just, it's just the access on the back. terms of the monitoring board. Right, on average per hive, how much honey do you harvest? Depends year on year, it really does. If every year was 2018, we'd be in treble figures. Some years it's low, like £20, £25. I like to go for an average. In North Wales, we aim for like £50. If we can get £50 per hive, Per year, I'm really, really happy with that. Farmers aim for like £200. It's crazy. Uh, Julian saying, I saw an unpainted National Paradise polyhive in the background of your latest feed. Have you used it yet? I have one and brace comb everywhere. Will be a bait hive this year. Um, so yeah, I've got one, I've got, I've got two, I've got two or three. Um, they're all painted now, by the way. I've gone around painting all the ones that I have. I've got bees in one of them and it is a bit, yeah, it's not my favourite hive, I'm not gonna lie. And yeah, it might get relegated to bait hives, but I think with all of these things, like, it's not, you come to just accept that some hives are a bit, yeah, that you kind of have to deal with them in a So it doesn't bother me too much, really. Like the differences between all the little hives. You obviously have your favorites, and you wouldn't buy ones that were annoying you. But like I have, I have a very low threshold in terms of all of my hives being sweetened tea. So I think I prefer the Paradise over the sweetened tea. Do I buy Wales? I do. I do know them. They're part of the Welsh. So the Wales have like a honey cluster. We're trying to replicate what they do in New Zealand with with reasonable success. I think the Welsh Honey Cluster is really good, actually. Great support. There's no way that my business would be anywhere near as thriving as it is without Welsh Honey Cluster and Griff. Greg saying managed seven splits from my best hive last year. Only reason I didn't take more was due to my cat candid. Ability at queen rearing. How many do you think you'll manage? 14 plus? Yeah, it's most likely 40. 4-0, I'm gonna go for. Yeah, and I— you'll have to tune in and see how I do it. But like that, I said, yeah, I'll go 40. But what I think I'm going to do is I'm going to get my biggest, biggest, strongest colony. I'm going to feed it— I'm going to feed it thin sugar syrup early in the year, kind of like as David said, you need to do it early. Because you need to target it kind of one cycle before. So probably first week of March, I'll go start feeding that up, get that onto double brood. On that too, I want to do it in not a Suyanti one because I want the extra frame in there. So I might— I'll do it in poly because I think the poly builds up a lot quicker, but I might do it on the 12-frame poly. Be a good— get— build it up to get it to a point where it's over 24 frames. And then I'll split that down into 12 2-frame nucs. And then what I'm going to do is build up those 12 2-frame nucs to the point where they're at 6 frames, and then I'll split them again into 24. And then hopefully— Okay, so we're talking kind of 48, and I think maybe some of them not going to take so well, so I'll round it down a bit. I'd say it's doable though, obviously all with mated queens. that's not taking into account any queen rearing at all in that, because that will slow it right down. What's the most useless beekeeping equipment that exists? Oh, I've had questions before to kind of have a think. There's so many useless bits of beekeeping equipment. I've got like a car full of them. I'll come back, I'll kind of, I'll try and think about that while I'm talking. Um, am I putting my produce prices up because of inflation hikes at the moment? I think a lot of producers, including myself, will have to. They've got to because the pressure's incredible from everywhere, isn't it? And so we've put up— we've not put up our retail prices, uh, but we've put up our wholesale prices on honey. We put up our cost of queens by £1. Max amount of hives you'd put in one apiary? I'd say rough rule of thumb is you really wouldn't want any more than like 20 as a max. I'd say 12 is a better figure, kind of 10 to 12 would be a good figure. I know a lot of bee farmers that say, yeah, 20 is way too many, but it is completely dependent on the amount of other bees beehives in that area. Oh, thanks, Joe, best beekeeper. I'd love that, thanks for the compliments. Do you think imports from other countries should be banned to protect from diseases and pests? Well, so David answered that question. No, I don't think they should because we've had what— we've been part of the EU for however Many years we've had free movement of goods and animals, and small hive beetle hasn't made its way over here with 40 years of imports. So now that we've got the ability to block them, what— why is it— why is it suddenly going to come over anyway? How did varroa get over here? That didn't come over from a queen. They think the way that came over is probably that it was transported over, like— so I don't— I just don't think it's as clear-cut as that. And there's clearly an agenda there by people who don't want it to be imported to say, oh well, they're going to be importing diseases and pests. But I'm not completely so one-sided in my argument to say that there's no risk. Of course there's definitely a risk, and by bringing in queens, the bigger risk is definitely packages of bees and nucs. So I'd never support that, and I've never kicked off when they banned the packages because I think The stringent measures they have in place for importing queens is a lot easier to identify if anything is in those cages, whereas in a package you've got no chance. You're not going to be able to see packages. Is that you'd say, I've got 100 packages coming over, and the bee inspector would say, okay, we want to come and we're going to come and have a look at them. And what they do is they kind of come and have a look at them, and then they shake it all out, you put the bees in your hive, And then they inspect all of the containers and they look in the containers and they cut a bit out of the containers and they send it on these small hive beetle legs. And I think it's a bit late really, but what they're going to do, they're going to come back, they'll probably torch your whole apiary if they did find anything, but you're probably still too late. So I think, yeah, do I think imports from other countries should be banned to protect diseases? I think We were right to ban the import of packages. I personally don't want them to ban queens, and I'll be completely honest because it's quite a big part of our business now importing queens, but also because I don't think it really reduces the risk down to give you the level of benefit that you're going to get from that. So you see the stats about honey that's produced in the UK, we're at a massive disadvantage in terms of being able to rear queens early on in the season. So being able to import them is beneficial. Having access to queens from all over the EU is really good. You can get such good queens coming in. So I don't think we should— I don't think we should ban the import, back to people's point of view, in terms of it. Um, jumping through some questions. And if you're starting again from scratch, what hives would you go for? Polywood, Abello, etc.? So if you asked me that question 2 years ago, it would have been a really straightforward everything. But I think they're— I do think they're the best poly hive by a long, long way. They really, they really are. And I, people know that I do. I post on social media for Abella. I do a lot on their social media, and I speak to Damien a lot. So you can take it with a pinch of salt, me saying that I think that they're the best. You see a lot of people, this beehive is the best, blah blah blah, and then they don't tell you that they work for the company. So I'll always be open and transparent, say I do, I do work with and kind of a bit for Abella, but I do like their polyhives. However, saying now If I was buying them again, I probably wouldn't buy, um, Abello poly hives as a complete unit. And my— would be I'd make my own floors and like make wood underfloor entrances. I'd have a— and I'd have an Abello poly brood box if I could get it on a good deal. If I couldn't get it on a good deal, I'll go with a Cedar Seconds box. So just one Cedar Seconds box. And then I would go— all of my supers would be cedar seconds, poly supers or poly national deeps. I would go with cedar seconds for everything above the queen excluder. I'd then have a poly Ashforth feeder from Abello because it is the best one that's out there, and it's the only one that fits really onto a national system without putting the little bars on the swim tee. And then cheap roof from somewhere. I might even get a cheap Suenti roof and just add that on the top because I quite like the Suenti roofs and they're cheap. Not quite as good as the Abello ones, but they are a lot cheaper. So I think it'd be— that would be a very, very good cheap system, and that's what I would get if I was starting out again. I'm going to reduce my colonies. Would you be selling your excess hives or will you be keeping So, so I, I wouldn't sell them as hives because the nuc market is so strong. So I'd always just split them up. Um, but I'll probably just keep them. Like, the prices are bonkers. Like, even when I'm selling my excess kind of honey extraction equipment, I'm kind of thinking, you know what, I might just hang on to it for a year again. So yeah, it's, it's a little bit, it's a little bit difficult. in terms of giving stuff away, you almost kind of think I might as well just hold on to it for a while. But I think around— if I get some help to come and help me with the bees— around 100 production colonies I can manage with a little bit of help. Um, I think the difference between, like, is so different from the difference between 10 and 50. So that's— yeah, makes, makes a big difference. I think I'll probably stick it around, around 100. Greg saying 40. Thought you were downsizing, you madman. Yeah, so whenever I'm talking about downsizing, I'm not talking about nucs. Nucs, uh, looks, uh, what makes us our money. So we, we make reason to kind of keep like a lot of colonies because it makes it a lot easier for us to make the nucs as well. Um, saying about people use the word disease just to scare us, I think. Which disease should we all fear so much? So, yeah, it's a difficult question to answer that. Like, the disease that you should fear so much is the worst one. EFB is pretty— that is bad, but nowhere near as bad as AFB. And they're both, on the whole, very, very rare. In some places in the UK, they're not very rare. So, like, in Essex, EFB is rife. It's so bad, kind of. There's a few hotspots in me. Like, I've never, I've never had EFB. I've never had AFB. Um, I've been pinged once for AFB, as in like they've had a sighting within 5 miles of me, um, confirmed sighting. And then they came and inspected everything, and then they said, nope, it's fine. And they destroyed the other hive, um, from the other person, and they never saw him again. And in terms of disease, then you can transfer that back over to like viral load and pathogens that are sitting because of varroa. So that could manifest itself as like chalk brood. I guess you could put that down as a disease where it's not really, it's kind of like just like a fungal infection. And then all the other brood disorders that you get like bald brood and sac brood and deformed wing virus. There's a few that are well known and a few that aren't well known, but I don't know, I don't, I don't see it too much in terms of like scaremongering on disease. Like, I'm, I'm cautious, I'd say, when it comes to disease, talking specifically about the foulbroods. But I'm also aware that like I'm kind of on YouTube, so I, I need to be a little bit careful with what I say on certain things. Because people watch and people report. So I'd prefer to err on the side of me being very cautious on things and saying it's more important than it maybe is. And don't read that into me saying that managing for EFB and AFB and being cautious isn't important. It definitely is, but maybe I layer it on a little bit more. So next 3 hives the size of a brood and a half national. So I think just David mentioned this earlier, just as long as you're making like reasonable splits and making sure the bees are covering all the frames, you're not going to have any issues at all. Something like that. I would say a single colony, don't split it into more than 3. You'll have problems if you split into more than 3. When you're splitting up a colony like that, making splits, you need to go to a new apiary, don't do it in your own apiary because you'll— you'll say you take 10 splits from one hive, you'll come back at the end of the day and there'll just be one colony of bees and 9 frames of brood scattered around all these different boxes with no bees on them. They'll just all go back and you won't get cold brood. Right, you should make a video about useless beekeeping equipment or talk about it maybe. Okay, yeah, I will do. I'll pick out my top 3 useless bits of beekeeping equipment. Um, yeah, I'll do that. What's my— well, I enjoy it. Any tips on cleaning an api melter? It takes so long. It's a night. Um, that's 2 very different questions in one. So I'm a project manager, uh, and I do, I do kind of enjoy it. Yeah. It's different from project management, it's different from beekeeping. Um, it's weird, kind of in the summer, like when it's sunny outside and I'm in the office looking out, I'm just thinking, oh, be great. And then when it's like pouring down in January and I'm in the office, I kind of think, I'm going to get a cup of tea, I'll sit down and type some emails, this is great. So it depends on the time of the year. Any tips on cleaning an Appia melter? It takes so long and is a nightmare. Oh, tell me about it. It is a nightmare, isn't it? But I do have some tips. Done that video like 3 times, and every time I go to do that video, I just— I can't bring myself to do it because it's such a difficult job cleaning it. But what I do is I fill it up with water, um, like right— pretty much brim it, like maybe like 3 or 4 inches from the top. Turn it up to the top temperature and give it like 24 hours on top temperature, like skin. And then I let— and then I let it go cold. So let it go cold and any scum will sit just like on a single layer on the top. And then I empty out all the water and then I get, um, like a Stanley blade on a scraper and I scrape off everything, like everything down all the way. And then I've got some like food-grade degreasing cleaning whatever it is, product, but it cuts through it all really nice. Spray loads of that on, let it go, and then just a few cycles of just cleaning it down using the scraper, but it takes ages. Any tips for getting queens to mate properly? No, I've got no tips. Just manage the things that you can control, which is like good nutrition. Um, and making sure— yeah, that's it really. Grafting, feeding them well, and then tips for getting them to mate properly. Just kind of nature, can't really do anything. Um, Endrit, yeah, you can ask questions, just pop them in the chat. Uh, Kev's saying, yeah, love the Abello hives but have blistering paint. So have you seen the recent video I did about Upgrading or saving £30 on all poly hives, I would. I would. You asked me what my prime piece of beekeeping equipment would be if I was to go and buy it again. I would definitely, definitely. The Abello paint is is not the best paint. It's not very hard wearing on the roof. It it's a bit of an issue because water sits on it and it's just it. Listers. And the problem with it as well is you can't spray paint over it. You can't use an oil-based spray paint over a water-based masonry paint like that because it makes a real mess like that, and you can't sand it off. So you just kind of have to keep on touching it up, sand, like sand, chip the paint off, and then just kind of, you know, rough it up a bit and just paint over it. It's a bit of a bummer. I said to Damien, I said, just, just, I said, buy them in unpainted and spray paint them yourself. He said he can't. He said they're really strict on what they can put on a beehive. Um, and then it's something that I hadn't really thought about in terms of his perspective, was if, if a colony dies, say he sells a beehive to someone and then their colony dies, and it's happened to him before, they come back and say, right, can I see, can I see the data sheet in terms of to be used in contact with bees? And he said, well, I need to make sure that I can comply with that. So it's, it's not— I don't think it's the best paint that they use, but it complies. But I would definitely say buy them unpainted and spray paint them. How would you treat a colony that is still alive but the weather was So pooped inside. If they can take a clean flight, will it help? So you get a lot of that. There's not really much you can do. What I would say is the big, strong, healthy colonies seem to be able to hold it in a lot better than weaker colonies. You look at kind of bees in Canada, or somewhere cold, they seem to get through winter without tremendous amounts of dysentery if they're healthy bees. Do with— there's something wrong with them. Might be Nosema, but not always Nosema. But yeah, it could be something like that, and less to do with the fact that they can't get out. But it's never nice. I've got a colony like that at the moment. not good. Uh, Avery, missed your question. Sorry if I have. I'm just scrolling back. I can't see it. If you've been blocked, um, if you pop it down again, I'll— I'm answering them all, so I'll get to the bottom today. Uh, do I ever plan on going on a commercial scale? So we're commercial, like Not— I'm never not doing it. Um, and he, like, the whole plan kind of was, I guess, to quit my job at some point and I'll go like 400 or 500 hives. And just having a couple of years doing 100 hives, it put me off that idea. I don't want to be a bee farmer with 400 or 500 hives and then start employing people. And because this— I mean, in mass honey production and selling it to people in barrels £3 a pound. That's not the enjoyment I get from, from beekeeping, but also kind of from the business side of things. I prefer to be like front end and manage the queens and the nucs and Amazon and Etsy and, and kind of do things on a bit of a smaller scale. And YouTube, I love you, YouTube. Uh, Ben saying, really enjoying the 12-frame Abello hives, got them due to your vids, but do you actually use 12 frames in them Or 11 and a dummy board. I use 12 frames in them. I'm not a fan of dummy boards if you can get away with not having a dummy board. So in the Suyenti, you have to use a dummy board because the bloody sizing is rubbish. And then in the wood— And that's some, but it's such a tight fit. And if you do it over winter, you will end up breaking them taking them out. So you do need to go 11 with the dummy. But in the Abello, there's easily enough space for 12 with a little bit to spare. spare. It's probably like 3 or 4 mil to spare. So I would highly recommend using the full 12 frames. I don't, I don't like dummy frames. Um, Mellow is just answering someone else. Uh, Nick's saying, did you say you have 40 hives? Do you have another job? So I've got, I've got like 100 hives, um, production hives, and then I've got a lot of nucs. Got a lot of nucs, about 250 nucs. But I do have some help with the nucs from someone else. As a new and panicky beekeeper, your videos have been a great help. My sentence is always going to start with Lawrence says well done and keep up the good work. Oh well, thanks very much. I do like I mentioned this on on the thing the other day. Like I'm not the most experienced beekeeper. There'll be so many people like on this stream. I'm just quite vocal about my opinions and put it on YouTube, so I'm always willing to learn from other people. Um, but I'm glad that— I'm glad that my videos do help. Is anyone ever any closer to writing a book for bees about what they're expected to do? Yeah, it would be good, wouldn't it, if they could learn to read and actually Could be exactly the same year and they just do 2 completely different things. With my Hyde hive, have I thought about just bars as 10 frames are 40 pounds? I'm gonna get a top bar hive, have a play around with a top bar hive, but no, I've not thought about that for the Hyde hives. I did a video recently about how to heft a long hive or How not to heft a long hive. But I've got the two Danish Buckfast queens, kind of breeder queens. They're not they're not breeder queens, but they're I'll do a little bit of breeding from them. But oh my god, they look so good! I can't believe how good they look. I'm very excited. As varroa management or queen restriction, I've never heard of that. So send me something about that. That sounds interesting. And no, I've not done that. How many hives for an artisanal honey for friends and family? I'd say it doesn't matter how many you choose, you'll end up with 4 times the amount anyway. So I try and keep it to single figures. Oh no, I probably won't. I have to— I just don't have much time to go to shows, so I have to pick and choose. And I just— this quite far away, the honey show, it was like Sandown Park, I think. Uh, have I ever thought of creating a close environment for bees and putting some flowers and stuff around and then heating the place up so the bees can take a cleansing flight? No, no, I don't think so. I sold, I sold 40 nucs to one guy last year, um, and he clearly knew what he was doing. Like, Peter was his name, really, really nice guy. He drove all the way up from down down south somewhere, and he'd, um, he'd lost all of his colonies. I think he'd lost like 50 colonies in a single winter. I said, have you lost 50 colonies? Like, what's happened? Someone nick them or vandalism? He said, no, I'd, um, I put them all in the greenhouse and just trying to like give them somewhere warm over winter, and they just came back one day and it's all dead. like every single one dead. I just thought, oh, just imagine that for work and then coming back and they're all dead. But I think trying to mess with the temperature of like the outside is— I just don't think it's going to end very well. Um, so I wouldn't, I wouldn't do that. Uh, James from London, hello from London. I, I lived in London I was, and I haven't been back for about 10, although I still speak like a Londoner. Uh, looking at 20 colonies next year, is it worth getting a decent oxalic acid vaporizer as a long-term investment, or is it an unnecessary expense? I'm unsure on the time saving. 100% yes. Get a Sublimox, get a ProVap, get one of the— get like a gun-type one, not a wand-type one. Great investment, saves you loads of time. Makes it so much more effective. Uh, it's really, really good. Well worth the investment. Uh, exact— Eddie Thrasher, hello from Michigan. Hello. Uh, what was the exact spray paint I use? I— this is my most popular question. It's, uh, Quick Color by Rust-Oleum. Colors that I use, I use brown, black, um, dark gray, and meadow green. Here you go. Don't use Oxford Green, comes out rubbish. Cheers, Ben. I hear people saying that doing 9 frames in a super gets you more honey than 10, 11 frames. What do you think? So there's less wax. It definitely makes uncapping either in a machine or by hand so much easier if you can get them down to 9s. I know someone who says they do 8s I can't get 8s. I think 9s— I think 9s is the sweet spot. 10s is probably a little bit less troublesome. Um, 11s is— don't, don't— I've got batches that I've not put on because I bought them in error. Bloody gutted they didn't take them back. Um, but yeah, 9s, 9s is where you want to go. Um, have, uh— oh, is that the same one? Right. Best plant for honey yield? Borage. Um, borage is good. Borage is great. Always comment down. Allseed rape's fantastic as well, but it doesn't yield anywhere near as much as it used to. Um, hi, I'm Lawrence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Sorry, I, I've got to cut them out. You've got, you've got to look at YouTube and you've got to look at the metrics. Uh, that is gone. I'll do it on live streams. I don't mind doing it online. Streams. Andy's off to bed as always. Love the stream, love the channel, and thanks for the chat with David. No problem. Um, cheers, Andy. He's a great, great supporter of the channel. And, and again, if anyone here is not following Andy's channel, get over there and have a look. He does lots of good things on his channel. Uh, Blackwater Honey, lots of folks over here in Ireland saying Old school beekeeper saying only honey shows are worth entering. I disagree, as honey shows are basically overheated honey. I couldn't agree more. So I think, I think it was probably on one of your feeds that you did the black jar competition, where it's— you're not looking at the honey, it's just give me your best jar of honey, put a black seal around it, and let's do some blind taste of honey competition. So I would never go to a honey show or like any of the beekeeper ones where it's like, let's check the clarity, because it's just a load of old rubbish, isn't it? And I know that will offend some people, but it's, it's not a load of old rubbish. So I retract that. I won't lose all the subscribers at once because it's kind of like an art in itself, isn't it? Flavorful honey. They're looking to perfect that process of filtration and and following the norms and getting the jar perfect with all the turns. And it's cool, isn't it? Like, I, I can see how people would be interested in stuff like that. People collect stamps, don't they, and arrange them nicely. So I do, I do get the appeal of honey shows. I don't know what to enter though. And for me, it's all about like the taste of the honey. So I like those black jar competitions and I like the other awards as well. Uh, are the winters normally mild where I'm at? It seems like it. Yeah, like globally, without a doubt. With the UK's mild, like in Wales this year, like very occasionally see some frosts. I've seen and watched Andy's videos, they've had way bigger frosts than we've had up here. It does seem to be very mild. Joe saying Thorn have. I always struggle saying Thorn. I always want to say Thorns, and the the lady there tells me off every time I say Thorn. So yeah, Thorn. Thorn seem to have a monopoly over the wooden hive market. They're brilliant up. I think there has been some other companies pop up, Joe. So bee equipment. Are going and doubling down on this big time. I've just ordered 30 of their wooden boxes in the latest sale. Obviously, you've got Mazemore as well. Mazemore do a huge amount of wood, and they make their— but Beer Equipment are properly on that, and they've spent a huge amount of money getting all of the tooling and the equipment in, and I've been pleasantly surprised. By the qualities coming out of Bee Equipment. Um, the boxes have been really good. They don't come with runners and they don't come with nails, which is a little bit— okay, let's get some runners and some nails. It's, yeah, pretty good, fits together nice. Uh, any more bee business videos in the pipeline? I can, I can do some more. It's just I, I constantly trying to do the videos that like appeal to the most people. And I think the bee business ones, uh, um, they're just, yeah, not as many people watch them. So trying to, um, am I thinking of breeding for a hardness in your colonies that adapt over generations? How long quickly could that happen? So we— I do, I do very, very minimal amount of breeding because I don't do artificial insemination. It's very difficult to do anything because if I If I buy a breeder queen and then I run 50 F1 queens off her, you know, that one's good at honey, that one's hardy, that one's so-and-so, all I can really do then is take that F1 queen and say, right, you're my new breeder queen, let's take some grafts off you. And then I'm down at F2. So each time I do it, I'm diluting that gene pool further, and I just end up kind of at F3 or F4. I just got local mongrels. The combination should take that F1 back up the line and then breed from it again. And I've not got the skills, unfortunately, in order to do that, but that's definitely what I want to do in the future. So I'm more reliant on speaking to the breeders who do the artificial insemination and produce the F0 breeder queens to tell them what traits I'm looking for that I want to carry down. And they're good. Like, I'm, I'm well pleased with the F1 quality of queens that I get. Um, got some really good breeders. Uh, do I restrict the queen laying in cycles to limit the varroa? Ever heard of the method? Yes, I have heard of the method. So it's a good method. I know Richard Null did a couple of videos on that. Um, and I think where Amitraz becomes a real issue for resistance being built against it. That's where we're going to be in terms of the summer treatment will be lock the queen up, get them broodless, treat them with oxalic acid or apibioxal to knock down all of the mites when they're broodless, because you can go in and confirm they're broodless. That's a powerful method, and I do think that's where we'll head if all of the chemical ones run out. So I think it's a good one. Uh, there's a big lavender farm nearby that could be an option for starting an apiary there. Have you got any experience of working lavender? Any thoughts? So no, I've not got any experience, and you just need to double-check in terms of the kind of cultivars. I think some of the English lavender is not— it's more like bumblebees. You'll have to double-check on that. Um, massive in France though, like the French lavender is huge, and they get loads of honey from it. Uh, what has been the single most regrettable piece of advice you have followed, and how much of a setback for your growth was it— has it been? That's, that's a really good question. Should take 5 and think about some of these. I'll have a drink while I think. Um, I don't know. I think like a lot of the time I don't necessarily, I don't necessarily take people's advice, and that's probably— it's not, it's not because I think I know better, it's because I get like, I get an idea in my head and I kind of think, oh, I need, I need to do this. So I'd say the biggest regret is not listening to when people have said stuff to me. Um, there's been so many things that I shouldn't have, I shouldn't have done. Like, bloody— you'll regret that 100%, you'll regret it. And looking back, I really regret that. And that, that's like, that's an expensive mistake because that was like 100 boxes at like, I don't know, but by the time you put the frames and foundation in, you're probably talking about £40 a box. It's like £4,000. Um, but yeah, there's been loads of bits of advice where I But I've kind of taken it on board and then gone off on my own way, so I wish I'd kind of listened to people's advice a little bit more. Yeah, what should you do if the honey is crystallizing in the frame? So we covered that earlier. If I have any frames of honey that are crystallized, if they're not tainted by— I just melt it down. We have a big baker's honey run at the end of the year, and if you're not doing that, just feed it back to the colony, stick it in with the nucs. Any problems with melting polyhives when doing your oxalic acid treatment? Yep, melt loads of them, but you get to the point where you're not that fussed about melting things. Like, don't want to scratch it, you're just like, I can't scratch my car, and then you scratch it a bit, and then you're not fussed about scratching it anymore. more. You get like that with your beehives as well. So I'm like that now where it's just, yeah, whatever, melt a bit, doesn't matter. I go in the front of the Suiyenti floors and I just kind of like go like that and it's all melting. Whatever, these don't— these don't care. I'm not quite as blasé as that, but yeah, it doesn't bother me. Uh, oh, there they go. Lavender in the Adriatic, it's a great midsummer But yeah, so I just I just checked because I don't know it could well be me just making stuff up saying that the English one doesn't doesn't do well for honeybees. But I seem to I seem to remember someone saying it didn't yield very well. Or bees, I don't know. Don't quote me on that. That is just me rambling on. How many hives do you think it would take to make this a full-time job? So I know bee farmers who have got like 40 hives, 40 or 50 hives, and it's a full-time job. And they make it a full-time job, so it's kind of like a retirement full-time job. Make that a full-time job like if you, if you produced royal jelly and propolis and tincture and beeswax and candles and made your own foundation and did queens and nucs, um, and all of the different types of honey I know people that extract by the frame, so they will take out a single honey and they'll taste it and they'll say, right, this we believe is like a lime honey. And then the next frame they'll say, oh, this is a mix of so-and-so, and they'll link it back to the hive. So just like you thought, that's probably a full-time job for 2 people on 40 hives doing it to that degree. Or you could have 500 hives and you just go, no queens, no nucs, no No Hive products, just interested, and then sell it off for £3 a pound. So it's not as straightforward as how many numbers per FTE. It's all about what your business model is. Um, I think the number people work on is like 400, so 400 per person in terms of like a big commercial operation without any other Hive products. Endre, you're keen on this idea, aren't you? So about your previous question, you're thinking about a day in the whole winter just to give that colony a cleansing flight if nature can't. I would just say, if nature can't, I just leave, leave. The bees will adapt to that. They would have coped with it for millions of years, so they'll find a way. I'm sure they will. What do I use for my smoker? So I, as in like smoker fuel, I just loads of different things, but the best thing I found is like wooden pellets. But I've got a really cool video coming up. It's on its way to me at the moment as we speak, which is it's called an Apisolis. You got my French accent. And you know people who smoke like vapes. It's an electric vaping smoker. Smoker, like fully electric, and it just like you puff it out like that, and it's going to be the end of smokers. That's, that's at least, that's, that's what's going to be my clickbait YouTube title anyway. But definitely click on it. Um, but it's cool. It is really, really cool. I'm so excited to get hold of it. And even better than that, when people are— because they approached me He's asking me to do stuff. I got an approach from a home alarm system company the other day saying, can you do a review of our home alarm systems on your channel? And I was like, I'd, I'd love to do that, but I, I don't think the beekeepers would be too happy we would be doing it. So I declined. Um, but this one is good. When people approach you, you can get them— you can say it's going to take me a few hours, so what's in it for me? I'm not looking for any money or anything, but give me a free one so I can give it away as a competition prize. So there will be a competition prize as well, and I'll do it as a worldwide competition prize. How about that? It's like 250 quid, this smoker. So I'm going to do more and more competitions because I do think it's a good thing. I got someone from another country WhatsApp calling me there. Ignore that. James from London saying, not got any experience with bee inspectors, but I've gone from three to twenty colonies last year. Should I expect to visit, and is there anything I should be doing? Regulations, etc. No, I get them on. I just get them on Bee Base, and just because they will find out about you, one hundred percent they'll find out about you, and just try and keep them in your good books. You keep them in your good books or whatever. Um, so Luke's saying, thanks for the happy motor advice. When am I— when are you going to sell me one of your bottling machines? You don't need 2, I've got 5 with your name on it if you don't. Selling my second bottling machine, it is a godsend because I run it side by side. So me and my nephew do it together and it's— it works so well. We just sit there just doing it all together. So you do need 2 bottling machines, definitely do. Uh, beekeeping is getting really expensive. Do you think this will scare any? I was having this conversation with a guy called Gavin Clark today about price of nucs, and, and it is getting expensive. It's like the Dutch tulip, whatever it was, um, and a little bit like Bitcoin as well, and kind of cryptocurrency, which is I think it will scare new beekeepers, but at the moment there's quite a lot of money, and there's quite a lot of money in honey, and there's quite a lot of money in, in selling nucs. So there's, there's not many other things. I did the analogy before in terms of if you buy— if you say you're going to get into golf and then you go and buy the clubs and you buy all of the gear and, and you do all of that, say you spend a couple of grand on membership and then you give up and And you sell it all, you probably get back half of the money. If I gave up now beekeeping and sold all of my equipment and sold all of my nucs, I would definitely have made a lot more money out of it. So there's not, there's not many hobbies where you can buy an asset, maintain an asset, sell parts of it, make a profit. It gives you honey, it gives you nucs, it gives you queens, and it's still there. So it's kind of like There is demand, the price will continue to rise on pretty much everything, I'd say. Um, saying hello from Montreal. Thank you so much for videos. I watch them all and learn things that can apply for our climate. Has anyone caught— ever caught a swarm in Quebec? I think that's a question for the group. there. Uh, Endrit's having difficulties writing long questions. Um, sorry about that. Every beekeeper thinks he is the best. It's a sickness between beekeepers. So I, I like to think I'm, I'm different. Like, I definitely don't think I'm the best. Um, I'm best, like, I really am. Like, I rush things, I make a lot of mistakes, I do things to fit in with my lifestyle. Style, um, and the fact that I can't dedicate myself full-time to bees. Um, so I'm, I'm definitely not the best. I'm just the guy who's got a camera. He's got a fancy camera now. Uh, but yeah, yeah, there are millions of better beekeepers than me. Um, with breeder queens, does the temperament depend on the area where the queens are mated? I have a gentle colony caught in a baiter hive in my porch bred from her in the same location. Bees horrible. So with breeder queens, it's— you could like F0, you're controlling both lines, aren't you? So you're controlling like the queen side and the drone side. So you're— so you can control both of those sides, and then as you move down, it's less and less likely. So that colon— that, that gentle colony that you've got there You bred from it and it was horrible. But if you'd have bred 50 queens from it, you might get 5 that were incredibly gentle, you might get 5 that— you might have 40 that are kind of somewhere in the middle of that. So every step further down you go, you get more variability. Doesn't mean that you're not transferring down some of the genetics. You're going to get a mix. You might get loads from one side and not so much from another other side. It is all dependent on the, the local drones though, and the local bees just aren't very nice. Um, that's just the way it is. Like, you look at that tree, the colony that was in a tree stump— bloody not bees at all. Scooch Gaming, I did a video on this one. How do you hydrate your bees? So we don't— so over here you never have to feed water. They will just get water. They'll find it. There's plenty of water around. I appreciate that it's not all over the world, so I have zero experience in that. Um, have I had any issues fitting a queen introduction cage into an Abello 12-frame hive? What do you mean, like the big queen introduction ones or the little, uh, I've not had an issue, but I can, I can look out for it. Um, Blackwater Honey saying, I know you use the National Hive System, but did you ever consider using a European hive system in order to get cheaper hives and frames, etc.? So no, not really. Like, I've always known that the, the money was in the nucs, and I didn't want to lock myself out of the nuc market by going down a non-standardized route. because it's not all— it's not about the honey for me. It's never been just bash out as much honey as possible. Like, our business couldn't really run as it is without nucs and queens. It would, it would have just failed, I think, by now, just solely going on honey. Or I would have had to go up to viable, um, which meant I would have had to quit my job. So, so no, I, I think, I think you do get it, you do get it a bit cheaper, but it's, it's The gap is not as much as it used to be either. So importing now that we've bloody Brexit, getting anything from abroad is difficult. Sage and Stone Homes, they're saying our bees may be brooding up already in February in Kentucky, USA. Wall-to-wall bees in the box. How do we know to add a box? for them, or is it too early? So it's difficult for me to say because I'm not sure what it's like in Kentucky. Um, but I'll give you an example over here. I've got boxes to be like completely full, 10 frames, probably got brood in there as well, but they are full. Um, and there's no way I'm putting supers on until April because they, they won't— they're not going to swarm over here when it's like 5 or 6 degrees. They just won't. And if you've got 100 colonies and you lose— I don't know, if I lose like 1 or 2 early this one, what I definitely don't want to do is start going around putting supers on and then they burn through all of their stores and then it gets cold and then they're running out of food and then I have to go and feed them. So I have to go and take the supers back off again. I'm talking from experience here, it's a nightmare. So I really try and delay putting those supers on as much as I possibly can. Um, and then on there, uh, could you please share what forums are useful to follow? So I'd say in the UK, the Beekeeping Forum is absolutely amazing in terms of content. It's calmed down a bit as well. It used to be a little bit feisty. I have— I have a total of about 5 posts, um, but the, the knowledge, the shared knowledge there is good. And there's what I love about it there is that there's no myths, there's no rubbish peddled. Um, people can be a little loose, but at least they're kind of straight to the point. So don't go there, start talking about matchsticks or ventilation or, um, any of the other stuff that Emir doesn't like. I, I'm only joking, I'm picking on him, but there's a few like that who will just tell you straight as it is. But the knowledge is impeccable. Um, so if you want to know who's on there, Murray's on there a lot. So Murray McGregor, he posts a lot on there, and again, very, very generous with his knowledge and information. Um, I don't know where he gets the time to write such long posts, but he really goes into a huge amount of detail in terms of his operation. That's the only one I'd really recommend because it's the only one I'll ever— I ever actually go on. There will be other ones. But going back to the the beginning of tonight, David's website, The Aperist, is so good. It's got such a good amount of information. I think it's pitched at the right level. There's a few sciencey, techie posts in there that even I get a bit like, oh yeah, I lose personally. I lose interest on them, but I know that's his real. That's David. They're few and far between. But the, the level of information is good, is backed up by science and experience as well. Um, so yeah, should have a look on that. Uh, Julian's saying, I've been working on that vape idea. Yeah, okay. Was also looking at pre-made drawn foundation and the company does that already. Yeah, I've seen that. It's like a— it says it's like a, like an artificial wax, isn't it? They use it a lot in America, that I don't think on a commercial level, but I've seen a few, few people use that already. Always a little bit dubious over drawn, pre-drawn foundation or frames like that. But what I will say is that it's amazing the second or third year using drawn combs versus foundation, like your honey yields just go up so quickly. Because the bees don't have to faff around drawing out foundation. Um, they spend like— you get— you only get like a week or two like good flows kind of per spring and summer generally, and they spend it all just drawing, drawing out the wax foundation. Well, they just go bang, fill it with honey, and then you have to— you're trying to keep up with them. Yeah, Danny's saying about the, the water is crazy. I see it on, on YouTube and You need to, you need to get them fed. I knew, I knew Andy couldn't, couldn't resist coming back. Good to have you back. Yeah, I will do longer videos. We like— I'm— it's difficult in the winter because we— the content, you can't really do too much bee-related content. But this year I'm going to reduce the number of videos that I post because I am posting too many. I've been doing like videos video a day of night at the moment. I do film a lot at once, so I do keep them going. And I do see the winter as a time— there's not loads of content about. But in the summer, I'll be reducing the, the, the kind of number of videos that I do, and I'll be doing more stitched up videos. So I'll be doing videos kind of shot over 2 or 3 weeks, 4 or 5 weeks if that's the case, and stitching them together. And then there'll be longer videos because they have to see it all the way through. Antoine, yeah, no problem. I will— this will be on YouTube. I put all my live streams on there. I'll stick a little cheesy thumbnail on, but you can come back and watch it at your leisure. One word to describe beekeeping. In advance so I can come up with a witty response. It's a bit, bit late for me at half 10. One word to describe beekeeping? Challenging. There we go. Do I feed pollen patties before spring? No, I don't feed any pollen patties anymore. I've stopped feeding pollen patties because I've got nothing to build up for really. The only, the only one I might do this week But even then, I think I'd probably just like prefer to trap some of my own pollen and just feed the pollen back in as opposed to putting it in a patty form or doing pollen sub. And that's it, I'm done, I'm done on all the questions. So I'm back to the bottom again, so I'll give it another 5 minutes if people want to ask because I've answered them all. Um, But yeah, 2 and a half hours in. Um, it's— I'm hoping the video is working a little bit better. It was, it was a bit rubbish. People messaging me saying it was cutting in, cutting out. It looks quality from my end. I was thinking, this is looking slick. Um, but yeah, yeah, uh, plastic pallets, I get them from— I get them from a guy around here. He just, he deals in plastic pallets, but if you go on eBay, they, they often have them on there. And if you find someone on eBay, it's generally someone who's got like a supply of them. Um, so it's good, good to get a supply of them, and they're amazing. Absolutely. I stack them on 3s and I get them for a fiver each. And even if you get them for a tenner each, £30 for a hive stand for 4, it's pretty cheap and they just last forever. Uh, my concession isn't great. What was my concession? I'm missing out here. Um, recommend a honey extractor for 14x12 nationals. It's a bit confusing with bellow. So do you want to extract 14x12, like actual 14x12 frames? Because they are very, very difficult to extract. Even an extractor that will take the them, it's very difficult. A lot of them don't take them radially unless you get a big one. A lot of them take them tangentially if you put the screen tangentially. I would not recommend extracting 14 by 12 frames, but some of the Bello ones do. The 20-framer does take them. I think it will take 20 frames radially, 8 frames tangentially, and I think it takes the 14 by 12 tangentially. But ask, just, I'll just, if you're looking at email the manufacturer and ask. Last question from Ben. What are your thoughts on emergencies, Queen Cells versus Swarm SuperSeizure? So I'll go back to what David said. Just graft your own using either the Swarm or SuperSeizure Impulse. They're much better, I think. And then subsequently control the level of nutrition that they're getting as well. So I would definitely go with doing your own. Um, it's a difficult one though. Like, I, I do kind of buy in a little bit to that you, you breed swarminess. So if you wait for them to stick up the, the swarm cells, be waiting forever. I don't think I, I can count the number of supercedure cells I've kept like on one hand. Like, it's probably in a couple of times. You rarely see a supersedure cell. Um, and I don't like doing them from swarm cells because I do think you breed in a bit of swarminess. And I don't like doing it from emergency cells either. That's just me. No worries, Andy. I do— everyone here, go and follow Andy's channel. It's good. Brookton's Honeybees, get subscribers up. Uh, he's going to be on 1,000 soon. I love it though, Andy, I do. I watched your video saying, oh yeah, not, not fussed about subscribers, not, no, not interested, just doing my own thing. And then you're straight on Beekeeping Basics saying, oh, come and come and have a look at my channel. I do, I do find it resonated a lot with me, that video, because I'm so like that and You do. You do. It is a mentality thing. It really is. My wife's all into this kind of like thinking about things, but I'm like it. If you you get you get one day, you'll get like some days I get like eighty ninety subscribers, and I'm like, "This is amazing." And then the next day you wake up and you've lost one, and I'm like, "I get more angry about losing one subscriber than I do get happy about getting eighty or ninety." But then I tried to turn it around and I tried to think, you know what, if someone, if someone doesn't want to subscribe to my videos or they want to unsubscribe, then fine, like, we're watching the videos. So it's all about like kind of quality over quantity. But you'll be on, you'll be on 1,000. Like, it's what's crazy is the curve in terms of like April, May, June, July, August. August, or maybe not August, April, May, June, July is when everyone watches beekeeping videos. So it really does. Do I use the Nikko system or Genta for queen rearing? What is the best in your opinion? So I don't— I've never used the Genta. I do use the Nikko, and I quite like the JZBZ cups as well. Um, I don't know what— I don't think any of the systems are very good though. though, like, uh, a system, because I just don't think they're very good at all. And I've seen Thorn do this now. They've got a new— so what really annoys me is like on the, on the queen rearing frames, but on the Neco system you have like, it's always permanently there, the bit that pops off and then the little cell that goes in. And there's no, like, you can't really get like proprietary frames that kind of fit it all together. So then you're there with like a little bloody hammer tapping it in and gluing it, and it's just, just a bit— JZBZ system, that's American and UK version of Zed or Zee. They're so much easier. It's just a nice straight bit of wood and it just squeezes in and pops in. But then they don't have the roller cages that fit them, so there's just this kind of real mess that there's really good bits to some, really rubbish bits to the other. Someone needs to come out and just kind of with an all that works really well. And I would just— I would like to use like the roller cages from the Nikko system with the JZBZ cups and the frames to fit together somehow. If anyone knows how to do that, that would be very good. Uh, no experience with Plastic foundation? No, um, I've not. I've got a couple of hives that are going through it now, and on my Flow hives I've got some, I've got some plastic foundation and frames coming for those, so I'm going to run those. When would you— oh, my connection's not great again. Okay, sorry. When would you do your last oxalic acid treatment? December. Yeah, but just because you haven't done it yet doesn't mean it's too late, so get in there and do it. But I'd say all of my colonies will have brood now. Uh, Ben saying not have the patience to do the grafting. So it doesn't take long, the grafting element's not, not that long at all. Like queen rearing, the whole grafting method is like, it takes like, but the actual time doing it Doesn't take long at all, and it is the most fulfilling because grafting is difficult. It is really difficult, and then when you get it, it's really easy. It's like a knack. It's good fun though. Um, yeah, the vid— that was a good video with the cows there as well licking my car. Um, okay, I will do that. Google beeswax drawn foundation production machine and select comb on demand video. Is it cool? I'll have a look at that. Uh, Gary's saying, hi Lawrence, read a recent article about UK honey and couldn't believe that we import 95% of our total honey and supply 5% from the UK. Not sure if those— I see loads of different figures knocked around for the differences between, um, the supply and demand, or the supply versus what's imported, but what's— you're never gonna The people who want to go and buy 50p a pound honey in Aldi or Lidl and they just want something sweet on their toast, that's— they're not going to change. They're never going to. So I don't think that's so much that we— there's not enough beekeepers to supply the demand, it's just that there's not enough people wanting that kind of, that kind of honey. They just want something sweet. You can hear Jasper in the background, he's kind of saying, what are you doing? Get off the laptop, stop talking to that stupid laptop. Danny's saying you can trick them to supersede, but it has to be done right, done in spring with good food and drones. It's about brood pheromone. Yeah, I've seen that. You can also trick them to supersede as well just by cutting off a queen's leg, something like that. There's loads of different ways just to kind of get them to do it, and it's good. Like, a colony that supersedes itself kind of every 3 years is such a Desirable trait. Six months is rubbish if they just don't swarm, and then three years later they just chuck up a single super seizure cell. They're the ones to breed from. Have you ever caught a beehive while at work? I have three of them. No, I haven't. But I tell you what, I do have near work. So I go like I work in. I won't tell you where I work, but I work in the UK. up, uh, to go get a sandwich. And on the way to the shop, I go past this like estate, and in one of the air bricks there is the strongest colony of bees you've ever seen. If you go there on a warm day, like, oh, I'd love to go and do a cut out there. It's phenomenal, the amount of bees going in and out. And it's— I don't know, I guess it's just quite a poor area. He's not cutting them out, and they've been there for about 2 years now. So I walk past it every day that I'm there, and there's loads of bees there. It's great. I will—I'll post a little video up. It's a good one. Do I treat with varomid or only with oxalic acid treatments? So I've treat—I have used varomid because I got someone did a video on it. So it's—it's with oxalic acid solutions, and it is a mixture of the two. I can see why it would work like a mixture of two a. Effective treatments. I do think like the the best treatment is the sublimation oxalic acid is incredibly effective, and I think combining that with a brood break, you go. It's very very effective. And that's it. I'm down to the bottom of the questions again. So I will stay on till like eleven. I'm pretty tired, pretty tired though. I'm not gonna lie. I think it was all I had. I had a really nice dinner. So I bought, I bought an air fryer, uh, like a Ninja air fryer. It's like, don't, don't eat loads of rubbish and minimal amount of oil. And every— I've had chips for like every night for about 2 weeks now because they make the best chips ever, uh, and I just thought Yeah, it's kind of going against the point of getting an air fryer, which was to try and lose a little bit of weight, because I've noticed on my videos I'm getting a bit chubby every night. And they're really nice, and I had it with like some nice chicken breasts and burnt ends, so brisket with barbecue sauce. It was a very healthy dinner. It was Saturday night though. Um, Kenny's saying looking forward to getting the bees out of the fallen tree. Yeah, A lot of people message me about that. When you're going to get them out? I would definitely go back and do it. A very popular video, that one. And I do, I do notice it like on YouTube cutouts and collecting wild colonies is what people want to see, preferably with blonde hair and good, good makeup as well. I think that does help. But yeah, the videos go down quite well, don't they? So I'll try and— if I didn't work, didn't have a job, I would do loads more videos like that. I would just be sitting at home just waiting for the phone to go, say, right, let's go, there's a cutout or there's a swarm. And even, even for the ones where you get there and there's other beekeepers there, I could just go and cause some, like, cause mayhem and film it. That'll make a good video. Um, it's funny, you know, I've got into— I've got Just on calls, and you get there and either someone else is there already, and then you have an argument with someone. I don't go causing arguments, but I've had it before where like I've got— someone calls you up, says, oh, there's a swarm here, can you come and get it? And then you get there and then someone else pulls up like 10 minutes later just as you're trying to get it in, and they're like, I was coming to get this swarm. They called me up to come get it as well, and they said, well, they called me up first. And I said, well, how do you know that? It's— people get very— it is good fun. Swarm Wars, that is, that is, that's a BBC 3 program all day long. Swarm Wars, I would be on, I would be all over that. How have I gained my knowledge? Is it books, courses, forums, or self-taught, or a combination? Um, most— mostly self-taught. Like just messing things up, killing bees, failing miserably, and then trying not to do it again. I'd say a lot of the bee forum as well. I do. I do tend to like this before on a stream, but I got in loads of trouble at school. I was. I was very, very naughty, but always quite good at absorbing information. So I do. I got Pretty good, like recall on things, so I pick things up quite quickly. So if I read something on a forum, I just I remember it, and then I can kind of like put it into practice. I definitely don't read. I've never read anything. I can't take it in through reading, and I've not. I didn't really take much in through YouTube because it wasn't really like I watched a bit of Stuart from Norfolk Honey Company when I was starting out. I watched a bit from that, but I'd prefer to learn by like doing, um, and failing. Um, salmon fillets in the air fryer, that sounds nice. I like that. Uh, showing the love for the bees. Yeah, brood break with a cover on the cage, uh, at the same time trick them to supersede, get 2 to 3 cells and sublimate after it. Yeah, that'd be good, good skills. Uh, on the wild colonies, are they Varroa Resistance or swarm? It's the $64,000 question, isn't it? I'd say probably both. You're probably going to get both there, maybe more the latter. It is funny when people say, I know that there's a wild colony in this tree, and I know there's been a wild colony in this tree for 30 years because I've seen them more than If they swarmed, like, 2 minutes, you've just been— if you're not watching that tree for 2 minutes, you've missed it. So unless you've been watching that tree for 30 years non-stop, there's no way you can say they haven't swarmed. But yeah, it's interesting. What influenced me to go into beekeeping? I said, I said this before, just I had a swarmland in my garden, um, gave it away, and then another one landed the next week, and then I kept it, and I just kind of thought it'd be quite cool. In the group the other day, most useless beekeeping equipment: entrance feeders. Yeah, entrance feeders is a nightmare. I'm really interested to see how your, um, your bottling machine works because I've seen those ones, and, um, I like on the video they just like pop the little hose down and it sucks the honey up, and there's no way you could do that on my On my machine, but it just, it's not got enough suction to pull it up. But I'm hoping for you, because you've got the narrower diameter, you can get the suction on it because it will make your life so much easier. You're gonna do it at that height and not have to worry about the head difference between the tank and where the machine is. So for me, I have to have the tank up here and then the machine down. Up here, want to be like tank or like bucket and then the machine up high. So I'm interested to see how it goes for you. Um, JK Photography saying my hive is super busy with multicolored pollen coming in. Is this a problem this time of year? Also, is it true, uh, everyone having problem with varroa this year? Uh, great, great news. Doesn't mean anything That's a common myth to think that everything's fine or they're rearing brood or there's definitely a queen in there because there's pollen coming in. I've had colonies without a queen, like no queen at all, and they'll pile the pollen in. No brood, they'll pile the pollen in. Like they're opportunists, they'll just take it in. But very good news, um, because it helps build them up, it gives them good stores. Also, is it true about everyone having a problem with Varroa this year? Uh, I'd say yeah, it probably is. I reckon the Varroa levels will be, will be higher this year just due to the fact that they've not had a prolonged cold snap. Prolonged cold snap really does a Varroa— so you see the curves, they're exponential like that. So if you don't get that stopgap where they can't reproduce, it just keeps on going up. So I think there'll be some, yeah, some quite heavy If I catch a swarm but haven't got another apiary, what would be the safest distance I should isolate the swarm to monitor for any issues? I, I wouldn't put them in the same apiary. I just wouldn't. Like, it's different if you just got like one or two. Then okay, it's not the end of the world. If you've got one colony in your apiary and you bring a swarm in and you get it, then you've just still lost two colonies. For me, there's no way I'd be bringing a swarm into any of my apiaries with like a lot of colonies in. Just stick them somewhere else. Just go and go. Just stick them on your roof, garage roof. That's what that's that's that's my quarantine apiary is that. at home, um, on the garage roof. Uh, Greg's saying you've had a fiddle, I think it's still gravity fed to a point, just fix the valve issue, EPA is a savior. Good stuff. Uh, Blackwater Honey, no, I've not done any trap-outs. I, I've had— I've tried to do some trap-outs previously and failed. Um, they're, they're very difficult to get them right. So tempted to go and knock at that place at work and just say, "Can I? Can I just do a trap out here?" Because they'd be up for it because they don't want the bees there. But they are hard to do. You still you'd have to do a bit of drilling and to like get some whatever the chemicals are they use to try and entice them out. But I think it would be it would be a good video with a colony like that and a trap that you'd end up getting like. 90% of the bees. You wouldn't get any of the brood, obviously, because it's a trap-out, and you probably wouldn't get the queen. Um, for me, that'd be worth it, but for them, it'd be annoying, wouldn't it? Because it just looked like the colony— oh yeah, the colony's gone. Oh, there's just a little cluster of bees left. They just grow back again. All the brood will hatch, and then, um, again. But they are notoriously difficult trap-outs, but good fun. Right, I'm back down to the bottom of the questions again. So unless, unless any more questions come in, I'll just have to carry on talking about my air fryer and what I had for dinner yesterday. But I'm surprised, I'm surprisingly tired at the moment. Like, I did a full day's work and filmed some videos and then was doing the honey extraction, and I've been doing that all day today. And I've been like, I've been leaving out loads of honey as well. You can see like I'm knackered. You say you have to see what ways of doing trap out. Like, a lot of them are done with cones, aren't they? So you're kind of— everything can get out, it's difficult for them to get back in. And then seeing people like strapping up nucs next to it, putting it in the same place. There's a lot of different ways of doing a trap out. Any tips for a new beekeeper? That is the The most open-ended question in the world, but I would just, yeah, I'd say my number one tip for a new beekeeper is just try and learn new things, try new things, and realize that a lot of people have an agenda, an agenda as opposed to their own experiences with other things that they haven't tried. But just have fun with it. It is good fun. So yeah, I think we're done. I do enjoy. I do enjoy doing the live streams. What I for the people, I will do them more regularly. And what I'm going to do is kind of instead of writing back to everyone's comments, I will elaborate a bit more because people ask good questions. And yeah, I get a lot of comments I have to go through, getting like, I don't know, 100 comments a day or something like that. And I like to get back to everyone, but it is a bit difficult. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna cover them on a lot, just quickly nip in and answer 100 questions or 2, um, and, and do it on a live stream. So a couple of— I've seen a couple of people do it already. If you've got a question If you put it at the beginning in like bold text saying this is a question, answer this question, more detailed answer as best as I possibly can for your question. Those two, um, a little comment. Uh, someone is selling a whole apiary of 15 hives and I'm a new beekeeper for 2 years. Should I take it? Definitely, 100%. Bulk deals beehives are amazing. I went down to Norfolk last, and I bought 15 hives off someone for £1,100, and that's what they were asking for. I didn't like haggle them down. It was a weird value, and it took me 5 hours to get there and 5 hours to get back, and it was on a proper dodgy trailer, uh, and the guy just had enough. They were aggressive. They were, they were very Nice. But they had the supers on as well, so they had between like 3 and 4 supers on each of them, and I reckon on average they had 2, maybe between 2 and 3 full supers, like full, and we carried them as they were. So we went into strong colonies of bees with all the honey supers on, super heavy. And lifted them back and took them back. And I kind of thought what a good deal that was. But in hindsight, I could have been bringing AFB or EFB back. I couldn't go in and check them because I didn't, I didn't have enough time. Um, what we're driving there, driving back. So there's always a bit of a risk on it. And I think some you need to make really high varroa load. My one, it was a bit of a punt because I was getting them so cheap and they turned out to be it turned out to be a very, very good deal. I think I, I think I earned like 2 or 3 times just in the honey that I took off them. Um, it was good. Is it essential to move a queen to split out of your apiary? Uh, so any splits, I do find it makes life so much easier moving them out of your apiary because you can balance them as you make the split, take them out, and then you, you're eliminating the risk of Any robbing, you're eliminating. It's much, much easier to move them. So I would always suggest if you can have 2 apiaries, you only need 2, you can just keep on like jumping between the 2 of them over 3 miles apart, is very, very good. So I'm going to call it a day there because it's, it's 11 o'clock. I've enjoyed doing the stream. I'll do more live streams. Um, I'm gonna try and interview some more people as well because obviously this was supposed to be me interviewing David and I really enjoyed that bit. So I will, I will speak to my internet service provider and say how rubbish they were, um, and try and sort that out, maybe do a couple of test runs again. Um, I did it, um, and he was so incredibly, uh, generous with his information. And I've just seen someone's given me a £5 Super Sticker. So thanks very much, that's much appreciated. And if anyone— yeah, if anyone wants to kind of go and buy David a coffee, I would much appreciate that. Like, if you enjoyed it, he didn't ask for any money. That's the way he gets a little bit of money. But if you're not going to do that, do go onto his site, take a look at his site, because there is so much good stuff on there, really good wealth of information. If you search for stuff on his site you will see a huge amount of good information. So thanks for everyone for dialing in and being so committed and supporting the channel as normal. Uh, there'll be a lot more specific videos that you want, give me a shout. Um, and then next time you'll see Andy from Brooklyn's Honeybees doing a collaboration with me. Nice one. All right, thanks everyone. I'll see you next time. Bye.