Black Mountain Honey Q&A - Live Stream

Right, so I think live. Hi, hi, Anne, first person to come in. It's probably just going to be me and you for the whole of this stream, so I do, I do have a few questions that I'm going to answer. So I will wait for 5 minutes, let a few people dial in. We've got 6 people here now, so if you want to introduce yourself in chat If you've got any questions, just chuck them in the chat and I will answer them. There are some great questions on my list already, some real proper off-topic questions, which is amazing. Just before I carry on talking, can someone please confirm that they can hear me? Because otherwise I could do this and it might not have actually filmed. So if someone could just put in the chat or give me a thumbs up to say you can hear what I'm saying, that'd be amazing. Loud and clear, excellent. All right, everyone, everyone can hear me then. So I think I'm just going to start then because people will filter in hopefully over the next few minutes. If you do have any questions, just pop them in the chat. I will do my very best to answer them in the chat. I will answer every single question that comes up in the chat, but I might miss them. So if I miss your question as I'm kind of gabbling on, Onto some other topics and I've missed your question, just pop it back up there and I will answer it. So I hope you're all having a very, very nice evening. I do apologize, I don't look directly into the camera. I get this all the time at work. So my camera is here, and then if I put it there, you can't— I can't see what I'm doing. So I just move it just off to the side like that. So I know when people have a conversation with each other, it's nice to look them directly in the eye, but yeah, the webcam's off to the side. The other thing I would say is that the videos that you all watch are edited. They take me ages to edit them. I think I've got kind of pretty good at doing it now, but well, I cuss and swear and stumble and stutter all the time. So you'll probably notice this tonight that I can't get my words out. So give me a chance. Right, so just looking at some of the questions. Okay, we've got a question there about ratchet straps, right? I'm gonna copy some of the questions over as well. Got one about record keeping. About record keeping from Anne, I have seen you comment on a few videos that I've not actually got back to yet, so sorry about that. Right, I'm gonna start off then from the top. So my first question that— oh, final apology, yeah, the final apology is I haven't got anybody's names on the questions, so it's just a question from someone random. I didn't put the names down, so apologies for that. All right, so first question then is, how do you get so many bees to stay in the box without them swarming? The latest video you were doing splits and it shows a box absolutely bubbling with bees. Mine would have swarmed by now. So my bees swarm, there's no getting away from that. I think what you see on social media and Instagram and YouTube is, is the select few, and obviously you might have a a different kind of look of my beekeeping because you see certain bits, and I do, I really do try my very best not to just show you all of the good bits, show you the boxes full of bees, and not show you the rubbish stuff. So you've seen if I've got disease, if I've got something wrong, I will show you that. But what I would definitely say about that question there in terms of showing a box absolutely bubbling with bees and how do you get them like that, is it comes down to genetics. It is as simple as that. So obviously you're doing your swarm control every single 7 days, you need to go and do your inspections, otherwise your bees will swarm. But if you get swarmy genetics, then your bees will just swarm. And I had bees like that for years, and I think, I think there's another question on this later on, which is about building up your colonies and building up the number of colonies that you have in your apiaries, and it's so easy to get carried away by the numbers and thinking, oh, I've got 50 colonies now, I've got 100 colonies now, where really a much better metric is to think about the amount of frames of bees that you've got. It's a lot easier to look at it by saying, well, I've got 300 frames of bees, and don't worry about how many boxes they're split over. And I know, I know I'm going off on a tangent there. But the reason for that is that when you, when I started out, definitely, you're looking at increasing the number of colonies as quickly as possible. So I used to go out, used to catch loads of swarms, I used to take those swarms, I'd let them build up a little bit, and I'm gonna split them into 3, and maybe 2 of them would get mated, and then later on in the season I'd try and split them again, and I'd get to the end of the year and I think, well, I've got loads of bees, this is great, got loads of bees now, and all I'd really done is just propagate really swarmy bees. So those boxes that you see, they're very select genetics, and this is really where I'm moving going forward, which is going for quality over quantity in terms of the bees that I rear, the bees that I buy in as well, versus the actual number of boxes in each apiary. So the question was, how do you get your bees to stay in the box? First part of that is do your swarm management and do preemptive splits on them. So preemptive vertical splits, which I'll do in a recent video on at the moment. You'll see that come out in a few weeks. And then the second part of that is to make sure that you've got good genetics and you're not just going and getting swarms and then making splits using unmated, uncontrolled drones, because you can just end up with really swarmy bees. So I hope that answers the question. A bit out of breath, it's gonna be talking. I'm not used to like back and forth with this, so I might have to like grab a breath. I've got tea. So I'm gonna look— tea, right? Watched a newly laying queen at the weekend and I thought I squeezed the queen. She came back to life after a minute and was fine. I've never experienced this. Turns out they can play possum. Perhaps mention this as I certainly haven't read anything on this and, and certain there's plenty of beekeepers who haven't experienced that either. So I have seen this, I have never experienced that. So I looked into that a little bit more today. I genuinely— that's never ever happened to me, and it seems to happen to a lot of people. So there's not so much of a question there, it's more of a heads up. And it definitely— if that ever happens to me, I will— I'll get it on camera and I'll show you all because I think that's really cool. Um, but I watched a couple of videos on that today and it's true, they just, they just completely freeze and go dead, and it's obviously some sort of coping strategy that they've got, and then they just come back to life. So Yep, no, I'd never seen that. Right, first off, how did you start beekeeping? To answer that first, started off beekeeping, a swarm landed in my garden, amazing, and then a local beekeeper who lived 3 doors down came and collected it, and I just kind of didn't really think much of it, and then it happened again a week later, and I thought, yeah, I'm having these bees, and I think the beginning of the next year I had like 8 colonies, so So my wife laughs because I just, I don't take— I don't do things by half at all. It's kind of full throttle with everything. And yeah, so that's how I started. And at what point did a serious hobby become something you could make a bit of a living through, and how long did that take? So I reckon I made a loss every year for the first 6 years, and a significant loss. Every single year. Started off with maybe like two or three grand a year, just buying hires, buying frames, buying equipment. And then when it got to the point that I thought, "Oh, I'm gonna I'm gonna turn this into like a big business," because I ran it as a business from day one. That's when I started spending some serious money, and yeah, made losses year on year on year. Probably spent 150, 200 grand into the company. over 6 or 7 years. Um, so the question, I guess, at what point did a serious hobby become something you can make a bit of a living through? 6 or 7 years. But it does depend on how you want to do it. Like, I, I watch some people on, on YouTube and I love their philosophy, which is just do it as cheap as you possibly can, make everything yourself. Um, it's great, I think it's really good. I just can't do that because I've got a full-time job. outside of beekeeping. I just don't have the time to do it, so for me everything is what can I buy to speed up my operation. But I do think, you read a lot about this, people saying if you want to make a million in beekeeping it's best to start off with 2 million or something like that, and I think I see where you're coming from. There is a lot of money that needs to go into it, but I do think that especially at the moment, like, people are keen to get into beekeeping, people like to You sell nucs and you sell queens and people will pay good money for honey, so I think there is good money to be made in beekeeping at the moment. Okay, next question. Do your bees sustain or is there a second job? So I could sustain myself on my bee company at the moment, and that's after its 8th or 9th year in. I could definitely, if I wanted to quit my job, I could quit my job. I'd have to take a big pay cut though. And yeah, and there is a second job, so I'm a project manager for a construction company, and it's tough managing both of them. The biggest challenge that I face— I've got a wife and a young daughter as well, and I get up early and I work late. I'm always doing bees, so I don't have any hobbies whatsoever. That's not true, actually. I have lots of hobbies. I love loads of other things, so I love fishing, I love golf, I love all sports, I love cricket, I love football, and I never do any of them because all, all I do is spend time labelling honey and making up gift boxes and doing everything to do with the business. So I do have a second job. All right, next question. I recently caught a swarm in an old box and they've started building new comb on the floor. I don't want to give them any comb from an existing hive as I know it has a high mite load. I don't want to give it to the swarm. Should I continue to let them build the comb on the roof and then cut it out and frame it up, or should I cut and discard and give them undrawn frames, or something of both? A simple one. I think this one is just shake everything out onto brand new boxes with foundation because it's a swarm, especially with the weather as it is at the moment. It could be really rough and aggressive with swarms. I have a few turn up in my bait boxes and I'm just— I find the queen, pin the queen down, and then just shake everything in just leading to it. So I definitely would let them draw out the comb and then start messing around pinning that into frames. I just shake everything onto new frames, do a shook swarm, and be done with it. All right, so I'm going to answer some of the ones that are on here first. So, hi, hi from Cape Town, South Africa, very nice. Hello. Can you describe your record keeping? Right, so, and the reason I've dodged this question for the last God knows how long it is now is because my record keeping is trash. It's really, really bad. So I'm a project manager and I'm supposed to be good at like kind of keeping things organized, and it's path of least resistance for me for everything. So I started off doing like a traffic light system, and then I moved over to a laminated sheet underneath my roof and going to the nth degree, sticking everything down on it. And then it's come down to now I've just got a pen. I've got an oil-based pen and I write on the roof. the most important thing. And the only thing I really ever need to know in a hive is the queen status, so if there's a virgin in there or if there's cells in there. If there's disease in there, I'll isolate them straight away and put a big red mark on them. So my record keeping is really, really bad, and I think if it was my full-time job, it would be a lot better because I would be looking at maybe rearing from my own colonies and doing all stuff like that. But I don't, so all I do is I just buy in good quality genetics, and my record keeping is really, really bad. So yeah, it's just I just scribble on the roofs. Yep, you show real works for me. I don't know what that means. Right, well, I've just fitted my first super and queen excluder on the new Abello. Is it right that the queen excluder sits directly on top of the frames? So the new Abello 12 frame is top B space, so it shouldn't sit directly on the frames. There should be a single B space 8 millimeter gap between. between the top of the frames and the queen excluder. So next one, can you clip the wings of a queen and does it harm her? You're a new beekeeper. So I never used to clip wings, and I think, so I started doing that this year and it's made a massive difference. I've not lost, I lost one swarm before I started clipping the wings this year. I've not lost a single swarm since, and I've found, I've come back and found some capped cells with the queen still there. So they probably had a go at swarming and came back, and then I got them. And in terms of honey production, massive, huge, huge amount of honey coming in. Really, really good. So I think it does make a difference. In terms of hurting them, I don't think so. Like, you cut them, all you do is like you take the very tip of the wing off. And I've done it loads. I've got a video on the, on the members section at the moment. It's going to be released soon. It's been there for a while. But you see when I clip them, they just kind of run off and go and lay another egg, but they're genuinely not that fussed at all, so no, I don't think it hurts them. Next one, regarding genetics, many new beekeepers start off with swarms and in my view was up with swarmy bees. I'm not sure, I'm not sure what that means, but yeah, swarmy bees, I've had colonies that have swarmed 3 times in a year, like they build up and then swarm, and then build up, and then swarm, and then just keep on going. And there's definitely something to be said about rearing swarmy bees, because I found with the other colonies that I get, when you're buying in the genetics, they do not swarm anywhere near as much. Yeah, £200K, I know it's a lot of money, isn't it? And the good thing about it is though, is that— and I'm so bad for this— but it's the tax rebates that you get are very, very good. So when you're having second businesses, you can claim back— obviously, the first thing to do if you're serious about beekeeping is become VAT registered. So on that £200K there, you've probably got like £33K or £34K back in VAT, because everything, every single thing you buy in beekeeping is VAT— is you pay the VAT on, so you claim that back. And then depending on what your tax rate is as well, you get 40% back as well. So if you're like medium rate payer, you get 40% back on top of that. And that's after VAT. So if you spent 200k, you'll probably get about 80, which you probably spent in cash terms only 85k. So this is what I tell my wife. This is always my excuse. It's like, oh, it's not 200k. It's only it's only 85k. But she doesn't she doesn't have any of it. She she sees straight through me. Will this live stream be available on your live stream? So the I'm hoping I've never done this before live stream. I'm hoping it will just be on my channel. So I've got a little thumbnail on it, so it will be there to watch if you need to go and, I don't know, take your kids to bed or go and watch something better on telly, uh, and then come back to this. So yeah, it will be there too. Difference between Jolanta and Buckfast queens? Good question, Nigel. So I've seen your post today. I've not got back to anybody today because I have been out all day. Um, it's just, it's just the genetics really. They're both kind of mongrels. Um, the, the Buckfast ones, uh, bred in. So they're UK genetics, but they're open-mated F1 over in Italy, southern Italy, way away from where high beetles are. And they've been being imported like that for like 15 years or something. Um, really good line of Buckfast though. And then the Jolanta ones, after Jolanta— I'm not going to try and pronounce the surname— um, that is Moen McGregor's head of his queen rearing unit And it's just working, working with his bees, and I'm not going to even begin to say I know what the genetic lines are. I've asked Murray, I've said you need to tell me what the lines are so I can get it on the website, but I understand there's a real mix of different bees in there. But saying that, take a look at the video that I'm going to put out next week because I show you the performance, the spring harvest performance of one of my Jelanda colonies I got from last year, and they are, they are so, so impressive, the Jolanta ones. Very different from the Buckfast. They're both really, really impressive, they're both really prolific, but the behaviour is very different. So the Jolanta— so the Buckfast is, they're not, they're both nice, kind, gentle bees, not like some of the colonies that I've got which are gits, but the Jolanta ones, it's strange, they've just got this, they've got this habit, they don't go on the top bars that much, so in the winter you sometimes think, you open up a box, to check on them for feed, and you think they're gone. You think, oh damn, lost a colony. Uh, and then you look down and they're on 10 frames and they're just like a couple of inches down. Really weird. Um, but keep an eye on the website. I'll do a, do a video on the comparison on that because I, I need to know it for the website. So I will give you more information on the breeding lines for the Gelamta. But yeah, top queens. Thank you for being so honest. Yeah, that is what this, that is what this channel is all about. It's not me trying to bullshit people and say, um, oh, look, look at this, this is, this is how I do my bees, isn't it the best? Like, I'm genuinely still learning, um, and I will continue to learn, and I learn on the bees every day. And I, I meet so many people in beekeeping that are so much more experienced than me, they just haven't got a YouTube channel. And when I say like so much more experience, I mean like I've maybe got like 3% of the knowledge that they've got. Um, so it's great. I meet people all the time, but I will always be honest and say if I don't know something, I'll just say I don't know that. Good evening. Uh, I like your YouTube channel. I, I watch quite a bit of YouTube, and I try to focus on people who are building their channels. I find the, the, the actual theme of someone building a channel really interesting. So yeah, I like watching your videos. Right, Kevin Kitson did me a favour after Smokergate. Yeah, really appreciate that. I'll never forget Kevin's input on that one, so thanks, Kev. All right, brood box filled with honey whilst waiting for newly mated queen to lay equals short of space. Add a second brood box, move 4 stores frames up, 2 frames of foundation placed either side of brood. Okay, yep, spot on. This is— I get asked this question so much, you know, should I go double brood or should I go single brood? And I say to everybody, why do you want to keep bees? And they're just like, what? I say, why do you want to keep bees? And often, I'd say 70% of the time, people want to keep bees because, oh, I just want to keep some bees and have them do well for the environment and pollinate some plants, which is a really good thing to kind of do. And I say to everybody, I say it's easy, then just go double brood, go double brood straight away, because it just helps you mitigate swarming. Doesn't eliminate it at all because they'll definitely still swarm, but it makes things so much easier, it gives them loads more space. And then yeah, if I was going to start beekeeping again, now this isn't a question in here, but this is probably the biggest bit of advice I'd give to anyone, and I always kick myself because somebody gave me this advice and I didn't follow it. I'm sitting here thinking, I should have followed that, really good advice, is to keep everything on the same size box. That is the best bit of advice ever. Starting out in beekeeping, or you're just thinking, I'm just going to get a colony of bees, work out what size box you can lift up when it's full of honey and just use that box for everything. Just buy 100 of those boxes. So I would go with, I'd go with a National Deep, not because I like the frame format, because I think it's a rubbish frame format, But because that's what we use in the UK and it makes it easier for selling nucs, and that is it. I would just go National Deeps on everything. That would save me so much time, because what I end up doing is going to the, going to the apiary, I find something and I think, oh, I need to do something different here because I've either got a 14 by 12 as a brood box or a National Deep as a brood box or a mixture of the two and supers up top. So what Kevin's saying there about moving frames up It's so much easier if everything's the same size, and then if you're doing splits, everything's the same size. If you're making up nucs, it seriously, it saves you a lot of time. Do you think that beehives are a warning to men about matriarchal— I don't even know how to say that— societies? Um, don't know, I don't understand the question. You have to like break it down a little bit better than that. Uh, sorry. Just getting into beekeeping and your videos are so informative, exactly what it says, no-nonsense beekeeping. Keep up the great work. Oh, thanks very much. Glenn Watson, couldn't agree more. Okay, right, let's get down to some questions. Hi, if we were to order a queen from you, would you be able to clip it and mark her before sending out? So they come marked, but we're not offering clipping at the moment because it is, it's a, we sell out, we send a lot of those queens out and It's something that I had to think twice about taking on because I knew that I could get overwhelmed quite quickly. And we're 3 weeks in and I'm overwhelmed already, so adding in clipping to the service is going to be a little bit difficult. What I would say though is clipping them when they're in the cage, so, so easy. All I would do is get them home in the cage, close all the windows, get some water and a spray gun, just spray them till they're pretty much sopping wet, and then just pick them up, take it, and you can just clip them. And when they're wet, they're not going to fly off. You can just, you can handle them really well. And then just go and put them straight into the hive, and then they'll warm up, dry off a bit. Okay, last question on here then. How many colonies do you have right now? So I sold— we sold so many nucs this year, and I've made a real concerted effort to try and reduce the number of colonies that I've got. Um, I know I've not managed to do that very well. we've sold about 200 nucs since Christmas, maybe about 220. We've sold a lot of nucs, so I'm not— so the colonies that I've got at the moment are still around 100. If I hadn't sold those nucs, I'd be up at around 300. So yeah, it's— I'm trying, I'm trying to reduce them down. I just, I can't cope with the number I've got at the moment. I can't get around them as quickly as I want, so I'm really trying to condense them down. Eliminate the ones that either are a bit grumpy or not performing, um, and then we're going to buy in some really good top quality queens, requeen everything, condense the apiaries down. Want to get down to around 60 or 70, I think, um, but then we'll go for 60 or 70, they're going to produce like serious amount of honey to reduce the amount of time that it takes me to go around and actually inspect them all. I'm sending some tea. What, do you not use super shallow frames? Yeah, I do. So I've got about 300, 350 National Shallows, and, uh, I, you— I do use them, but I made this transition over to 14x12, which is really— it definitely helped the 14x12. It's brought its own set of problems, which is that this difference in frame size, and it's compounded by the fact that I was already on National Deeps, so now I have 14 by 12s. Well, my extractor can take 14 by 12s, so all of my boxes are interchangeable as, as like brood boxes or supers. So I've got— there's a, there's a Demeray video coming out shortly where I've had to lift up a big 14 by 12 and a National deep up the top of the Demeray, and it's— they're super heavy. But I'm just, at the moment, I'm just— it's a bit of a mix and match of everything, and it works, but it's just a bit messy. So I'd like, yeah, I would, if I started again, I wouldn't have shallows, but then if I was starting again and I was like a bit older, maybe I would go down the only a shallow system, so just national shallows, but it's just having everything one size box would be great. Hey man, I've just got a swarm trap outside my shed. Yesterday bees were inspecting it but nothing in the evening, same again today. Any clues as to what's going on? Definitely not from my hives, big fan. Thanks very much. Yeah, so scout bees, crazy. Like, you can be— you can have a bait hive up and you look at it and you just think, oh, today we're going to get a swarm guaranteed, and then they just go. So the scout bees will just go out and they'll just be looking at all the different places, checking them out. They're probably doing it at like 50 different places, and then they just choose which one to go to. So I find if you have a colony, if you have a bait hive up and you're seeing lots of activity there, What tends to happen is they either come and there's a massive swarm that goes in, or it just dies off and they've gone somewhere else. So hopefully, hopefully you'll get one. Kevin, how many hours a week do you have to give to inspecting so many hives? So I do, we kind of finish like 2 on a Friday at work, so I try to get out after Friday, but I tend to get caught up with work. Work stuff. So I have a whole day on Saturday and then Sunday is like a buffer. But to go around and do a full round of 100 colonies takes me about 7 hours with driving, so it's not too bad. I think when you get to like a certain level of beekeeping, you do become a bit quicker on the inspections. Like, I just go through frantically shake them off, check for swarm cells, put them back together again. You're not— doesn't take long, probably 5 minutes, 5 or 6 minutes per inspection. What slows you down is that when you, um, when you find swarm cells, when you find something you have to do a manipulation, it really slows you right down. So yeah, I, I say Saturday's my beekeeping day. I spend the whole weekend, pretty much every weekend, doing my beekeeping, and this is why I'm trying to rein it back in a bit, because I'm, uh, missing out on my daughter growing up, which is quite sad. Um, but obviously I've got livestock there, I need to make sure they're okay. So I just want to get it down to make it, make it everything a little bit more manageable. Um, another one from Ange. Have some oilseed rape around, when do you suggest I extract? As soon as you possibly can. You're probably about 2 weeks late on the extraction for that. Um, it, it go— it turns overnight, the oilseed rape, and it's really, really difficult to get it out. So you may well be a bit too late on that. I would have extract it as soon as you possibly can. One from John, want to make up a nuc in preparation for a new queen, 5-frame holly that has feeders for both syrup and fondant, so when would you suggest I make it up and how many frames of brood foundation food? So making up nucs, you can do, like, it totally depends on when you want the nuc for, if it's going to be something you're going to build up into another hive. This time of year you can easily do like 2-frame splits with one frame of brood, and then really, really build them up. You can feed fondant any time of the year, but I think this time of the year thin syrup is what they really want. It's really accessible for them. Now, my way of doing splits, putting the queen in the cage for 7 days. I know people don't like that, some people really don't like that, conversations with some people, but it's fine. Like, I say it's fine. Works for me, it's what I've always done, and it just means you're not preempting when the queens are going to come. Like, especially this year, the supply of queens has been a nightmare. So if I was making splits and then saying, right, I want my queen to turn up now, then it could be really, really difficult. So make it anytime really, and then just put the queen in and then knock everything back, get it hopelessly queenless, and then release it. I started 14 by 12, which I find great. However, I find it takes a long time to move up the super. Hope, uh, my hope is to start introducing British Standard deeps into my yard in the hope to get them filling sooner. Right, so I, I've been caught out by this, definitely something that I've looked at before, and this all comes down to genetics of bees. Some, some bees, they will never fill a 14 by 12, and they probably put 50% of their yearly crop into, into the, the 14 by 12 brood box, So if you want really big, massive colonies, you need to get the genetics to do it. You're not gonna find that, I don't think, kind of from like a feral swarm. I don't know whether you've got feral swarms, you're buying them in. But as soon as I realized that and started buying the colonies, wow, like— If you watch that video I did the other day with the 2-frame splits, so that colony, the one that they said that were bubbling out of the box, I've had about 6 frames of brood out of that already this year, 6 big massive 14 by 12 frames of brood covered all the way around like that with brood, and they've got about 60 or 70 pounds of honey on them, and they're over 10 frames in the brood box, and there is not a single drop of honey in the brood box. Every single cell is brood. So it's a case of 14 by 12, you need to match the box to your bees, and it depends what bees you're working with. Now, big prolific colonies definitely aren't for everyone though, a lot harder to handle, and they take a huge amount of feeding, lots and lots of feed over winter, and if you get it wrong you get dead colonies, and for some people they don't really want that. But yeah, I wouldn't say it's just a case of 14 by 12 not being able to fill the boxes, it'll be the genetic of the bees not wanting to fill them. Well, how do you get access to land to hang swarm traps? You can't very well put them on the side of the road for fear of theft. I don't know, I don't know what it's like where you live. For us, quite low levels of crime around here, so just hang it anywhere on your house. That's what I'd say, best place to stick it, just stick it on the garage roof or something. Swarm traps, like, best thing for swarm traps, blackcomb. I know I said that, everyone probably knows that anyway, but stick a bit of blackcomb in a swarm trap and give them a good amount of space in there, so like 40-50 litres, and you'll catch some mega swarms. And saying it's still flowering, the OSR, yeah, but it's, it's because it's been flowering for such a long time that it starts to set in the combs, so you— I would get it out as soon soon as you possibly can. All of the bee farmers that I know had it out a good, a good week ago. Yeah, they tend to get it out kind of as soon as, as soon as June hits, they tend to get it out. Right, that is— I'm up to date on all— oh, okay. Do you think we will hit a June dearth this year given the late start? So maybe, like, not I don't think it will be significant for us. The June gap is never that significant, and as long as it's sunny during the June gap, they'll pretty much sustain weight. So they're not going to start like losing loads, they're just not putting loads more on. Um, so I just— so I don't think they will, but it's very, very different throughout the UK. So if you're down on the south coast, you could have a massive June gap. If you, if you're up in Scotland, you could have a massive June gap. I think it's very, very location dependent. For us, we're definitely not going to have a big June gap this year because I can see brambles out already, um, and the crossover's been pretty good. So there might be a couple of days. Uh, the feeders I use with the Suyenti brood boxes, are they a specific brand of Suyenti too? They are the worst Ashworth feeders I've ever used in my entire life, so do not buy them. Yeah, but yeah, they are Suyenti. and they don't have the rebate at the bottom, so I've had to glue on all of those bits of wood, which works, it took me ages, and some of them are coming off now. So definitely do not buy them. BS Honeybees do one, Abelo do one, and they're both polyash forth feeders with the rebate on, so buy either of those as opposed to the Sweemte's. Yeah, John's answered the rapeseed one, so it crystallizes in the cells, nightmare. Have I any experience with Carnolian queens? Yeah, very, very limited experience with them. So I did try them, and all I found was they were, they were nice to handle and they swarmed. And I know some people have worked with those and they don't swarm as much, but I found the buildup was crazy. I couldn't get over how quick they built up and then they just swarmed. So I had them for like a year and a half and I just thought I don't want something that's going to swarm, take me by surprise, because it was, it was really difficult to manage it. Flow hives? No, I've not tried, I've not tried any flow hives, but I might try one, um, just, just for YouTube, uh, because I do like— they get really, really bad rap, flow hives, and, and I do understand why, because they kind of sell it on the premise that you, you could just stick it in the back garden with the kids running around You just go and turn the tap, you've got honey coming out of it. But that— it does work, but yeah, they sell you this little dream of not having to do a huge amount of work, not having to go and inspect the brood box, and I think you get some irresponsible people with them. So I'd quite like to get one and do a few videos on it about, yeah, how to maybe manage them responsibly. So I have sent them an email to see what— to see if they'll give me one for free because I'm not paying £800 quid for one just to do a YouTube video on it. Uh, yeah, so Brooklyn Honeybee, send them. I don't know if they ever made national boxes, you know. I, I've never seen them on national boxes. They've always been Langstroth last time I looked. Um, but I'm, I'm happy to have, have a go on one on a Langstroth. Um, have I done an update on my experience with the BS Honeybee hive? No, I have not even painted it yet. Sorry. I am so far behind this year, like it's— I proper have to pick and choose what I do, which is rubbish because, like, my personality is I really get off on getting things done and like ticking things off. And I'd say this is the first year, maybe last year as well, when I just— I've just not got round to doing stuff. So I'm really genuinely struggling for time. Okay, I wasn't aware they've made some— they've made a few nationals. That is interesting. I guess it's easier for them just to do a worldwide one. Um, cool. I will, I will have a look though, see if I can get myself a Flow Hive and have a go on it, have a little play. Right, I'm up to date on the chat. Great. Uh, right, so next question on here: what challenges have come about due to COVID-19? Good question. Uh, I'm not sure who wrote that one. So the impact on our business from COVID-19 has been crazy. So sales for Honey, through the roof. As a business, our turnover was up 1,200% last year, and I know that sounds like, really, 1,200%? But like, it was a small business before, and it's turned into like quite a reasonably sized business now. Our honey sales turnover, I think, was about 700 or 800%. So the website sales just through the roof because people are sitting at home, getting paid in some instances quite a lot of money, and they've got nothing to spend it on. So anything that's a little bit of a treat— honey's nice, honey's a bit of a treat— that has been doing really, really well. And then the other thing is that a lot of people, I think, have been thinking, oh, maybe I'll keep bees, and then they've not been able to due to personal commitments or going away, and then they've been at home, so they thought, I'll start keeping bees. So every— everything that we sell has just gone through the roof. In terms of, like, my workload, it's been good because I've been able to manage it a little bit better because I've been around a bit more. But yeah, the challenges have all been real positive challenges really. It's nothing, nothing bad, nothing like we've been struggling. It's quite the opposite. It's how on earth are we going to cope with the increased sales, the increased demand for everything. So yeah, it's good positive challenges. Well, I remember who wrote this one. This is from Rob Tallis. As a first-year beekeeper, is it wise to avoid splits or go for it? If so, how late in the season can that be done? Definitely go for it. Always. Like I say this to everybody, I am not one of these people that think I'm not going to sell you a nuc because you don't have your grade three diploma in frame making. Like you just can't learn stuff to do with beekeeping on an exam book. You can read up, you can see the content, and obviously I would advise people to like look into the technical side of things before they get their bees. But also, if they say, oh well, I just want to get some bees and I want to learn on the job, that's exactly what I did, and I just find that's the best way to learn. So no, definitely don't avoid splits, but I would say temper that a little bit with the don't go crazy with splits. Don't think— don't get caught up in that trap, which is, oh, I've got one hive of bees, and I know you've got more than that, but I've split them now into 10 colonies. So now I've got 10 colonies of bees, and I like that. I always do it by frames, so if you've got 10 frames of bees and you split them into 10 one-frame colonies, you've still got 10 frames of bees, and that's a much better way of looking at it. So definitely have a go at doing some splits. I would say the easiest, the easiest splits to make are splits where you make a split, let it build its own cells, knock down all of the cells, so look at the timings, Make sure it's hopelessly queenless, add a mated queen, make sure it's been accepted, and then go from there. Because then within 2 weeks you're back up and running, you've got eggs going in there as well. So yeah, definitely have a go at it. Then how late in the season? So when we make our nucs up for overwintering, we go around August or September with an in-year mated queen, so a brand new queen, and we go— well, pardon me— 2 frames of brood And then we put a bit of foundation in and some drawn comb as well, and then we constantly feed until they stop taking it down, like feed, feed, feed, just little and often, and then you've seen the nucs, how they come out of the winter absolutely ram-packed full of bees. So you have got quite a while, quite a while left to make up some nucs. Okay, I've got one on here, can you show us how to clip our queen bee's wings please? So I can't, I can't show you on this video I'm afraid, but I will Put the video up for it. It is quite simple. I do it a different way from most people. I just kind of pin them down and do like a diagonal cut across the back of the 2 wings. So it's not the conventional way, but I just find it really quick. It means you haven't got to pick them up, because I find when you pick them up, you've got to pick them up the other way. So I like to pick them up from the back, and then I'm kind of holding the wing. We used to have to pick them up from the back and then like transfer them over and then do it, and my left hand is just like good for nothing. So it's just the way I learned to do it. What's your best recommendation you have for rearing queens? So I do, I do think everyone should have a go at grafting. Grafting is a really good thing to learn, but you don't, you don't need to do that if you want to rear your own queens. You can, you can rear them loads of different ways. You can do like kind of like cell punches, they work well. What I would just say to people though is don't, don't rear your queens on the basis that a colony is swarming. So you think, I've got colonies swarming here, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna cut out those 6 swarm cells and then go and add them in, and I've got 6 nucs. Because I really do think that you can propagate that swarming tendency and it can, it can cause you issues. Um, so yeah, I would go down the route of getting yourself your very, very best colony. You don't need to go out and buy a breeder queen, just go for your very, very best one. Um, and then either force her to create swarm cells somehow, so it's, it's like an artificial method of getting her to create swarm cells, either swarm cells or supersedure cells, not emergency cells. And then yeah, just let your colonies go for it, rear some queens, and they're pretty good at it, at least doing it like that. Right, next one: what challenges have come about due to the poor weather in spring? I can't believe the weather in spring, and I can't believe the turnaround in the weather since it's got nice because it's just been amazing. So I waited and waited and waited to try and take the feed off because— and to put supers on. I don't know if anyone saw the videos where I had the comb being drawn in the feeders because this is exactly what happened to me last year, which was I wanted to get the supers on. I always think I'll get the supers on and then I've got to worry too much about the bees, and last year it was so difficult because I've got supers on and then it just got cold and then they run out of food, so I had to go and take all of the supers back off again and it was a nightmare. So I thought, I'm definitely not doing that this year, I'm going to leave the feed on as long as I possibly can. And then when they started drawing all of that comb in the feeders, I just thought, I'm gonna have to get the supers on now, it's a little bit too late to be leaving it. So I finally got the supers on and then it just rained and rained and rained and rained and rained, and I just thought I can't go down the route of taking these supers back off again and putting the feeders on. So I just run my luck a little bit and thought, I think they've got enough food in the brood box there. I've fed them and fed them and fed them and got to the point where I just about made it through. But the colonies, because they've been fed so late into the year, they were ginormous. But the colonies have been really, really strong coming out of winter. and they were ready to go. I don't know, again, another video, back end of April, had a colony and it had packed out 2 supers absolutely full of honey, and that was April 22nd, 23rd, and I thought, wow, we're going to be on for a mega spring, and then it got rainy, stopped raining, it just rained and rained and rained. But the weather, we've caught up, I'd say we're way above average for our spring crop this year. across the board, across all apiaries, just because we've had the ground's been wet and then you've got like 3 weeks of really, really good sunshine and the hawthorns just come out and just blasted every single colony. So we've got colonies that are up easily around 60 pounds, probably more. I've not weighed them, I just kind of weigh them in my hands, but I'm thinking if, if the super is full and there's nowhere else to— for them to store any honey in the super, I'll call it 20 pounds there or thereabouts. there's some that are on 3 supers in a national deep as well. So challenges, I managed to bypass them by not going and taking any supers off, and it's turned out to be a really, really good spring. Right, how can you save a laying worker hive? Right, so I get asked this question loads, so I don't know, yeah, there's loads of laying worker hives it seems. Whenever I find a laying worker hive, I shake them out, shake them out, go and take them along about 50 yards away from where they are, just shake them all out, and then just pack the box up, put it somewhere else. However, I'm going to do a video later on this year showing you how to save a laying worker hive because it's a question that I get asked a lot, and I do appreciate if you've got one hive, um, I'll say this as I talk, you can't, you can't save it if you've only got one hive, so you have to maybe do something a bit different. If you've got 2 hives though, you can definitely save it, but it is a real gamble trying to save a laying worker hive, and the reason that I always shake them out is because it's the risk of damaging the other colonies. So say for example you had 2 hives and one of them turns laying worker, the way to save a laying worker hive is you need to keep on adding frames of eggs, frames of larvae, frames of open brood, like constantly. So if you've got a laying worker hive and you put in a frame of eggs, they're probably just going to be like, yeah, thanks very much, just going to turn that into bees and we'll just carry on with our laying worker habits. They're not going to draw out cells because the pheromone's not there. The pheromone is there to stop them doing it. And then you do it again and they say, thank you very much, that's another frame of eggs, we'll turn that into bees. And what you need to do is you need to keep on doing it like 3 or 4 or 5 weeks regular intervals, you just keep on adding this frame, and hopefully at some point they get to the point where they're like, they draw out an emergency cell. And then at that point, you can either take down the emergency cell, pop in a mated queen, and hopefully get it introduced. But the risk of them killing her at that point is high still. Or what I would suggest is just you let, you let it run its course and let them try and raise their own queen. But If you've got 2 colonies, you've just nicked 5 frames of brood out of another colony over 5 weeks, so you're knocking it back, knocking it back, knocking it back, and then if they die, then you're kind of 2 colonies down because you've knocked one of them back so much and you've not saved the other one. So what I always suggest is just shake them out, and if you shake them out, you still keep all of those bees because they go back to the other hive. Shake them all out, give them 2 weeks, they'll build up into a really strong colony, you'll end up 2 weeks later with loads more bees than if you started trying to save the laying worker hive and then make a split. And that is what I, that is what I do across all my apiaries now for anything. So any laying workers, any drone-laying queens, straight in, shake them all out, let them adjust for a week, and then make some splits if I need to. Right, more questions. Have I seen an increase in varroa this year? So this— no, I've not seen an increase in varroa. I haven't seen any deformed wing virus whatsoever, but that doesn't mean that there's not an increase in varroa yet. You tend— if you've got a good, like, management plan for the autumn and Christmas over winter, then you really shouldn't be seeing it this time of the year. They're kind of on the curve upwards at the moment, so maybe later on in the year. But I don't do any testing for varroa, and this is something that I would definitely do if I had more time. I would probably test them a lot more, but I just, I treat religiously. So I do Apivar. I've been using Apivar as an autumn treatment and then use some apibioxal over winter to get the mite count really, really low, and then I find that tends to keep them in check. So I've not seen that, I've not seen an increase in varroa this year. I agree with your method of introducing queens, looks nearly foolproof, but have you ever put some full frames in a box for just 4 to 6 hours and introduced a queen that very day, still caged? So my method is I stick the queen in Immediately on day 1. So I make the split, put the queen in like 10 minutes later, and then I leave her caged for 7 days. Then I come back after 7 days, on the 8th day, knock down all of the emergency queen cells, and at the same time take the tab off, stick a bit more fondant in there if they've eaten it all away, and then come back another 7 days later. But you could come back like 48 hours later if you just wanted to check, but there's no benefit to just checking. Um, and then yeah, they go in. But I just— I've seen, I've seen some other videos doing it, doing it after 3 days, doing it after 7 days, and I just think, just wait 7 days. Um, I— believe me, I fully get the, the frustration, and some people aren't very patient, and I am like the least patient, least patient person in the world. Um, I remember one of my first colonies, I killed the queen or did something, or a formed, so I had a queenless colony. I went and bought a queen, bought it from BS Honeybee actually. So I drove down to there, got the queen in the morning, took it back home, popped the tab straight away, put it in the colony, and then after 3 hours I thought I'm gonna go and check to see whether that queen has been accepted. And obviously they hadn't even started to notice that she was there yet, and I thought I'll speed things along here, I'll just take the little glass cap off and just opened it and just flew off. And I'd driven like 2 and a half hours to go and get her. Gutted. I just thought, oh, bloody hell, nightmare. So I went the next day and got another queen and drove all the way down there again, got another queen, um, and did something very similar and lost another queen. I was getting really annoyed. And it's so— so when I give people this advice, it's not been sitting on my like pedestal thinking, oh, I know everything, like I've made all of these mistakes. so many times. I, I say I've made these mistakes so many times. I went and put 20 queens to be banked today, and I was pinning them together, bloody opened one of them up by accident, just flew off. Just thought, 40 quid down the drain, properly annoyed. Um, but yeah, that mega tangent, that one, right? Uh, you think it's best to get requeening swarm after a week I'm not sure what that means. We go to the next one. When is the right time to stop making splits? So I'm not sure where you are in the world because it is very much dependent on where you are in the world when you stop making splits. In the UK, I would say we do it August, end of August, 2 frames, so 2 frames of brood ideally, and then some drawn comb, and then feed, feed, feed. that's probably the cutoff for me, but I know, I do know people do them after that as well, but obviously if you're going to do it, it needs to be a mated queen. You can't expect to get mated that late in the year, but you, you will get matings that late in the year, but I wouldn't, I wouldn't make up nucs on the basis that you're going to get them. Did you take them out from the apiary to make laying worker? I'm not sure what that means. If we get laying workers, we just shake them out just like kind of 50 yards away from where the original hive was. Right, one from Matt. Have done an artificial swarm split. How long would you leave queenless hive before inspecting for brood, etc.? I inspected after a week after initial split and knocked down all but one cell. 4 weeks, 5 weeks. I really, really don't like the, the, the, the Pagden. I don't even know how to say it. I'm that not interested in it. It's, it's a really bad method of splits. I do not like it. Um, so I appreciate that's what you've done. Um, but yeah, it's not, it's not something that we ever do because you end up with 2 very uneven colonies and you end up having to wait until one of them gets mated. Um, so I did a, I did a video on walkaway splits, I think middle of May, and the video was talking about walkaway splits and I wasn't saying I did— I dislike them, but it was just showing you how to do them. Um, and the queen failed, so she's just— she's not come back to the hive, or something's killed her, or something's happened. Um, and that's why I don't like them, because I think for the sake of buying like an F1 mated queen— and I know, I know we sell F1 mated queens, um, I'm not trying to like influence your decisions on that— but it's, it's just that, it's just that guarantee. So for me it's a no-brainer. Like, we don't do any splits with any queens anymore like that. If you're doing queen rearing, doing them like little mini mating nucs, and that's kind of like your goal is to get lots of queens made, it's very different. But I think for anybody's colonies like that, it's so much easier just to stick them a mated queen in there. That's just my view anyway. Okay, yeah, sorry, I've re-answered that one. Can you use oxalic acid in the UK? No, you cannot. You have to use apibioxal. Hi Lawrence, just tuned in. Your F1 queens look great. How good would their offspring be if they were made into queen cells? So they are F1, so their offspring would be okay, but the only difference that you'd get is you'd get quite a bit of genetic variance in that because at F1 they are open mated off an F0 breeder queen, so an artificially inseminated controlled queen. So you're getting quite a bit of variance in F1 as well. So if you were to buy, like, say, 20 of these F1 queens— orders always welcome— um, they might not all be as good as one another. Um, and they're obviously all going to be like, they're, they're good, um, but you're going to get some that might produce 200 pounds of honey and some that might produce 100 pounds of honey, um, some that are really super gentle and some that aren't gentle but not quite as gentle, so you're getting that genetic variance anyway. So then when you go into F2, you, you're just going to get an equal amount of genetic variance, but the only difference is going to be is that where these queens are mated, they're controlling the drones as best as they possibly can, so they'll be flooding the area with selected drones. And when I say flooding, they go wild for it. Um, my daughter's in this room if you hear any background noise. Um, so yeah, so when you do it in the UK, you're gonna probably be flooded with local drones. And this is the issue that I find with like a lot of local mated queens, is that you can get some really good ones, but you can get some really bad ones as well. So all I would say is if you're going to go down that route, you just need to be aware that you're going to get quite a lot of variance from it. But I definitely wouldn't suggest breeder queens for like Unless you've got, say, like 50 colonies or over, I think breeding from your best is, is fine. You'll get some really good queens out of it, like some really, really good ones. So yeah, go for that. How do you guarantee that your queens get mated? I did a split at the beginning of the year and the queen didn't go out on a mating flight, probably because of the weather. So this is exactly what I mean, is you just, you just cannot guarantee it. The only way to guarantee it is to buy a mated queen. Um, and then you know, you know that she's going to be mated and you save all of that time. So that's just what I do. Uh, right, Jim, have you put your Abello Mini Plus mating nucs into action yet? So it depends on what you mean by put into action because I have sold them. Um, I said that to someone today and they were gutted, so I apologize. I've kept one. I bought 25 and I sold 24, so I've kept one and I will do a video on this later in the year. The reason being that I just don't have the time, so I had to sit down and I had to work out what am I gonna, what am I gonna stop doing, and the queen rearing is one of the first ones to go. I'm gonna pause, I'm gonna go turn the light on because it's a bit dark. There we go. Langstroth or Nationals, what are the pros and cons? Right, so Langstroth, million times better frame format, so, so much better, like everything's better about it, but if you're used to Nationals, Langstroth, you'll find Langstroth awkward to work with at the beginning because of the little lugs, but everything about Langstroth hives and the frames, so, so much better. The problem is, is that everyone uses Nationals, so there's not a huge amount on the market. And then the bigger one than that is that if you ever kind of want to sell any of your hives or sell your frames, the buyers are limited as well. So I think there's no debate in my mind at all, Langstroth is so, so much better. But yeah, we're stuck with the National. No worries, I, I try to answer everyone's comments and I— you'll always be able to comment on my video, so don't worry about that. Right, Kev, did my first 2 splits and allowed them to raise their own queens. Now I tick that box, I plan to use mated queens in future splits. As you say, better for honey production, etc. It is, but it's, it's all about what works for you. So if you're— if, if it's like a retirement activity for some people, but like if it's a hobby or a pastime, something you do for fun, and you just want to keep bees, then yeah, you don't need to buy mated queens in. Because if you've got, say, 6 hives and you're doing splits and stuff, and then you play around with them, and then you go into the winter on 6 hives, that's exactly— you, you've kind of met your goals. Um, if you're splitting a hive into 10 nucs because you want to sell some nucs next year, then I just— if you don't add a mated queen, you could end up with 3, and then you're kind of not really meeting your goals. It's all about working out how much time you've got and what you're, yeah, what you want to get out of it. Well, I'm up to date on the chat then, right, so I'll go back to the questions on here. So what got you into beekeeping and who do you admire in the beekeeping world? That's good, that's a good question. So what got me into beekeeping was just a swarm, so I do like, I like kind of like nature and stuff, Love a documentary, but I'm not, yeah, I'm not your typical beekeeper type, I don't think. Like, I was into kind of going out and sports mainly. I love sports, so that's all I used to do in my entire life was play sports. I played a lot of rugby, played a lot of cricket, but I just got into beekeeping. I just loved it, got straight into it. I just thought it was so much fun and so interesting, and I like food. I think that's the bigger one for me. It's funny because I do— I don't do much fishing, but I do a bit, like a bit of sea fishing. So if anyone ever says to me, oh, what do you like? I say, I like a bit of fishing. They say, oh yeah, I do a bit of carp fishing. And I don't want to offend anyone, but I just— what's the point in catching a fish unless you can eat it? I've always thought this, and I do understand, like, it's quite enjoyable in it, and it's the challenge of trying to find the bigger fish and the strategies and stuff. But the fact that you can eat what the bees make is definitely a very big part of it for me because I do enjoy honey, and I like the business side of it as well. So I think what got me into beekeeping was the fact that I wanted to keep some bees and for them to make me some honey. That's what got me into it. What kept me into it is that I thought I could probably make quite a good business out of this. I do enjoy the business side of things, I really do like building it, building the brand. And then, who do I admire in the beekeeping world? So the people that I admire, you wouldn't know any of them. So I don't necessarily admire people on YouTube, although I aspire to be a bit like them, I guess. I'm like, without a doubt, the most competitive person you've ever met. So I track myself against everyone and compare myself with judge myself to them and steal their ideas and do everything. So I do, I'm quite competitive, ruthlessly competitive if you want to put it that way. The people I admire though, yeah, like I say, you wouldn't know any of them because they're not the kind of people who put their head above the parapet and say, aren't I great? It's those people that I talked to you about, the people with all of that experience who I sit down and I meet them and I have like a 4-hour chat about beekeeping with them, and it's probably like 90% them telling me what I'm doing wrong and putting me right and giving me the advice. So I don't know, like this latest video that I made is a perfect example of this, is that the guy said, oh, I don't like the way you make your splits, bit rubbish, you're wasting time doing it that way, here's a better method. And I just, I just thought it was so good, like, when he was saying it. I just— that's what it's all about for me. And I'll never get offended by people saying, um, you, you're not doing that right, you're doing it rubbish. But I respect them so much if they kind of come back and they know what they're talking about. So, so yeah, who do you admire in the beekeeping world? The people who know what they're talking about and they don't come back to you— they're not rude and they're not kind of arrogant and they're not saying, oh, I know everything, you're just— you don't know what you're talking about, I know what I'm talking about, you're doing it wrong. And I do see a lot of this, like, I— this is another tangent we'll go off on, but I, I always had beekeeping in my mind that it was like a little old man's hobby. And, and I know I've probably offended like everybody on this chat, so I do apologize, but I mean that in like the nicest way, like like that it was a friendly hobby, um, and that it's like a nice thing to do kind of when you get a bit older, when you've got a bit more time, it's a bit more laid back. Um, I did— I was not prepared for how cutthroat beekeeping is. Like, it's incredibly cutthroat on like a, on a commercial level, but not so much on a commercial level, but more on like a, like a beekeeping forum level. Yeah, I've said it. So, uh, it's— I don't know, I just, I just don't get the hate with beekeeping because I find that everyone— you're never going to get everyone doing it the same. It's not like, how do you make a cake? Oh well, this is how you make a cake because you need the flour, you need the eggs, you need the butter, um, and it's— these are ingredients are correct and stuff. You don't get people fighting over, oh, No, it's not 250 grams of flour, it's 252 grams of flour. Whereas in beekeeping, the amount of variables are infinite, they're literally infinite, and I see people arguing over stuff that's just like, seriously, why are you arguing over that? And I don't mind the discussion element because I quite welcome the discussion element of it, but it's the nasty— the nastiness element of it I find really, really difficult. Like, I do not take well to arguing, and not in a— not a nice way. I just don't like it. I don't like conflict, um, and back away from it. So yeah, so I've gone off on a massive tangent there. So yeah, who do I admire in the beekeeping world? It's people who are well respected, who I respect, uh, for their— for their knowledge, because you get some people with like 40 or 50 years of knowledge, and who are nice. I'm not, you know, not arrogant about it. How many times have you got stung? Right, so I don't know if you can see on my arm there, you probably can't. So these are sting scars where I get stung all the time, like all the time, hundreds of times a day through my suit, through the ultra suit most of the time at the moment. So I've got myself a new one that goes all the way down to the bottom of the arms because I always the wrong size suit. It was a bit short on the arms, so, um, it gets stuck all the time and it bloody hurts. Yeah. Hi Lawrence, Andrew, any tips for grafting for queen rearing? Having trouble grafting and hives accepting them. Um, so have you— are you checking there's no virgins or anything running around, or is it the quality of the grafts that are going in? Because if it's the quality of the grafts that are going in, just keep trying, just keep practicing. Um, use— I like a Chinese grafting tool. Like I said, about 50/50, I reckon, people on that one. Um, but it sounds like you might have, might have a virgin running around. The, um, the method I use, I, I use Michael Palmer's method, and I thought such a good method for building cell builders, really, really good. And it's quite easy to follow. It's a 10 over 10 method. And you just need to make sure, hopelessly queenless, but then you flood it with nurse bees. And then if you set it up correctly and you do 30 grafts, you'll get 2 or 3 definitely, just kind of like luckily. But yeah, if you're getting none accepted every time, then you might have missed a queen cell, so there might be a virgin running around. So in that case, you've got to find her. Finding virgins and killing virgins is without a doubt the most difficult and time-consuming thing to do, so good luck. How do you approach landowners without apiaries? Running out of room in the garden, so I need to explore an alternative site. So yeah, first thing I say to everyone before all of the other first things I say to everyone is don't keep bees in your garden, like unless you've got a lot of land, just it's so much better keeping bees not in your land. I had 36 colonies in my garden that when my wife told me it's kind of me or the bees, and it was the bees that left. But yeah, so going to people throughout Apris, you will find farmers are so up for bees, really, really good, great for their environmental credentials. So I find the best way is Google Earth. I have a very strict set of criteria for our apiaries, and I'm really quite rigid with them. So they need to have good kind of vehicle access, I need to have unhindered access to it, so it's not a case of, oh, you can come down at this time. It needs to be secure, needs to be really out of the way, out of the way of any people, preferably out of the way of any animals, but as long as they're kind of fenced off, it's fine. So in terms of approaching them face to face, definitely. So don't ring them, don't email them. Just get some letters printed out. If you've got some honey, that works really well, and just go to the places and just speak to them. Do your homework though, look professional, go in your beekeeper's outfit, is really good, they love that because it shows that you're keen, and go to them with a plan saying this is what I want, this is what I'm going to do, and then they take you a lot more seriously. But I think you'll find, yeah, finding out apiaries is really, really easy. I've got so many different apiaries, as in like I could have, and I choose the best ones. But also, don't— this is a good bit of advice, it's something I didn't do for ages— don't be afraid to say to a landowner it's not working anymore. And even if it's not working anymore because the bees aren't producing honey there, and it really is noticeable once you start to get a few apiaries, you start to run your colonies for quite a while to work out where the best performing apiaries are, because I had some at some site and they're just, just a rubbish site, obviously just not got enough plants to enable it, or there's such a massive cluster of bees there from other beekeepers that there's just not enough to go around, one or the other. And altitude comes into a lot of it as well, so we're quite high up, so I've started moving down to go a lot lower now, and I just found the lower I go more honey I get. Pretty, pretty simple really when you think about it, but it is, it is that straightforward. But yeah, Google Earth and then go and approach them directly. Joe, I started a few years ago, I'm 25, but now I find everyone is friendly, we're all here to learn. Oh, it's good, I hope people are being friendly. Yeah, that's good to hear. Andrew, hi Lawrence, I just bought my first bees and decided to treat with Apistan because of Deformed Wing Virus syndrome. What are my options if they fill the brood box before the end of the treatment? So you can't have supers on with Apivar, and it is one of the ones that they test for. You're not supposed to have honey— you're not supposed to have honey in frames that have had Apistan on. I think it's 3 years as well, withdrawal period, so you do need to be careful with that. What I would suggest is just double brood them, just stick another brood box on, let them fill it out like that. It's a really interesting method of keeping bees, is where you keep the queen excluder the whole time, because we do this a lot. So I'm taking the Apistan out of the equation here, but if you build the colony up, so you've got single brood and then go double brood and then just keep them going up like that, and then you time for when the flows are going to come in and then put the queen excluder in, say like 4 to 6 weeks before you're going to extract, so giving all of the cells enough time to hatch out and then to be backfilled. You get some monster colonies and they really do backfill it really well. They seem— if you've got like a box of brood above the queen excluder, they always fill it with honey. Really strange. But yeah, I just don't— I just stick another double, just to go double brood, and then If they're building up that quickly, stick another double brood on and then maybe split them, um, go into winter with 2. Matt, Matt, 27, very young. Um, I'm surprised no one has asked how old I am, so you can— I won't answer, you can have a guess how old I am because no one ever guesses it. Uh, I'll leave that at the bottom. Right, crazy question, I've noticed you and another beekeeper in Ireland using poly deeps. Do you think it is better for winter and keeping the bees warmer, or is it cheaper than wood over there? So I don't think there's much in it. Like, and this is one of the ones that you see like real debates and arguments over. I don't think there's a huge amount in the difference. There is no doubt that poly is a better insulator than wood, no doubt at all. And I think a lot of it comes down to cost. Now at the moment, the prices are leveling out a little bit. Like, the cost of cedar has just gone through a the roof, but I don't think there's a huge amount of difference in it. I personally think wooden hives look nicer, especially if you've got like a— if you want it in your garden, like a nice gabled roof. Some of the copper roofs look really nice, so completely comes down to what you're interested in doing for your bees. If you want to give them the best place to possibly live, then maybe go for poly, and if you want something that looks nice, maybe go for wood. In terms of technical differences, there obviously is a difference there, but I think it is negligible, and I think the bees just work around it. Okay, so how soon after a swarm arrives in a bait hive nuc do you start treating them for varroa? So I think like the textbook answer is, is just do apibiotics or sublimation the second they arrive, because there's no brood there, you're going to get All of the varroa mites first time, so do it on day 1 as soon as you find a swarm, just vape them. Is that what I do? No, because I don't carry around my sublimox all the time. I would just leave them, stick them into quarantine apiary, which I do for all of my nucs anyway. So I've got a separate apiary, they all go there, or they come on my garage behind me there, and then check to see the brood's okay, and then they just go into the normal cycle, so I'll just Apivar them at the end of the year. Like, I spent so much time going chasing nucs— sorry, chasing swarms. I do love swarm catching, like, it is so much fun, and it's without a doubt one of the things that I would do more of if I had more time, just because it is fun and it's cool to video it as well. Um, but I just don't do it anymore. So I've not— I've gone out to catch one swarm this year, and the only reason I went to catch it was because I know the lady and she knew she rang and said, swarm in my garden, is it something you can deal with? And I said, yes, I'll come and get them, it's fine. I wasn't doing it to go and get the bees. I catch loads of swarms in brood boxes though, like bait boxes, and I've stopped putting up bait boxes as well. So all I do now is I just go and stack up my boxes at the apiary, and it's weird, I've not— I've lost one swarm this year, which I'm really happy with, and I've caught 3 or 4, and I've not tried to catch them, and every single one that I've caught is not mine because obviously all of mine are marked and I know the colour they're marked and they're clipped, so I've done quite well, so I'm up. Do I ever do comb honey or is it not worth the effort? It's definitely worth the effort because it's really nice, but no, I don't, I don't produce my own comb honey. We buy comb honey in from someone who is amazing at it, Really, really good at it, and we buy Ross rounds off them, and I reckon I've only ever found a maximum of two empty cells in his Ross rounds. So it's probably the best section honey I've ever seen, and it's really nice. But definitely do it though. It's fun. It's fun to do. I think I think I'm going to do a video on it. I was speaking to Thorns actually about this. I said they're going to send me some of their Ross round sections, and I'm going to do a video on on how to do. them. I'll probably do it at the heather, um, because it works nice on the heather. But it's all about, uh, limiting the amount of boxes that they've got, so you can almost just shook swarm onto new stuff and just get on with it, and they will go crazy in there. But with comb honey, it all comes down to the amount of bees you've got in your box. You need to have some super mega crazy strong colonies to do good, uh, comb honey, and that goes for any of them. Just, just because otherwise they'll do it, but they kind of do it half-assed. So you'll end up with empty cells, you'll end up with it not going to the edges, so you just need to make sure they are super, super strong, time the flow as well. I'm looking forward to your live stream, to do a live stream now that I've done one. All right, Love the videos, learning a lot from you, you cover so many topics and you keep it simple, keep them coming. I will keep them coming, don't worry about that, loads more to come. What kind of money can you expect to earn from one of your colonies? On an average year. That's— I've not worked it out like that, um, but we, like, our average is around like £50. It's probably not much more than £50, like, honey, um. And then, so this is a good topic actually, we, we don't sell our honey in pound jars, never sold it in pound jars. We don't sell it in 12-ounce jars either, so we only sell our honey in 8-ounce jars. So for each 8-ounce jar, so for each, so for £50 we get like 100 8-ounce jars. And then I'm not going to tell you how much we sell them for, give you away too many secrets. Um, we're definitely not the cheapest at all. Like, we, we sell— like, people laugh, I think, when they look at my website. You can go onto our website and see how much I sell it for. Um, people— I've had so many comments from people, especially bee farmers, saying Your honey, you sell your honey for way too much money. And I kind of think, well, why are you fussed? Like, because you can just undercut me, can't you? Um, so I never understand why people put that comment in, and people do laugh about it a bit, but I just think, I put so much effort into that honey, and I am in the luxurious position that I don't have to rely on the beekeeping, so I can kind of like play things around a little bit, try things out. Um, but we We sell, we sell a lot of honey. Yeah, I struggle to keep up with the demand, definitely. So I'd say this to recommend to people is just don't underprice your honey. If you're selling a pound jar of honey for £5, you are selling it for probably 50% of what it's worth. You need to get it up to £10 and do it incrementally, a pound a year. Or the cheeky one is get it into 12 ounces and still sell it for a fiver. And then goes up to £6, you automatically get the percentage off, and no one will know the difference between a pound jar or a 12-ounce jar. But yes, don't sell your honey in pound jars. Yeah. All right, crew, uh, all right, 38, 42. So if you add them together— no, it's gonna be 49. I was gonna do— that's really bad maths. I'm 35. Yeah, so I know this is, this is the problem. I'm haggard. So I've answered Phil Wheeler's question as well. What is my view on treatment-free beekeeping, as I have not treated since I started 3 years ago and I've not lost a hive yet? So my view on treatment-free beekeeping is absolutely fine with people doing it, and applaud them doing it as well, because I think you're doing a really good job, but I think that your bees might die next year, to be blunt. Like, it's— and that is the problem with treatment-free beekeeping, is that in order to get to a point where you're going to come up with a bee that can live with varroa— never going to get a colony that doesn't have varroa in the UK unless they come up with some fungus or something. I know they're looking at that. So you're gonna, you're gonna get to a point where you'll find a colony that can live with it and tolerate it, but you're gonna have massive attrition rate before you get to that. So you might have 100 hives and not treat any of them, and then 2 of them survive after like 3 to 5 years, and then you breed from those 2, and then you get your numbers back up again. But the issue that I have with it is that, are those bees thriving or are they just coping? And that's, that's the difference. And I do, I see people and they say, I've not treated my bees 3 or 5 years and I'm getting 200 pounds of honey a year, and I think, if that's true, then amazing, can I have some of your bees? Because I would like those bees because I don't want to have to treat my bees, but I just find if I don't treat, they die. So yeah, I'm not against it, and I never look to get involved in these wars because I know treatment-free beekeeping is one of these topics that is hugely controversial. And people sit on one side of the fence or the other due to the nature of whether they treat or not, but I think the people who aren't treating are very brave and doing a really good job, and hopefully they, you know, they come up with a bee that is going to be able to thrive and we don't have to treat for varroa. I think back, like, how lucky were people like in the '80s, didn't have to worry about varroa. Bloody nightmare. Right, who designs all your logos and labels? Very cool and distinctive. Thank you very much, uh, Black Mountain Honey. Um, a lady, a lady called Michelle Rose Innes. Innes, I don't know how you pronounce her surname, but yeah, she did all of our labels. Uh, she's very good. I've given her name out for a number of times. I— it just reminded me one thing there, the, the one thing that my family Oh my God, and my friends rib me about more than anything is, hi, I'm Lawrence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Like, that is how they all say it. Every time I meet anybody now, that's all they say is, hi, I'm Lawrence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. And my little daughter even does it now. So, uh, I can't, I can't change my intro line now. I'm too, too far in. Um, right, Jackie Jackson, polyhives in the USA. I want to move to the USA and buy a poly factory and make poly hives. Someone's going to do it, and someone is going to become a millionaire from doing it because the cost of wood is going through the roof, and they just don't seem to have any good poly hives out there. Really strange. Um, so I wouldn't, I wouldn't recommend making your own because I don't think it'd be really difficult to make your own poly hive and make it decent. I think if you started making it like Celotex or like insulation board, it just, it just gets torn to nothing really, really quickly. Um, but I don't know, someone's gonna make a lot of money from it. You can do it, you can definitely do it with insulation board. They definitely do work. You need to get the aluminium tape on it and stuff. I just think like in the long run I wouldn't want one. I'd probably do wood. Um, Oh yeah, so that hive died. So Matt Brady's saying about the video I took out from someone and not treated them. Yeah, so, so I, I didn't treat them because I thought, oh, I'll give him a go, because I knew that he didn't treat them. Um, and then the varroa got so bad that I treated them and then they died. Uh, so I left it too late. But did they die from varroa? Probably, but I can't prove that. So, um, Yeah, died. Got it. It's the thing with losing colonies, like, you do, you do— the more colonies you get, the, the less it hurts when they die, but it is still annoying every time. Any special construction secrets I wouldn't have noticed? Okay, that's a good question. Right, right. Hi, uh, which month is the latest you can make a split? So we did this earlier, so it's August, September, really. 2 frames of brood, some drawn comb, feed them up. What did you do with the extractor in the abandoned shed? I sold it all on eBay. That went on eBay. And if you— yeah, just stuck it all on there, um, because I didn't have the space to keep it all. And, uh, a nice guy came down from Nottinghamshire and got it all. And, uh, he, he kind of like clubbed all the money together to get it, with him and him and his friend. Um, and he wanted to catch some swarms, so I gave him some black comb to go with it. And he rung me the day after he got home and he said he caught a swarm and he was over the moon, so I was well happy. I think he caught it in one of the ones that he didn't even put the frames in anyway, but he was very, very happy. He got a very good deal on eBay as well. Hi Rodney, thanks for watching my videos, you comment on loads of them, which is great. How much will farmers expect for putting hives on their land? So standard is a pound per hive per year, but I've translated that to a jar per hive per year because we don't do pound honey jars. So they seem to be happy with that, but I kind of like jazz it up a bit, like I do like a little Christmas hamper. I couldn't do what I do without the farmers, so we make sure they are well and truly looked after. And we invite around for pizzas and stuff like that. Oh, while I get onto that, that is the question: how do I take my pizza? Great question. So yeah, if you've got any questions that aren't beekeeping related, more than happy to answer them as well. Keep them, keep them clean. And how do I take my pizza? I love a meat feast, hot fire honey. Should I wear my hot fire honey t-shirt? But yeah, meat feast with hot fire honey. Right, looking at the next quick— I'll go back to the thing, I'll come back to the questions on here. Uh, right, do you still get stung through nitrile gloves and are you wearing them now? So I'm not wearing them now, um, and I don't wear them in my videos actually, so I moved over. So like, this is gloves, a bit of a strange one because nitrile gloves are definitely the best kind of gloves, but I, I've got big hands and I know that's like in perspective, um, But they're big and they're quite long. So even the long cuff ones, they only come down to like there on me, um, because I've got like gangly arms as well. I'm moving around, they ride up, so then I get like stung underneath them. So I've never been able to find like an extra large nitrile glove that's long enough for me, so I don't use them. So you'll see on the videos, watch them from the beginning, watch all 250 if you want, uh, I've got loads of different gloves. I've been through pretty much every single glove on the UK market, and the ones that I found that are the best— so I use— I wanted to get some Marigolds. Marigolds are really good if your hands fit in a Marigold, they're probably the best you can get, but my hands don't fit in them, so I got some ones from Viking Direct. They do like a fake Marigold, they do a pack of 12 for like £6 or something, so 50p a glove, and they are definitely the best gloves you can get, I find, because they fit my hands really well. Get loads of dexterity in as well, so they're really nice and tight, and the bees can't sting you quite through them as much as a nitrile, but they can still sting through them. So I think, I think they're a real happy medium. But yeah, if your bees are stinging your gloves, then the bees are probably a bit grumpy, and you might look to requeen. And it is just an ongoing thing. with requeening and just trying to get like nicer bees. You don't need to buy them in, just choose, just requeen from your nicest colony, give them no choice. Right, I'm going to go through the chat comments here because I don't want to miss— assuming the sales are there for the end product honey, how aggressively would you contemplate increasing your colonies? Double each year, 10% each year? So you can— I was going to do a video on this this year. This is one of the ones that was Um, it's gonna take me quite a while, so I haven't done it unfortunately. But if I had like 4 colonies of bees coming out of winter, you could easily split each one of those 4 colonies at the beginning of the year into 4. Once they've filled a brood box, take 2 frames of brood from each, fill them into 4. So you have to watch the maths here. So you've got 4 into 4, so you've got 16, and then build them up into strong colonies. And then easily go 5, so each split each one of those into 5 nucs, and then maybe split again once. So you've got 16 times 5, so you've got 80, and then you could go into 2. So I reckon you could go from 4 colonies to 160 nucs in a single year if you bought in mated queens and fed, fed, fed, just constantly fed. So you're not taking a drop of honey, you're just feeding, feeding, feeding. So that's like, you've gone from 4 to 160 in a year. That's doable, definitely doable. I might, I might have a go at that next year and do a video on it because I think that is achievable easily. Probably do more, um, but yeah, your honey sales will be there. You, you, you'll definitely be able to sell your honey, but, um, but it's all about, yeah, it's just, it's just the right, right off the honey if you're going to do it that aggressively, just write off the honey, say I'm not doing that, and constantly feed, because you do need to constantly feed if you're going to do that, because you need to stimulate or simulate a flow to stimulate the queen. Thanks for the honest answer. That's all right. Yes, good luck. Let me know how you get on. I find it really, really interesting. I know there's— I know a couple of people who do it on a big scale with the treatment free beekeeping. And like, look at their bees, calmest bees you like, no sign of any kind of damage on the brood, no deformed wing virus, loads of honey. And I just think, why aren't we all doing that? But then try and get queens off them, and they don't want to give you the queens. And understandable, because they probably want to make loads of money off them. I certainly, if I found a colony that didn't have varroa, I'd look to, yeah, make a couple of quid off it maybe. Is beekeeping your full-time career? No, not at all. Like, it's a ridiculously time-consuming hobby, so I work a full-time job in construction. That's quite a demanding job, and yeah, takes up all of my free time. I have the most understanding wife in the world who does everything, and then I outsource all of my duties to a cleaner, so I get the house cleaned by someone else. Wear gauntlets with the nitrile gloves, works great. Yeah, I really struggle with gauntlets. I tried gauntlets for a while, I had the Ultra Bee gauntlets as well, I still found that they were getting in, but I do— this is— that's what the bee inspectors wear, and that's what they say to me, is like, just wear the nitriles with the cordlets. But yeah, we're like all about finding what works for you. I found with these new ones I've got, the Marigolds, really nice fit, really kind of easy to clean. So you can kind of clean them as well just in like soda, and they're really super long cuff. They're just perfect. I wouldn't, I wouldn't change my gloves now. They're spot on. Another treatment-free Yeah, where would you have a guess? Would you think? Um, it's not Wales, although my surname is Edwards, so I do, I do blend in a little bit. Um, have a guess. If any— if anyone guesses the town that I was born, I'll send you a jar of honey. Just guess the town though, not, not the— yeah, not the city. because it's quite obvious, I think, but the town. Okay, right, what football— I might give it away, right? What football team do I support? So I did something terrible in a previous life because I'm an Arsenal supporter. Yeah, so next question. Can I have a job? That's someone's question. Maybe we We're looking to move house. We've been looking for about 3 years to move house to buy a farm, and we just can't find anything because it's just getting snapped up straight away. As soon as we move house, we'll be employing people, without a doubt, because I cannot cope with everything that I do. And a lot of the stuff that I do, someone else can do, and someone else will do so much better than I do it. I want to kind of like focus on the things that I enjoy and focus a bit more on my family. And not stay up till 3 o'clock in the night labeling honey and making gift boxes. So yeah, maybe if you want a job, give me a shout. If you— that is genuine. If you live close to me and you want a job in beekeeping, I might not be able to give you a job just yet, but we will be looking to recruit someone as soon as we move to a property that means that we can recruit someone. Right, from catching your first swarm, how long did it take till you went full Full-time beekeeping, so I'm not. I'm not full-time beekeeping, so I never. I never will be full-time beekeeping as well. Often asked that question is when are you going to go full-time beekeeping? As in like when are you going to quit your job? And I won't quit my job because I enjoy much. I do enjoy my job actually, but like it's it's like a career job, so I put a lot of effort in at work. I want to succeed, and so I'm not. Going to quit to do beekeeping full-time. And so I'll probably take a bit of a step back from the beekeeping and just focus on YouTube. Where'd you get your ratchet straps from? I can't find your video. A company called Handy Straps. Really good, really cheap straps. They've gone up quite a bit, £1.20 they are now, but they're good. It's funny, ratchet straps, again, just like topic of conversation. Some people hate ratchet straps, some people hate the ones that I use and want the little fiddly ones, and I find the ones called little fiddly ones. So it's a funny one, but yeah, I love ratchet straps, they're great, especially like where it's windy and rainy. Like, I look outside and it's Wales and it's pouring down with rain and there's a massive storm, and I just think, my hive's not falling over. What tends to happen with me is that trees fall on my hives and damage them, That's what happens to me, as opposed to anything blowing off. So that's where you can buy it, right? I'm up to date on an hour and a half in, and I've answered all of the questions on my little spreadsheet. I think I've answered all the questions on the chat. So what do you want to talk about? I've penciled in like 2 hours. So I can just kind of like freestyle, I guess. I could tell you where I live, where I was born, but yeah, any other questions anybody wants asking? I haven't been able to do it full-time, my job is only a job to pay for the family and the bees. Yeah, I know, I would say like, yeah, My mind, yeah, was also always with the bees. I thought, I'm going to transition to this full-time, and I do, I do love the bees, but I do think beekeeping does come with some risks as well. Like, my back is absolutely knackered, really, really bad, and like in my job, like, I get like a car and I get like private healthcare, get pension, bonus, so I'm like getting a Bonus, and I just I until when you until I don't know what you do. Like when I but when I was thinking about it, I was kind of thinking shit. You know if I like gave up my job and then became a full-time beekeeper and like really put my effort into it, it would I'd be quite tired, probably more tired than I am now. And then if I had an injury, like if I broke my leg or something or broke my back, it's kind of thinking shit. be quite bad. But yeah, risks, isn't it, that come with it. Like, I do love the beekeeping side of it. I think definitely though, if I was going to go full-time beekeeping, I wouldn't be out doing the bees every day. I'd be focusing on YouTube videos. That's probably the most enjoyable part of my beekeeping hobby, I think, for me now. I do enjoy that, the YouTube videos, and I enjoy making up nucs, really enjoy making up nucs and selling nucs and watching people start out in beekeeping. That's really fun, but yeah, difficult with it being full-time. Right, next one. But loads of questions—that's good. Shows people were paying attention there. I was trying to check you out, see if you're all listening. Recently, our first split. Please to say all going well. The hive that was near death two three weeks ago is doing very well. It's there's nothing better than saving a colony that's dwindling. Really good, like doing like an interaction or a manipulation on a hive and then you're thinking, oh, have I done it right? And then them coming back and booming, really good, I love that. No, not North London, no, a bit further south. Did you use every working frame? I'm not sure what that means, sorry. Can you talk about the best method of introducing a wild swarm into a nuc, please? I can. If I had a wild swarm in a box, I would just— I'll probably just shake them in. Depends, like, I've just done a swarm video and the technique that I use now is generally what I use now, and I forgot the When I left, I went to this— get this swarm. Let's take some secateurs with you because if they cluster up on a tree, it's like the easiest method in the world. You just cut the branch off to rest it on top of a nuc and they just all go in. It's like the easiest swarm capture in the world. But if you've got them in like a box, I would suggest you do something similar, like cut a hole out the bottom of the box, put some black frames in into a nuc, and then they'll just get attracted to the smell of the frames. Yeah, I think that's a good idea. Frames and just go down into it. But you just need to make sure you get the queen in there. Don't get the queen in there, they won't go in. How many hives do you consider would be needed to make a living from bees? Depends what you're doing with it. Like, it's really— it's funny because I have a conversation— I know I won't say who it is— bee farmer from down south, and I said to him, you need to get in the nuc market. Like, the nuc market is like where a lot of beekeepers make a lot of their money. Like, I'd say 50% of our business comes from nuc sales. We sell a lot. Um, and he said, why would I sell nucs? Because I— he said— I said, because they're getting good money at the moment. Like, he said, yeah, but they're not as good as if— if I've got a nuc, an overwintered nuc, and I said, oh, you can get £275 for it. And he says, yeah, but I can get £250 of honey from it. And I think, okay, because I can't get £200 of honey from it because he takes them around, professional bee farmer, takes them to all these different places. So I kind of thought, oh, that's a good point actually, because for me it's probably like £50 average. And when I work it out, it's definitely better for me to sell the nuc than it is to sell the bees— sorry, to sell the honey that the bees would get. So when you're working out how many hives do you need? You need to think, what's my actual business plan here? Is my business plan to sell honey? My business plan to sell honey in buckets? Because if you're going to sell honey in buckets, then you're going to need a lot more bees than if you're going to sell honey in little dinky jars and do like gift sets and stuff. If you're going to sell nucs, you don't really need that many hives. You just need— you could probably start up a decent nuc business with like 20 or 30 hives. 20 or 30 hives and then split them all and did what I said there, split them all and went into the winter with 200 nucs, sold 180 of them, and then kept 20 to build them up again to next year to split them out to do 200 again. It's quite a lot of work, um, but say if you're selling 200 nucs a year, it's £300 a go. Like, it's, it's a pretty decent amount of money that you're going to earn. Um, so you just need to think about what, what you actually want to sell and in what format. Must you move a split 2 miles away from an apiary? Splits, so splits, I'm going to do that, get asked this a lot, I'm going to do a video about splitting bees in the same apiary because you can do it, definitely can do it, but yeah, 3 miles is generally the rule to keep them getting 3 miles away. I think 2 miles would be fine. But you could definitely do it in the same apiary, so I'm going to do a video on that. I'll give it away, all of the tips now. So what you need to do is that if you split the colony, the one with the original queen in, make that the one with fewer bees in and less brood. My few is in my less is right. And then the colony that hasn't got the queen and is not on the original spot, absolutely stuff it full of bees. Like, you want to go for like 80% of the brood, 80% of the bees in the one that's not on the original swarm, and then just stuff loads of grass in the entrance and stuff it right in so they barely can get out, verging on not, not get out. And then after 24 hours, just make sure that they can just start to break through it, and then that will stop that. You'll get a few bees reorientating on the back of that, but also because you've loaded it with brood, You'll get a lot of nurse bees hang around to keep the, the brood there. But also the big one is, is you, you really should add a mated queen straight away in a cage. So cage-mated queen, and then a lot, a lot of bees will stick around doing it that way. If you do it like that, after say 3 weeks, you'll be about 50/50 on a split. So it does work. I do that quite a bit. It's just easier to do it the other way. Did I miss you answering how to save a laying worker hive? Yeah, you did. I'll give you the, I'll give you the Bite-Sized Bees version though, which is add a frame of eggs every single week for 5 weeks and hope that they draw out an emergency cell. Do wild blackberries produce significant nectar flow in June? So yeah, massive amount. So bramble is the biggest contributor to honey apparently. I read that the other day. Um, it used to be, used to be clover and now it is bramble, so that is the biggest UK crop for honey, definitely in June. Like, they're out, the flowers are out already up here, probably nearly finished down south, like the, the season started moving that far. An hour and 40 minutes and I'm still on the same cup of tea and it's cold, but I'm quite thirsty, so Is your partner interested in bees as well, or is it just you? No, she is. She's an environmental consultant for quite a big consultancy firm, and she is like a carbon and sustainability specialist, so she is well into like the environment and stuff. But oh my God, I do not stop talking about bees. Yeah, and I'd like— she laughs, I'll be honest. Like, I'll be like, oh, guess how many subscribers I've got now. And she's like, I don't care, just don't care, stop telling me. So yeah, I'm like a little schoolboy when I get a new subscriber. I'll get like, oh, I've got a video that's got some views. Like, I do, I do love it. So I do, I do appreciate you all watching it. Thank you. Yeah, she does not care about my bees. Doesn't stop me talking about it though. Work frames, is bee building, and after they slid brood out, you cut in and take out. I really want to know what that means. I'll come back to that one. Yeah, sorry. I think it's the main source of nectar flow. Okay, yeah, it's true, blackberries, massive. Right, Jim. You'll notice that Jim has a very dapper badge. Jim is a member of our channel, our channel I'm getting tired. I'm looking to upgrade my extraction equipment to a more commercial scale like your setup. Do the Bee Farmers Association have finance packages, deals? They definitely don't have finance. You should speak to the bank manager if you want finance. What they do have, definitely look out for this, Jim, is they have classified section in the Bee Farmers Mag. I can send you a picture of the classified section if you want. And what they have in there is generally people who are retiring saying, I've got a full extraction line, or these are the bits of kit that I've got. You get some real bargains in there. It's always really good quality kit, and the kit lasts forever. So yeah, if you don't want to buy it new, you can get it from there. And the thing is though, is if you're not buying it new, unless they're VAT registered, then they're not going to offer it with VAT. And if they're looking to retire, they'll probably do everything with they can to offer it to you without VAT, which means that you might not get it for such a good price if you can't claim the VAT back. But the cost of extraction equipment has just gone through the roof, like I can't believe how much everything's going up, getting more and more expensive like day by day it seems. Best way to take bees from a house? I've had 6 or 7 calls already this year saying I've got bees in the loft or bees in the attic. So I'd say the best, the best way to take bees from the house is to not do it. Oh, what a nightmare. It'd make a good video, it'd definitely make a good video. I've seen some real monster colonies, but it's not something that I would do. So the best way to take bees from the house is get written permission from them to smash down their walls because it's one of the most destructive things that you can do. really, really difficult. Obviously, I don't know what the house looks like or where they are, but I just— yeah, we do not do it. It's kind of— yeah, not got time for that anymore, so I'm not doing it. Makes sense. But again, does blackberry produce a significant flow economically? So yeah, like, it's— that is, that is where you'll get the majority of the honey from, from wild brambles. I don't know about like commercial in other countries. if they grow blackberries on a commercial basis, but it's crazy. You've got a Birmingham accent. I did live in Birmingham for 6 years, but I did— it's— no, no, I've not got a Birmingham accent. Is white clover more preferable to pink clover? Yeah, so honeybees don't forage pink clover unless, unless a bumblebee's kind of gone and bit a little hole at the bottom of it first. Their tongues aren't long enough, so yeah, they go for white clover. In Hertfordshire, our brambles aren't out yet, but the farm where I work, bees planted field beans this year and they're going absolutely mental on them. Field beans are amazing. I, I'm so jealous. Like, I, I do chat with a few bee farmers down south and they're just like, oh, well, the bees are on this, the bees are on that. And I just look, I look out to the fields out there and I just see sheep and I just think, great, I'd love to live somewhere where, like, they just planted things that was good for the bees, like even oilseed rape. I'd be well happy if we had some oilseed rape near us, or some field beans, or some borage, or some linseed, or just anything other than grass, because grass is a bit rubbish. I had a horrible colony which went queenless, failed the hive tool test, so I popped a frame of eggs in from a very gentle colony for them to make a queen. So yeah, so that, that is fine for them to make a Queen, but the problem that you've got is that you're still relying on wild, like your feral drones, and obviously if you've got a colony there that's horrible anyway, you've got a lot of drones that are horrible, so they will mate like that is. They might not mate, they might go off somewhere else and mate, but you are very much reliant on local drone populations, so I'd always say go back to F1 if you've got a grumpy colony. I can't even get my phone up and show you this now. I've got a colony at the moment at the Heather, and they're vicious. Like, they are horrible, horrible bees. And they're queenless as well at the moment because I'm requeening them, and they just batter me every time I go there. Hundreds of stings, and just like want to sting my face. It's not fun. Um, so yeah, so they're getting, getting requeened. Oh, but you said— so yeah, queen emerged but never made it back. Okay, yeah, get an F1 in there trying to sort them out. Brooklyn's Honeybees, he gets the same whenever there is a new sub to his channel, get all twitchy, right? So everyone on this chat, you've got to subscribe to Brooklyn's Honeybees. So get on there, subscribe to him, you get some numbers up. Um, uh, put more eggs in, right? Yeah, this is the problem. Yeah, what you're saying there, Julian, and this is where you really get caught out. And this, this is what takes so much of my time up. This is where I really do try and avoid it, is that you get to a point you just kind of think, is there a version in there or not? And then you like start adding more frames in to try and test it and stuff. And it's just so much easier just to not doing it, um, just starting off with a mated queen. I do appreciate like it costs, it costs so much more money, um, but it is like, for me, it's the biggest time saver. Is not going down the route of letting them rear their own queens or even adding in my own ones. Now I've only done that for a couple of years, um, but it does save a huge amount of time. And there's nothing worse than introducing a mated queen to a colony and then them killing her because there's a useless 6-week-old virgin running around in there. You just think, what, seriously, like, bees, what are you doing? You've got like a duff virgin, or you've got like a nice premium mated Queen, like protect the mated queen. Don't let the little duff virgin get her way. Yeah, mate. Yeah, Adam. There will be so many failed ones this year. Like the weather now. Yeah, they're coming up. You've got virgins are either emerging now or mating or maturing now. You're in the business or the last three weeks. But May was just so bad. So many people be in a position of. like dwindling colonies, and they'll be getting to the point now, if they've not taken action, where they're going laying worker, and then it's game over. Thanks, I'm glad you enjoy watching the channel. All seed rape is an absolute nightmare. I have to blend it with later extraction to avoid it crystallizing. Yeah, but it makes some amazing soft-set honey, really, really good soft-set honey. But the best thing about all seed rape, by far and away the best thing, is Is that if you have big prolific colonies and you go double brood on them early in the year and you use the oilseed rape as like a feed to build the colonies up and you go like crazy, crazy big and you've got the colonies as in like the genetics to do it, you can split them all out and then you've got massive colonies to go out. So you could take 10 hives with the oilseed rape in April, take them away kind of like middle of May, or end of May, whenever the flow's finished, and then take them to your target area, and you've got double the colonies to go at it, and you've just, you've just fed them up on the oilseed rape. But it is a nightmare, but it does make, it makes like the best creamed honey in the world, really, really nice. Get it in like a creaming machine and it creams up better than anything else. If you see soft-set honey in the supermarkets or anywhere, it is always oilseed rape. Yeah, it's the protein that gets them going, and the kind of— there's the huge amount of nectar coming in as well, just gets them. So do I sell honey on the comb? If not, why not? Would it not be easier? No, definitely not. So one, um, it's— people don't really like it that much. Like, it's just one of those things is that people kind of say like, oh yeah, that sounds great, like when it is fresh and it's raw directly from the comb. I think in reality people want it in a jar. We find it— we've stocked it in a couple of shops before and it didn't sell very well. And also, like, ah, we sell loads on the website and then trying to get actual frames people in the post is difficult. So jars is really easy. We find jars is just so much easier and sells a lot better and is more consistent in terms of being able to produce it. Right, I'm up to date on questions. I don't— I'm not ready to go to bed yet. I'm normally up till like 2 o'clock editing videos. I've got a couple of, a couple of videos on the way. So no one's guessed where I'm from yet. And nobody's given me any suggestions for any new videos, which I thought would be pretty cool. I could tell you, I could tell you a bit about my Cornwall. No, not Cornwall. There is a jar of honey on offer if someone gets it right. I'll give you a clue. It is, it's in London. And give you like rubbish. It's like this classic, really bad clue because it gives it away, and it's like the worst claim to fame ever. It's where Stephen Lawrence was murdered. Yeah, it's pretty grim there. Not a question, but something people may find interesting. I got a call about a little swan behind a church lock in a tower on Thursday. I go pick it up and. it's a prime, absolutely huge, very nice. Whenever I get a call about a swarm, swarm in inverted commas, I always ask for pictures now, always, because 9 times out of 10 it's bumblebees, always bumblebees. Oh, I've got bumblebees in my wall, I've got honeybees swarming in my wall, is what they ring up and say. So I say, okay, Um, I probably wouldn't go anyway because they said in their wall, so I'd rule that one out. But I always ask them to take a picture now. Take a picture, take a video, and then you can kind of rule it out. Do you keep Melifera mellifera? Yes, they all know that. Um, how do you know you have laying workers? Loads of eggs in the cells. So you should just have one egg in each cell, and layer workers, you have like 20. And yeah, that's it really. He doesn't look like a pirate, certainly not Cornwall. Right. Oh, Peter Sabba. Oh, do you know what? I was just about to say you've won the jar of honey, but then you've got a Chelsea fan as your badge, so I've deducted you one jar of honey for that. Oh, Tommy. Well, Do you know what? Okay, I'm gonna give Peter Saber— you can have a jar of honey. So drop me an email, um, blackmountainhoney@gmail.com, with your address. You can have a jar of honey. And Tommy Donahoe, Well Hall— very nice— you can have a bonus jar of honey for getting Well Hall, because that is exactly where it was. So yeah, um, but how shit is that? Like, that's all— where do you live? I live where some Black guy got murdered 30 years ago. Horrible. Uh, everyone knows it for that. So yeah, uh, right. Take a newbie under your wing and teach them with videos to show. It's a good idea. My nephew does help me out a little bit. He's only 11. Um, I got him more on the labeling stuff and doing things at the moment, but he has got a bee suit. I bought him a bee suit. But I just want to get my apiaries to a point where they're not as— because they're just at the moment, they're not all nice. And there's some like, all of the apiaries, there are some like horrible colonies there. And the reason I keep the horrible colonies is because I don't, I don't care. Like, I've got like a BB wear ultra suit on, they're in the middle of nowhere, um, and I keep them for a reason because they're like piling the honey. Um, so I'm going away from that at the moment. moment, and I'm gonna be requeening them. So once I've requeened them all, he's gonna come around and help me, and then I'll show him some stuff. He's keen, he's good, he's very keen actually. He comes to work and I pay him a fiver an hour, which I think is a good rate for an 11-year-old, and he buys like guns and stuff with it. Like, that sounds like a gang member, but no, he's like into airsoft and like BB guns and like forest things. So he absolutely loves coming and doing a day's work, earns £50, and then goes and buys a gun. Uh, I grab as much as I can but I have to leave a lot behind. I put them immediately into a hive as there's too many for a nuc. I'll go back today and pick them up. Oh really? Yeah, that's good. Like, there's— it's, it's quite late to be getting prime swarm still, but you do, you do get big ones this time of the year. There's nothing better than catching a big prime swarm. I absolutely love it. Yeah, it's good fun. I would definitely do more swarms if I had the time. No, not Enfield, it's Eltham. Yeah, close. What's your take on drone foundation? I'm trying to keep my other brood frames straight. Might be working, bit early to say. I don't put drone foundation in my brood box? What are you doing? I'm trying to keep my other foundation straight. But we do, we do use drone foundation in some supers, but we find they don't cap it quite as early as the rest of it. So I don't— it's fine in the supers. Apparently you get a little bit more of a yield because there's less wax, but I think it's negligible. I've only got it in some of my supers because there wasn't Any worker brood available. So, um, do you see any future for horizontal hives to play more of a commercial use for you personally, or no? So Matt's gonna hate me for saying this because we're doing like a series of videos for Matt, but no, not commercially. Um, just because, like, I, uh, because, because I might get my words out, I would have edited that out on the video. You wouldn't have seen any of that mumbling. Um, But no, they're not big enough. They're not big enough at all. So I'm really considering, for my genetics of bees, big massive colonies of bees, I'm going to take that central divider out of that long hive and I'm going to run it as a single colony hive, because I think with my bees in there, they're just going to— they'll swarm really quickly. So I'm going to run it without the queen excluder to see how quickly they fill the whole box up, and if they get to the point where they're filling it up and then they look to swarm, I'm going to take out the central divider. But I don't think that's— I don't think that— I say Matt will be annoyed at me saying that, I don't think he'd be too mad because it's not his target market for people to— for commercial people to buy 50 of his hives and then run them commercially. It's not what he's looking to do. If I turn the question on its head, if I quit beekeeping, which hive would I keep? I'd keep my long hive because it's nice, like really nice to work with, really nice to look at, really well built, and just, you know, just nice hives. So that's his, that's his target demographic of people who are going to have like 1 or 2 hives, maybe 5 hives in the garden or something nice on an estate, to pay a little bit more money for it. So, um, no, I wouldn't use it commercially, but it is my favorite hive. Do really like it. How do you deal with selling nucs to newbies? So I speak to a lot of bee farmers, I've said that loads, I do speak to a lot of bee farmers and a lot, I'd say the number one turn-off for people for not selling nucs to new beginners is they think that it's going to be like a headache for them in terms of answering questions, and I just see it the other way around, I just think I love that, I love like helping people out with their bees. And it's not even like helping them out, but because I think the YouTube videos— this main reason I started the channel was because I get a lot of questions from people in terms of like answering the same question again and again. So I just point people off to the videos now, which is great. But it was— I quite like the seeing people with their bees and seeing them getting on with them and seeing people get a crop of honey. And I know this year, like I said, 200 nucs. People are going to be sitting there now with colonies of bees that have got 3 supers on them. They're going to be thinking, oh my God, it's amazing. And I just, I quite like that, that I sold them, I sold them the nuc, um, and they're getting so much benefit out of it and so much joy out of the hobby. Um, I also do laugh at some people as well. I will name-drop him because he's my number one Whatsapper person I've WhatsApped this year, and he lives down the road. So this guy called Tom Beach, and he bought 2 nucs. I think he's got 7 colonies now because they just kept on trying to swarm because they were so big and they just kept going around like this. So he split them and then they just did it again. So he wanted a real gentle introduction to beekeeping and now he's got 7 colonies, and I find it hilarious. But I love watching the story of it, so it's good fun. Is the BB Wear Ultra Suit really worth it? Is it significantly cooler than a standard suit and truly sting resistant? Right, so I've just bought a new BB Wear Ultra Suit, so I do have 2 of them now. So there was— it was my fault, um, but I ordered it with extra— I've got a custom suit made, and I said when they did the measurements, I just gave him like my height and stuff, and I said I want an extra 3 inches in the back. I don't because that was the one that I'd had before from like the standard one. Um, so I had 3 inches extra in the back, but the arms weren't long enough. So he gave me— so they built me like an extra 3 inches on the arms, like as a, as an amendment, like about 6 months after I got it, but out of just normal fabric. Um, now I got some horrible bees and they sting that bit of fabric really, really badly, and they leave the, like, the sting pheromone it, and then they've just been attacking it. And that's why— that's where all these stings have come from, because we're going through that bit of fabric. So I know I'm going off on a tangent, sorry Kevin, but, uh, so I've ordered another one now just because I'm getting fed up we're getting stung there. Uh, so I've got it with ultra fabric all the way down to the wrist, so it is a custom fit. So to answer your 2 questions, is it— is it significantly cooler than a standard suit? Yes and no. So when you're— if you're on a hot day and there's no wind, um, and you're just in like shorts and t-shirt underneath it, then it's kind of just like you're in shorts and t-shirt with a little bit of something on, so a little bit cooler. If there's a breeze, it's perfect because you get a little bit clammy and the breeze goes right through it, like perfectly through it, and it really cools you down. But if there's no wind, you don't get a Massive benefit other than you could just be— you can be shorts and t-shirt underneath. Is it truly sting resistant? 100%. So anywhere that you've got the Ultra fabric, they can't sting you. They just cannot get you. But you need to make sure you've got that special cut so you don't get the— don't just buy it off the shelf. Pay the extra £20 and get them to do it Ultra fabric all the way down and just to put on like an inch of fabric at the bottom. And I think they'll probably transition over to that in the future because it is a bit of a, um, not an error, but I think they do it to kind of like keep it standard because people have different length arms. So my recommendation is, if you're thinking about that suit, and it is bloody expensive, um, pay the extra £20 and get it done bespoke and get the Ultra fabric all the way down. Doesn't make a big difference, but yeah, I'd get one. I, I've just bought another one, so that's £600 on suits this year. Um, have you ever done a video on removing old wax from frames, cleaning process, and rewaxing? No, I haven't done, but I would definitely will because I just bought a new, uh, big gas-powered wax melter from Abello, but like a dedicated old manky frame one. Uh, so I will be doing that this year, and I've got so many frames and so much crappy wax that is going to go through that. So I will do it, uh, and again get a good amount of wax, I think. Do the bees change drawn drone comb back to worker comb? I've never seen that, and I've seen a lot of my colonies have got drone comb dashed around it, and I don't think, I don't think they change it back, which is weird because they change it from worker comb to drone comb. So my dog's barking in the background, I think he wants to go out. I'm a newbie beekeeper this year, have a strong hive From a very gentle nook with F1 Belfast Queen, and I've learned a load from the local beekeeping association from YouTube. Cheer for the bids. No problem. Uh, it's— I'm hoping beekeeping associations are going to come back online because they seem to have just gone into hiding for the past 24 months, understandably, like with what's going on. Um, but they are— they serve such an amazing purpose just for people to discuss bees, but more the practical side of it. So I will be very, very happy, I think, when beekeeping associations come back online, because it's just, it's just, just better for everyone. You can talk about bees and stuff and go and get some hands-on experience before you commit to getting a nuc. So yeah, I think that'd be good. That's just what I had to do. I decided to break my dual long hive back to a single for the larger hives. That's interesting, Jackie. I've not, I've not seen people do that before, but I'm— I think, I think it needs to be done because I've put a nuc in there like, what, 3 weeks ago, and it's nearly full, um, and there's just brood all the way. So it's 14 by 12 one because I knew they'd be small anyway, but we could— we have some colonies on double brood 14 by 12, and they're on like 14 or 15 frames of brood, and I don't keep bees just to keep Big massive boxes of brood. I keep them to kind of give myself like a bumper honey crop, and so I need the space for the honey. So that's definitely what I'm going to do with mine, I think. I'm surprised nobody asked the question about black bees. I thought I was going to cause like a beekeeping war with people asking the question about black bees, so no one answers it, I'm going to dodge the question. I am up to date with all questions, so I'm quite happy to go on. And talk. As you, you're probably aware, I can just talk on and on and on, and not a huge amount of sense comes out, but I can talk. So more questions if anyone wants more questions, more topics. Remember, you can ask questions that aren't about beekeeping if you want. Uh, black bees, are they aggressive? No more aggressive than any other bees. I've got, I've got some Black bee colonies. I call it black with black bees. Like that's the that's the number one topic that you'll get into arguments with people about, and I don't know. I don't know why people get so hyped up about it. Our Welsh black bees, when people say, "What are Welsh black bees like?" I say, "Well, they're just like mongrels. They're just like." either swarms that have been caught, um, or like colonies that I've had that I've developed. So every year I'll take like my best black bee colonies and I'll just do some splits from them and I'll just let them mate locally. So there's nothing really, there's nothing really special about them in the sense of, oh, they're like a, they're like a magic bee from centuries ago that have been kept pure. They're just a local bee that happens to be quite dark, and and and that's it. Like, I just don't I don't see what the big kind of massive fuss about it is because, and I know I'm I'm going to carry on talking now. What's it like? The amount of viewers probably going to drop by half because I will annoy people saying this. But I just don't I don't see what the big fuss about black bees is. If there was like if there was a pure race of bees somewhere, it's like a pocket of bees that was 100% pure, I always use the analogy of like a dog, so if there was like a purebred Labrador somewhere, I would 100% agree, let's save, let's save that bee, let's protect it, and let's not bring in other races of bees or other dogs, let's not bring in Alsatians and start mixing them, in because you've got a really pure breed of bees there and you want to protect them, but that's not what we've got. We've got like the remnants of that, so I just, I still don't quite understand why they're trying to protect it. It's like they're trying to protect a 95% Labrador and a 5% Shih Tzu cross and say, well, that's what we've got, and I might be completely wrong with it, that is just my take it, so I don't see the benefit. But what annoys me more than anything about it is that it's, it's not a case of, oh, look how good my bees are, they're gentle, they're resistant to disease, they produce loads of honey. It just seems to be the blackest, so he's got the blackest bee. And I only do DNA tests as well to kind of go back, but they're always like, if you're in like the high 90s you're doing really well. But a lot of them come back as like, oh, 85% pure. I see, what's the point? Like, if you— if, if there was a chance of getting it— and I do— I'm not a genetic expert at all, like, I really don't look into this too much at all. But I understand in Ireland there is like a native bee colony. I don't even know if that's true, but I get that. And I get that if they want to protect that, that kind of colony of bees, fine. But it's the colour thing that gets me, because I have some Buckfasts that are really dark, probably darker than some of my Welsh Black bees, and I don't think people would know the difference. I'm just, yeah, I'm not too caught up on the colour of the bees. I'm more caught up on what they can do for me, how gentle they are, how disease resistant they are, what their honey production capabilities are. Like. So yeah, so I'm— if you, if you want me to say which side I sit, I sit very much on the Buckfast side. That's the kind of bee that I prefer. We run our association through WhatsApp and Zoom for beginners training, still running and helping beginners up here in Lancaster. Great, that's fantastic. I'm really, really happy to hear that. Up with the times as well. That's good. So yeah, so black bees, black bees, black bees. About 50% of bees are black. Okay. But this is the thing: 50% of the bees might be like dark, but they're just they're like just kind of like a mongrel still. So if you're bringing in other bees, all you're doing is just kind of. Adding to that mongrel mix, whereas if 50% of bees were like a pure race of bees, obviously they wouldn't be for very long. I'm just not 100% sure of like why people are so caught up on the colour of them, because the colour doesn't necessarily reference back to the actual like subspecies of bee. I'm not an expert, so I'm not gonna argue too much about that. Why can't you post queens to Northern Ireland? So another question that would have been good is, what do you think of Brexit? Steam coming out of my ears. Because Brexit— so if we post queens to Ireland— so I took loads of orders for queens to Ireland just casually about my business because we send honey to Ireland through Royal Mail. And then someone said, "Can you just double check that you can send queens to Ireland?" So I double checked and they said, "Well, you can send them, but in the health certificate." So to send a queen, I need to get bee inspector to come in, inspect the bees, and then give me a health certificate. It's about 100 quid. So I can't like if someone wants like 50 queens being sent to Northern Ireland, I can probably do it and sort it out. But I need I need some advance notice. Thomas yet Elton. Yeah, that's why I lived in Eltham for 20 years. I was actually born in Greenwich, but yeah, I say I come from Eltham. Do you think the black bees are bigger than the other breeds? Some of my girls can't seem to get through the excluder. I've never heard that. Is this Vivian who bought the nuc from me? I think it is Vivian. You sure it's not drones? Patronise you, my the drones, but that seems very strange. Or the other option, the other thing, there was a batch of queen excluders, uh, remember where it's from, that were the wrong size. And I remember a guy up in Anglesey, oh, he was livid because he lost so many colonies of bees because they swarmed on him because they couldn't get through the excluder because they were like a couple of mil, probably like half a mil too small. Um, so I'd measure the queen excluder But no, I don't think the bees would be that much, that big to not get through an excluder. What made me move to Wales? So I lived in London until I was about 20, and then I went to university in Leeds, and then I worked in Sheffield and Wakefield, Hereford and Birmingham, where I met my wife. And then she had a family who lived just up the road, so I followed her back here. I said, we're going to set up there. An amazing bee business. I didn't say that. She always says this, you didn't tell me you were going to set up a bee business. Simon, on the topic of F1 Buckfast queens, when splitting a hive, are the new colonies with queens likely to get more and more aggressive as they go on, or generally stay pretty chilled? So I'm not sure, hopefully I'm interpreting this right. So when you split the hive, are the new colonies with new Queens like to get more and more aggressive as they go on. So, so in terms of like iterations through the generation, so F1, F2, F3, F4, like they don't necessarily get more aggressive, but the chance of them getting more aggressive increases because you're more reliant and there's more variance that comes in from the local drones. So you could get— they could get more aggressive, definitely could get more aggressive. Um, they might be all right. But then you're likely to have— so yeah, so when you're requeening a colony, you're likely to have anyway like 4 to 6 weeks where they're pretty nasty before you start to get like a real shift between the different colonies, the different bees that are coming through. So you like— I always say like you need to give it till next year. You can't really analyze a requeened colony properly until the next year. Unless you do it really early in the year. Brooklyn's Honeybee Kids, if you've been here the whole time in between those 2 messages, I applaud you because I, I can't believe, um, you've been here so long. So that's all right, no worries. Good luck with your channel. I do, I do enjoy your channel. Um, some people like the black bees for even the white cappings. Yeah, so black bees give you the whitest, whitest cappings, and it's it's crazy. Yeah, these Gelanto bees from Murray McGregor, they have the whitest cappings, and he does have like— it's part of his mix apparently. Um, so it is strange, but yeah, that, that is one of the big, big benefits of black bees. So if you're doing like kind of, um, Ross Rounds or any, uh, frame products, black bees— if you can get a good strong colony of black bees, the cappings are really, really nice. Not drones, some of them just get stuck between the gaps. That's really strange. I would check your queen excluder and just try a different queen excluder. I've never seen that before, bees getting stuck in a queen excluder. What do you think about Russian bees? I have no experience of Russian bees whatsoever. I do see on like American channels people have Russian bees, but I've never once dealt with a colony of Russian bees, so I'm sorry I can't answer that. that question. You say all right, Chiba? I'm from North Wales. I was originally born in London though. Thank you so much for your videos here in Indiana, USA. I can hardly wait to hear you say your opening line when David Attenborough gives up narration job. Hope they give it to you. So I— you missed it earlier in the stream. I did, I did say it. But it's the number one thing, yeah, that I get bullied about by my family and friends, like constantly. And my wife does a cracking impression of me. And I'll let you all in on a really good secret as well. I've got someone famous to do my introduction for me on one of my videos, and I've not yet edited it in. And I'll tell you who it is— it's Ainsley Harriott. How cool is that? So we were on the James Martin Show like 4 weeks ago, 5 weeks ago. And then we also filmed with Ainsley Harriott. He came to our house probably, yeah, similar time that the James Martin was showing actually. And he came in and he gave it the big one. It was so good. So you'll see it coming up in a video. I'll have to pick out a really good video to do it on because he's done such a good job of it. But yeah, I can get my partner to do the intro as well because she does it. And when she does it, she puts this voice on like this because she thinks I saw her talk. But I said that's not how I talk, but probably is similar. Yeah, the Ainsley memes are great. He was there for like 6 hours and we just cooked pizza, got pizza oven, we just cooked pizzas in the pizza oven and just chilled out and cooked pizzas and had the hot fire honey on it. And then went and looked at the bees and he was great, he was so much fun and just did everything I want— everything I wanted. And he was thinking I sent him and said, can you just introduce this video for a YouTube channel? And he's like, oh yeah, sure. So he did that. Um, so yeah, Kev, you've seen the end of the video, so he introduces it. But just for Phil's benefit, I will do it again. So, hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Answers Beekeeping. And it's, uh, it's just funny because everyone rips the piss out of me for it, like so bad. Um, I can't give it up now, can I? But you will notice I have changed the intro slightly due to YouTube telling me it's best to kind of like get people's attention first before you start doing your real cheesy intros. But yeah, get my partner to do my intro. I'll get that. But I've got my nearly 3-year-old girl doing it as well, but she's really shy when she does it. So maybe I'll choose a good one to do for her to do. as well. She'll be funny with that. Have you any idea what the moisture content is in hawthorn honey? No, sorry, not specifically. Like, we find, like, as long as the honey's under 19%, it's fine. We find most of ours is under, like, 17%. You can see it, like, you just— if you go like that, as long as it's not shaking out the frames, it'd be fine. But yeah, we find generally, generally around under 17% for us. Some of the heather honey, we had heather honey last year, quite a bit of heather honey, and because heather honey is like high moisture content, so we put it in a room. Oh wait, you know, to us Americans, a proper English accent is worth at least a dozen. Have I got a proper English accent? Because people think I sound quite rough. Like, suddenly, so nobody's talking about, uh, but yeah, the heather honey. So heather honey is really high moisture content and it can go off quite quick. So we put it in a room, uh, with like— really good tip, this actually, I'll probably do a video on this— but we've got like a big commercial, um, I can't remember what it's called, dehumidifier. You put a big commercial dehumidifier in like a sealed room and then you put your boxes in in there with honey in and stack them so the airflow can go through them. And you put it in there for like a few days, put it in there for like 3 or 4 days, and we got it down from like 22% to like 15%. And I thought, oh, amazing, definitely not gonna go off now, this honey. And it was really difficult to extract it. I think we took the moisture content down quite a bit too far. So even putting it through the loosener, it was very, very difficult to get the honey out of the actual It's a good tip though, if you've got it in, if you've got it and it's like a little bit of shakeout, probably a bit too wet, but if it's borderline you can bring the moisture content down really well with a commercial dehumidifier. Any tips for new city beekeepers? The hive will arrive next Wednesday. I'd say the only tips for having it, I've never kept bees in the city, I kept them Birmingham, but not like in like a city centre kind of thing, is just try and get them out of the way of people. Like, it'd be difficult. Get them up on like a rooftop somewhere, it'd be good. But yeah, I just— bees and cities don't mix very well unless you find a good spot for them. So yeah, just kind of have a think about where you're going to keep them, just try and keep them out of the way as best as possible. possible. So good night, Beekeeping Gardening. Joseph, I'm in Wales next week, can I pop over and see your setup? And I would love to let people— I get asked that loads, can I come and see it? I'm afraid not because I work all the week, not on the bees, and then I'm just doing other stuff as well. But the big one, and this is a shame, is that I keep all of my apiaries secret. Nobody knows where any of my apiaries are, and it's bad enough doing it on like YouTube or something, but if someone came and cleared out an apiary overnight, like, I'd lose so much money. So I'm militant, I'm afraid, on who knows where my apiaries are, which is no one. So come down, come to my house, have a cup of tea, have a chat. Yeah, no apricots, I'm afraid. I have a problem. I put a swarm of bees in the hive, then it turned out there was no queen bee in it and I had a drone mother in it. What to do with this swarm? Find— it's a drone mother, like a drone laying queen. So find the queen, kill the queen, um, add a mated queen, give them a feed if they need it. Um, but yeah, when trying to catch a swarm, how do you use lemongrass or Where, how do you apply it, and how much? So don't do what I used to do, which is just chuck it around the polyhive and melt the polyhive. You can just dab it on the frames, you don't need much at all, just dab a little bit on the top of the frames. The easier way of doing it, if you're just going to do it like a bait hive, if you put it on like some cotton wool or like a little bit of cloth or something, and then just put it on the cloth and then seal it in like a plastic bag, little baggie, seal it, and then dab a little bit on the frames and just pin that into the bait hive. It lasts for ages, lasts for like a few weeks. That's what I would do, works well like that. The best one, pinch some black frame from someone. If you get a bit of black frame, um, like people chuck out black frame because then you don't get any wax out of it. So unless they're going to melt it down, a lot of people just burn it. Loads of bee farmers burn their black frame. Um, just see if you can beg or borrow some. That is the best way to catch swarms, but getting a bit late in the season for catching swarms now, a little bit late, because you might catch them, but they never tend to be that big. Like, still get them. I'd take swarms all year round because I just think I'll just chuck them in a box and see if they make it through, but they get kind of smaller and smaller and they don't build up as well later in the year. Any ideas for getting bees to move up to a super? I have one colony that didn't do much last year and not really going into the super yet this year. So it's the genetics of the bees, so your bees just won't be that prolific. So I remember posting this exact same question on a forum maybe 7 years ago saying, my bees just won't go through the super, the queen excluder. I'm thinking, is the queen excluder the wrong size, or my bees won't go through it? And I remember just someone answering it and just saying, wrong bees. And then look at that video I did recently with the bees bubbling out. It's the genetics. Like, they will go through that super if they need to go through it, and once they get into the super, they will do the business. They will make as much honey as you want, but it's just genetics. Um, like, if I, if I had a colony— I don't have any colonies like this at the moment— that we're in the middle of June and they hadn't got to the super yet, I'd kill them. Queen, and I'd requeen them with a different queen. Because for me, like, there's no point keeping the bees and going and doing a weekly inspection on them week in, week out for them to maybe— I mean, they might fill half a super, one super. I want them to fill 6 supers. So I just kind of constantly striving for perfection really with the bees, which you're never going to get, but you become Quite militant, I think, when you have a few colonies and you see what some of them are capable of. So the ones that just don't make the cut, they just get— you just kill the queen, give them, give them another queen. And at this time of the year, like, I've got a few colonies, not, not like that at the moment, but they're being requeened for another reason, just because the queen's getting a bit old. And they're probably like on 2 supers, maybe a little bit less than 2 supers. Full box of bees in the brood box and give them a queen now, give them like a good quality queen now, mated queen, and they can still turn, turn that into towers kind of at the end of the year. It's, it's quite amazing once you get a good queen in there how quickly they turn that round. So yeah, so get— getting bees to move up to a super, it's just, it is the genetics. There's not really much How old do you call an old queen? So a couple of years. I find the, the big thing is very dependent on where you're foraging for your honey as well, this. So we will only take this year's queens to the heather. So I'm going through the heather site at the moment, requeening all of them, because the heather really takes its toll on bees. So you need to make sure that you've got the youngest possible queens in there so they are just like firing out the bees, because otherwise they really can struggle in the heather. Um, so yeah, we do it, we do it kind of every— we pretty much do it every year. And what we're going to start doing now that we sell queens is that we'll do it every year and we'll just shift out like any of the older ones later in the year at maybe at like a reduced cost. Um, might do it, might do it at 2 years, I'm not sure yet, but instead of, instead of selling like the normal F1 Buckfast queens, I might just knock them out at like £20 each and say, well, here's like some 2-year-old queens, um, or like 1-year-old queens for £30. I don't know, see how it works. But there's— I've got some queens that will go like 4 or 5 years. There's nothing— I'm doing that as like a time-saving thing, um, because I find they're less likely to swarm. That's, that's the only reason. What's really good, what you're looking for, what's amazing, if you find a colony that will keep a queen for like 3 or 4 years and then supersede that queen after 3 or 4 years, that is like the best thing you can possibly find. You find a colony that goes 6 months and then swarms, that's like a nightmare. Um, so I think, yeah, an old queen, like 3 or 4 years, definitely, definitely get 2. 2 years out of them. Have I discussed top versus bottom b-space and preference? Appreciate it's late, so no worries. It's fine, I'll talk till I kind of just fall asleep talking into my camera. It's cool. No, I've not spoken about top b-space versus bottom b-space. So my preference, definitely top b-space, much better, I think, top b-space. But the national setup is bottom bee space. So it's— but the Abello hive is like, it's top bee space. So I think they've played a blinder with that hive. It's a really good hive, that new Abello hive, and fixes a lot of issues from other hives, and it's top bee space. So I really like working that hive. It's very well designed. I just find with top bee space just kind of easier to use. me, um, in terms of like putting crown boards on. Doesn't make— it doesn't make a huge amount of difference. The big difference with top B space is that you're not— you can make your own accessories really easily. So if you're making a crown board, you can just have a flat sheet of plastic, flat sheet of wood, as opposed to having to rebate it all to put the space in. That's where the big savings come in with top B space. Chris is going to bed. See you, Chris. Um, is a smoker an absolute must-have? So I rarely light my smoker, and I should light it more, but because I'm just kind of going around and just, you know, I don't light it that much. They definitely, definitely don't— they definitely sting you more if you don't have your smoker. So I'd say, yeah, for most people it is, it is a necessity really. Newer bellow, difficult to avoid squidging bees. Yeah, I find that with all hives, to be honest. Like, there's not, there's not any hive I have where I do an inspection and I don't kill loads of the bees. It's, it's kind of the facts of my beekeeping is that you will kill some bees. I don't find the rebates too bad at all, uh, like no worse than, um, well, a lot better than the Suyenti ones I use, because the Suyenti, you've not got the rebate and you've just got a big fat wall. Look at my videos, Look how many dead bees are on there, they're swim tea loads. Um, but yeah, I just kind of brush, brush them off the rebate and then put them on. I don't find I kill any more than all my other ones. Do we use any Perspex quilt boards? So no, I've got some Perspex quilt boards, uh, but it's, it's not something that I— it's not something that I need because I just crack the lids open in winter to have a look at them if I want to do it down to like -5. The bees really don't care if you go in, open them up, and it's -5 for a couple of seconds, like just to see them. It's fine. But I like Perspex quilt boards, and if it was— if I was doing it for like a hobby, um, I know it is my hobby, but if I was doing it and just had a couple in the garden, really, really good thing, um, to have. That's what I would have because it's nice when you show people them, um, and it's nice just to kind of— I think it's— I think it stops a lot of unnecessary inspections, Perspex quilts or like polycarbonate crown boards, just because you can kind of see them and check up on them and say, are they doing well? Um, so I do like them. I've got some of them, but I don't use them. My setup is I use the upturned feeder as a crown board, so all of my hives have that on the whole time, and it's a massive time saver. Yeah. Really fed up that people don't offer petrol money when you collect their swarms. What do you do, and am I being too sensitive? So do you mean in terms of like you're going to collect a swarm from someone and you want them to pay you for petrol money? Is that what it is? I'll assume that's what it is. Um, just, just tell them, just say it's 50 quid to come and collect a swarm. The problem is that everyone will do it for free. Like, it's like proper bee wars, isn't it, when someone rings you up for a swarm? I remember this happened all the time, it drives me mad, is that you'd— someone would ring you up, there'd be a swarm, get your kit on and jump in the car and go and get a swarm, and there'd be like 3 other beekeepers there trying to get it, and you think, nightmare. Um, so it's one of the questions I always ask, but I don't, I don't go collect them anymore because I just don't have the time. But I do— if I do go and collect them, it's the question I ask is ask for a picture because I want to check that it's honeybees, and I ask them have they told anyone else that it's there, and then if they tick both of those questions off, it's fine. But in terms of petrol money, I wouldn't personally ask for petrol money because if there's a prime swarm there, it's worth a few quid. If they sent me a picture of it and they're like, it's a big massive prime swarm, I wouldn't personally ask for petrol money. But yeah, if you got there and there's a bumblebee nest, I'd probably ask for petrol money. Um, just got a Payne's poly hive and realized it's bottom bee space, so crown board squashing the bees. I'm putting it back together. Yeah, just get rid of the crown board. So I don't— it really annoys me that some of the manufacturers give you that polycarbonate, like the flexi wibbly board, with their bottom bee space hives because it just doesn't work. What's the point in having it? I'd say to everyone, get rid of those little boards and don't buy a crown board, buy a polyashworth feeder because it doubles up as a crown board, really good crown board. You can feed, you invert it to put fondant on, so you can feed syrup, you can feed fondant, do everything that a normal crown board does, and it's like £20 more, but it's so much more versatile. Plus you get all the insulation up top, which is where you want the insulation. So I think it's a really— like, even if you're on wooden hives, polyash forth feeder on top underneath the roof, perfect. Just gives you all the benefits of poly just with that feeder. It's not the best thing you can buy. Uh, is the Layens hive something you, uh, somewhat new— so is the Layens hive a somewhat newer over there, or have you guys had them for a bit? So I'm not sure. I've seen them, and it's something that I probably will look at and have a little bit of a dabble in, but I've not got a huge amount of experience on it, or whether it's a new thing or not. Seen they're expensive though, they're not cheap. Oh, no worries, Angela. Thanks for taking the time to be in it. You've been in it for the long haul as well. I'm surprised, I'm surprised how long I've been talking to those 2 and a half hours and how many people have been here and commented. I genuinely thought I would answer the questions I had on here and there'd be about 6 of you watching, so I do appreciate you all watching, it's great. What month do you hang your swarm traps? So I'd go from like April onwards really. You want to get them up as early as you possibly can, but obviously the tip that you need to watch out for is if you're putting black comb in them, you just make sure you treat it for wax moth, and unfortunately there's no legal treatment in the UK for wax moth, so you need to regularly change it or do something with it or take it out and freeze it, because if you put it up in April and go back in June, it'll be gone. Like, they'll just obliterate it for you. But I think if you put up a bait hive, I don't know, I get pretty good, good, some pretty good success on my bait hives. So I'd be annoyed if I put one up in April and I didn't have a swarm in it come June, but then I do, I put up a lot, but I tend to just put my boxes up around the apiaries now, so I don't necessarily like actually put them up as a bait hive, I just set my spare boxes up in such a way that a swarm could go into it if they wanted to, and catch mega swarms that way, really good. You've changed your Payne's poly nucs to 8 frames by cutting out the side feeder, have you looked into this now. They produced a top feeder video, so I've got some— I do a lot, quite a lot in pains hives. A lot of our ones that go out are in pains because they're quite good to send in the post, but it really annoys me about the top feeder thing because they're just, they're kind of trying to tick all the boxes. They don't want to change the mould. They realize that the side feed is rubbish, like you speak to them, they know it's rubbish, That's why they built out the top feeder, but they don't want to change the mold because the mold is so expensive. So they're just saying, "Right, we'll just do it at the top feeder." But then if you buy the nuc and then you've got to buy top feeder as well, it's really expensive. That costs a lot of money, whereas the other ones they come with a top feeder. So like I I really like the BS honeybees and the Bello. Like both of those are much better. I think, than the, than the Payne's ones. But the Payne's ones are fine. There's not much in it at all. I think a nuc is a nuc. The only difference is you just need to put some sticks and stuff in the Payne's one to stop the bees drowning in it. In terms of overwintering though, I don't see any difference between the two, and they're both quite dense. So there's not— I'll use any of them. It kind of comes down to what's the cheapest for me really, and the prices of all of them going up through the roof. So, Headbanging Zulu UK, I love this name. You have to message me and tell me what it means. But can queen excluders damage queens' wings? Apparently so, and they say the zinc ones are the worst for it, like the pressed zinc ones. I've never, I've never seen a queen— I've never seen a bee— sorry, oh, you said damage queens' Please. I'm confused now, getting late. Um, I've never seen a queen with damaged wings as a result of a queen excluder. I don't think I've ever seen a queen with damaged wings. I've never seen a bee with damaged wings because of a queen excluder either, but apparently the pressed zinc ones are, um, can damage the bees' wings. I've never seen it. I like the wireframe ones, they're my favourite. With a rim, but any of them would do. And I said this on a video before, if I was going to go and buy loads more queen excluders, I'd go for a plastic one. Cheap, cheap and cheerful, because they're fine. Matt is planning on hacking the Payne's Poly Nuc too. Side feeders are far better than the side. Yeah, yeah, I'd agree with that. I would go through it, but we churn them so quickly quickly, so I just think I'm not gonna bother taking a knife to it. But I'm gonna do a video on that, um, how to chop them out. I think that's a good idea. Are Buckfast bees the most chilled type? Not necessarily. Like, Buckfast have got a name, uh, they're just gonna jump in that room, they just like literally send a chill down my spine. Don't like I'm the most scary— it's like, most scary— most scared person in the world. My wife walks into a room and bangs on something, like, I nearly have a heart attack. So yeah, don't say he's standing in the corner beside the window behind me because I've literally got a sweat on. Oh yeah, I can ban you from future chats if you start talking like that. But back to Ian, are Buckfast bees the most chill type? So not necessarily. Buckfast, as you go through the generations, can get horrible. Horrible. And I know they're not buckfast really after they get past that few generations, one generation really. Um, but so, so, so not necessarily. And definitely some people that are selling buckfast queens can be a bit, bit gnarly, a bit aggressive. Um, but other ones I've seen, I've got black bee colony, I went and collected a swarm the other day. This is the one swarm, you'll see it, I did it without a veil. only a little swarm, but they're really, really dark and just like the most chilled out bees in the world. And I know like swarms are chilled out anyway, but I've got other colonies, really, really, really quiet, the most calm bees in the world, and they're not Buckfast. I know a guy does a lot with Carnelian bees and he's got some incredibly gentle bees, like just don't even twig that you're near them. So Buckfast bees, are chilled out, but I think other bees can be chilled out as well. It depends what you, what you select for. Do you see a difference between different style queen excluders? I did a video on that, good video on that. So there is a difference. I find depending, it depends on the bee space you're using as well. So I find a bottom bee space, I do like the wooden framed wire queen excluders. They're my preference. there's so much more money. If I was starting again and I had to— if I was starting again, I had to buy 100 queen excluders, I'd go for the cheapest plastic pressed ones, definitely, because they're fine and they're cheap. I'm hoping to start out next year beekeeping. Is a 10-year-old tree plantation an ideal place to keep bees? What kind of Maybe, I'm not really sure because like 10-year-old trees probably not going to yield anything depending on what tree they are, but I think like the big thing for me obviously like as long as the forage is available for an apiary, it's more just like the access and stuff like that. I think bees tend to manage pretty much anywhere, there's not many places that the bees won't do too well, but I'd have a go. See how they do it and then get on with it. Yeah, seriously, don't don't mess around. Say there's people behind me. I get so scared. So I remember you installing several packages Italian into hives. How did they do? Did they go through the winter? Yeah. So the packages I installed there, there's a video coming out about the Jolanta queens. So those packages there, they were Jolanta queens. I had some Buckfast ones as well, but the Jolanta ones. went to this apiary. And yeah, have a look, you see what they're like. They're the ones on the 2-frame split video as well. They're the ones that are bubbling over, so they're the packages, and they're, they're really, really good. But interesting, you can't get packages this year unless you get them in through the back door through Bee Equipment, which they managed to do amazingly. So fair play, um, they got them through. Surprised they're not 6 months late, but they, they got them through, didn't they? So a lot of people have got packages, but they're the only people that you can get them through in the UK this year. So they have a full monopoly on that market, which is very interesting. And I know Murray McGregor is doing— he's doing some homegrown ones, but he has sold out of them now. So yeah, he has sold out now, but you can't get them. It's just mad because they just got flown in from— flown in— they got dropped drove in from Italy, and then you got a call the day before from Murray saying, I'll be at the M6 services at 4 in the morning. Seriously, 4 in the morning. So then you set your alarm on for 3, like quarter to 3 in the morning, drive over to the services, and then he stops on the way with his merry men, and they've got like 500 packages on the back of a truck. And then you It's proper weird. It's like you're dreaming because it's just middle of the night. Like, I'm— I like to sleep, uh, not good at getting up that early. But yeah, you're good, so you can get them this year. Any packages in the UK? Packages are great, and it's a real US thing, packages. That, like, everyone gets packages in the US, um, and they're, they're great because they're just perfect for, like, deadouts, for any colony that's failed, as long as you, like, sterilize it all and then reframe it, or you can just stick a package in and they're just good to go. Great for making increase because they're so much cheaper than nucs. So yeah, packages, they've done well. What's the best paint to paint your hive? So we use spray paint on the poly hive, spray paint. Cupronil Shades is the one that most people say, I think, because it's like non-toxic to bees for wood, that's good. But for poly, any, any masonry paint's fine, any oil-based gloss is fine. We just do a test to make sure you're not going to melt it, because some spray paints and some oil-based glosses do melt it. But what you want is you want it to melt just a little bit to form like a shell. But yeah, most, most paint, just slap it on. 2-frame split being 1-frame brood, 1-frame stores. So yeah, it kind of depends. like, if you did a split now, strong colony, one frame of brood, one frame of stores, and then added drawn comb— and that's the thing that gets them going really quickly, is the drawn comb— and then fed them, you'd have to split them before the end of the year because they'd be too strong to overwinter on a 6-frame nuc, definitely, because they just go wild. If you did it with foundation, then you could probably do that now, and you'd probably just get it about It takes them a while on a little colony to draw out foundation. Takes a really long time. So take good care of your drawn comb. Yeah, Santex. Santex is fine. That's what most people use, I think, for like masonry paint. There's in B and Q they do like their own brand. I can't remember what it's called. Masonry paint. They do their own brand one, and you can have it mixed. So you can have it mixed. any color that you want, which is, which is really good. So if you, if you're in like your garden and you don't want like ivory or gray or something, they do any color you want. Um, so you can have like— and you can Pantone reference it as well, so you can have like a million colors. And it's nice if you want to like kind of get something nice for your garden, they do mix it. Forget what it's called, really nice paint. I painted a few of mine with that. Right, I'm going to talk probably, I think, until like midnight, 12. So any more questions? Again, doesn't have to be beekeeping. Ask me what my favourite dinner is. Food is a good topic actually, like that is probably my number one passion, which is food. I bought a Kamado Joe the other day, so anybody in America probably know that, maybe not so much in the UK. And it's just like the best thing I've ever bought. Like, I'm totally obsessed with it. I'm telling everybody I meet, and they're just like, who's this weirdo talking to us about his barbecue? I'm completely obsessed. I made a rotisserie chicken on it, I've made a chicken shawarma on it, I've made a whole slow roast leg of lamb on it. It's proper nice. So yeah, I'm a massive, massive foodie. I love to eat food and cook food and talk about food. Probably more passionate about food than I am about bees. Is that a good home? I don't know what that means, Joseph. How's the plastic foundation doing? Would you recommend it? So that is— I went wild this year, didn't I, on product reviews and stuff, so I completely forgot I bought plastic foundation. So thanks for the reminder. I have to get some into a colony and do a review on it. I did it on the— I got red plastic frames as well over nice. I've got to finish off the review of those and the propolis traps. I bought loads of things to review and I've not done any of them other than kind of open them up and talk about them. So that's a good reminder, I need to get on with that. It's a good time, just come up a new question. Do you keep paper or digital records? I'm struggling to get my— struggling to get my head around them. Do you record— do you record, follow the Queen— that's next one— or location of the box? Right, so I said this at the beginning, so my, my record keeping is bad, really bad. And I've— so my record keeping at the moment is I write on the top of the hive anything important, um, and it tends to be if they're queenless. So if there's something going on with the queen, or I've made them queenless, or, or there's anything else I need to know, I write on the top of the hive. So some of my roofs are just covered in like scribbles, really just like garbled nonsense a lot of the time. But if there's anything like I really need to remember, I'll just write it on the top of the hives. Um, it's such a short-term way of doing it though, I couldn't look back through anything. And it's probably the biggest area of my beekeeping that I, I need to improve. I should get better at that. The only bits that I do kind of like I'm good at is like of recording treatments and stuff, because obviously like required by law to record all the treatments, especially part of the Bee Farmers Association. So we do, do all that separately, just keep it in a folder. But in terms of like day-to-day management, like checking for frames of brood and all that, I don't do any of that whatsoever. Um, I just— it's queen status pretty much is the only thing I write on the top. So Matt, have you seen, have you, have you seen our other company? So we haven't— if, if one company wasn't enough, I do have 2 companies now. So we have a company called Hot Fire Honey. That's why Ainsley Harriott was around it filming for. So it's a habanero chili infused honey that's used to drizzle on pizzas. So I've been flirting with all of these companies trying to get my name in there. They've not been taking any notice whatsoever. So hopefully once Ainsley gives me a bit bit of a promotion, get Domino's or Pizza Express on the phone, and then yeah, I can get the— hi, it's Lawrence Edwards from Hot Fire Honey, welcome to my new promotional video. But it's not gonna happen, is it? I've been trying to plug it for ages, that one. But it is nice. Hot Fire Honey is, um, it's nice. Like, big, big thing in America. So it's just like a chili-infused honey. You drizzle it over pizza, you drizzle it meats. There's a guy out there, it's called Mike's Hot Honey, and he's like a multi-millionaire. It's just on the back of like infusing honey with chili peppers. So I've stolen his idea, tried to do it in the UK, and it's not really taken off. But it is nice. It's like, imagine you've got like a chili oil for a pizza and you have it, but it's without like oiliness of it. It goes really, really well. Yeah, get on Dragon's Den. I tried to apply, they don't take applications for it. I'd love to go on Dragon's Den, maybe give me an excuse to give up work if I got on Dragon's Den. It's nice though, it's a nice sauce. I'd love to go on Dragon's Den, give it the big one, go in the lift, get all nervous. My favorite recipe which includes honey? So this is the worst recipe in the world, but my favorite way of eating honey is I just have a yoghurt, just like Greek yoghurt, drizzle of honey on it. I'll give you, I'll give you a, I'll give you a business idea. So what is your favourite recipe which includes honey? This is a business idea that I was going to do this year before I realised that I've already got 2 companies and a job, so I didn't do it, and I'm not going to do it because the overlap doesn't really work. But it's something they do in France. So what they do in France, they get toasted hazelnuts and then they blitz them with honey. So it's like 50% toasted hazelnuts, 50% honey, and it's blitzed, and then you have it like on toast. So it's like posh Nutella but without the chocolate. Um, and oh my God, it's the nicest thing in the world. So if you— and I've tried it with loads of different honeys, and the best honey— so we call it Beretta. Beretta. in our house. And I know burette is something else. The reason we call it burette is because of borage honey. So it's 50% borage honey, 50% toasted hazelnuts blitzed to a paste, and then just have that on your toast and it will change your life. It honestly will. It is delicious. I just sit there eating it with a spoon. Good night, Afrim. Have I tried making mead? So this was one of my other hobbies these. So I was well into making alcohol. Um, so I don't drink. So last time I had a drink was about 6 years ago, and not because like I consciously made an effort to not drink. Um, but I never, never really was a massive drinker. Uh, we used to make loads of alcohol, loads of cider. I had a 100-litre apple press and used to go around scrumping in Birmingham, come back with like cart full of apples and I made loads of cider. I started making cider, so if you— you probably know what it is, so it's like apple juice fermented into a cider mixed with honey, like rocket fuel. It was nice. And I did loads of stuff like that, like elderflower champagne, all different— parsnip wine was quite nice. I made loads of like disgusting things as well, did a nettle beer, terrible. I'm just looking at that question. I'll answer that question in a second, Angus. But mead, yes, I did make some mead and it was, it was nice, but it was a little bit medicine-y. I think it needed to mature a little bit. And I found one, I found a mead that I've been trying probably about 6 years in the demijohn, and it was nice. I'm not a massive drinker, so I'm not, I'm not really a huge fan of it. But in terms of mead, Wye Valley Meadery, so I know the guys down there, they're a really good bunch of guys, and what they make is amazing. I think they're kind of bringing it into the 20th— I'd say 24th century, that's getting late— bringing it into the 21st century a bit, making it a bit popular. So I think they're going to go really, really big with that, and I do think that will be like the next big thing, unlike cider is. Because it's nice, because they do like a honey and elderflower mead. It's like sparkling, you have that over ice and it's like, it's really nice. Right, Angus, if it's not too much of a cheeky question, do you get much of an income from your YouTube videos? Surprisingly not that bad. So I love the analytics side of it, and like I said before, like every single subscriber I get, I'll probably check my YouTube homepage, must be a couple of hundred times a day. day. Like, I'm so, so obsessed with YouTube. My wife properly takes the mickey out of me for it, um, but I do. And like, I'm so into kind of like the keyword research and stuff, and I, I am, I'm ridiculously competitive and kind of like benchmark myself against others, other well-known UK and international beekeeping channels. And I'm quite relentless in terms that I kind of get the channel as big as I possibly can. I'll be honest, like it's not I'm going to lie about it. Like I am, I'm committed to making it a good channel, and I hope I hope that people see that with the videos. Like I put I put a lot of I put a lot of effort into the videos, and I try and make them different to what other people do. So instead of kind of like saying, "Oh, I caught a swarm today in this video." Here's a swarm that I've caught. Look at the bees as a swarm. Trying to do this time-lapse approach, I'm trying to give you like a full view of all of the processes that I do, and it's difficult. It takes me so much more time than just kind of going and filming a video and showing you what I've done for that day. But I'm hoping that it's gonna set me up to kind of go to the next level. Fingers crossed. So going back to, uh, how much do I earn from it? Be it'd be really interesting to see what people think I earn from YouTube a month, considering how much time I spend on it and considering the fact that it's only about 14 months old the channel. So I'll leave it. I'll leave it for a bit. See what people think. I'll come back. I will answer it though. I'm not going to dodge the question. Oh hi, hi Hakan. I'm glad you've been following it. I hope you enjoyed it. USA packages averaging $185, this $150, going up. And they— it's like everything with beekeeping, the price is going up crazy amount just across the board for everything. And then the only thing that isn't going up is the honey. At the end of it seems to be the same price that people were paying for 10 years ago. Right, how do you find the time for it while running your other businesses? Right, so I struggle, I struggle for time. And like I said, a very, very understanding wife who does everything. And then I try and outsource everything else to like cleaners and stuff, get away from my chores. And I just work late into the night. So I kind of— on my days, the videos don't take me that long to film at all. So if you're seeing like a 10-minute video, it's probably taken me 20 minutes to film it. Um, it doesn't take long to film. at all. And then the editing, I just kind of chip away in the nights. So I'm up till kind of like 1 or 2 o'clock just doing a little bit here, a little bit there. Um, and then I get a lot of help from my nephews. So 2 nephews who help with like the jarring and the labeling and doing all that kind of stuff. Um, and then just like just chip away at the social media. My wife does quite a bit of the social media, which people don't realize about as well. She has got all of the access to the accounts on her phone, so she does, she does some of of the stuff. You have to see if you can guess what stuff she does. A grand a month? £350 a month? So I wish it was a grand a month. I definitely wish it was around a month. Nowhere near that. £350 is quite close, so it's probably close to average around £350 a month. This is going up, so it's like a real exponential curve. It is great. So I don't know where it's going to stop. So please share the videos, get it up as high as it can go. Last month, it's all done in dollars, so we get like fleeced at the moment because the pound's quite strong against the dollar. So it's like $540 last 20— it's the last 28 days, so you get a bit more. It's about $600 a month, which is like, what, £450? Work it out on an hourly basis and it's less than minimum wage. I'd say, in terms of the amount of videos I put out there. But what's really interesting with the videos on YouTube is like, it's the old videos, it's the videos that YouTube picks up and kind of makes popular because people like them or people watch them. And it's all about— this is why, this is why I'm changing my approach to videos and trying to do these time-lapse ones, because I think over the long term it's evergreen content. So stuff that people will always want to watch because you've got new beekeepers who want to know how to do a 2-frame split, and then next year you've got new beekeepers who want to know how to do a 2-frame split. So you're always going to have that. But I'm trying to make the videos like the very best they can be and make them the best videos on YouTube. That's my goal. So I'm hoping it will go up and up and up. Um, but yeah, so like last month I had 85,000 views for the month. And I think it was 25 or 26,000 of them for one video. So I think, I think I'm pretty sure this is right, it was like 75% of all of those views was top, was just 5 videos out of 250. So it's all about just hitting, trying to hit that viral video, which you're never really going to get on beekeeping. But yeah, I enjoy it though, I enjoy the YouTube, and I see it as like a long-term thing. And the biggest one, and I've been, I'm being so honest here, is that it— there's no way I'd have sold 200 nucs without YouTube. Absolutely no chance. The reason I sold so many nucs this year, and I think I'll sell them again next year as well, and the queens, is because I've got, I've got a demographic of people who, who want a product that I'm selling. So the targeting of that is, is near perfect. And you see this with all beekeepers, with all YouTubers. It's like they don't make their money from YouTube adverts, they make their money from like selling other stuff to people who kind of want to buy things from someone they've built a relationship with. I do, I build a relationship with everyone on YouTube because people watch me and I respond to their comments, so it's kind of like there's a bit of to and fro in there. And especially with the nucs as well, it's like people's people see what they're getting. So if there's something comes up on Facebook which is like a 6-frame nuc for sale, you don't know where the queen is, you don't know what the colony's like, you don't know how many frames of brood are on there. But with YouTube, you kind of get to see it and you get to see how the colony's developed and stuff. So although I don't earn that much money from YouTube yet, and it does sell other stuff, uh, Night Shift Master Race, get paid to watch YouTube YouTube at night or work on private things? Is that a question? I do, I do get paid to watch YouTube at night. I don't know, I edit videos at night. How many hives do I have? So I have just under 100 because I sold all of my nucs. I'm keeping it around 100. No one asked this question. I'll answer a question that no one's answered. Is what is my favorite method of artificial swarming, and it's a Demarest split by far and away. Doing a video on it at the moment, and the reason I love it is that you don't have to split your colonies into 2. Um, so it's helping me this year keep my colony numbers static and maintain honey production. So it's a really good technique. Kebab6597, love the name. I'm introducing a Carni queen to a buck First time using the queen introduction cage. She has been in there with a frame of brood for a week. The brood on her frame has hatched. Is it safe to release her? It's difficult to know without saying, like, if the colony was hopelessly queenless before you introduced the queen and you put her in a cage and then the brood's hatched, like, yeah, definitely, if they were 100% hopelessly queenless before. I find if you if you use push-in introduction cages and there is a virgin in there, they kill her. They get in under the cage and they kill her, like always. So the fact they haven't done that, they're probably probably happy. The other safe thing to check is if you can look in and see that the queen's back laid all of those eggs. If she's laid them up, then definitely just take take the cage off. Should be fine. Julian, I had an email from the National Bee Unit saying there'd been EFB within three. along at one of my apiaries. I have a couple of mini mating nucs there. Is it okay to use these in mated— is it okay to use these in mated queens in other apiaries? I think, I think just clean them for EFB. Like, just, just get the disinfectant on them, just get them as clean as you possibly can, properly. Like, go to town, dunk them in soda, caustic soda, get them all clean. If it's wood, torch them all over. Um, But yeah, do you know what? Like, if it was me, no, I'd just go static on that apiary and just monitor them. Because if you get EFB in your apiary, you know about it. I know people, it's obliterated them. Does it affect you if people skip the ads monthly-wise? I don't know. Apparently so, but I'm not fussed. Like, if people don't want to watch adverts, it's fine. You're gonna have— we're gonna have a mix of people, and some people are gonna want to— some people pay to be channel members, about £5 a month, and they don't have to watch any ads. It's all advert-free. It's my little plug. Channel membership's great. But I don't even look into that kind of side of things. I look at the overviews and look at how much money I make and stuff. I'm doing— I'm doing it for the want, but I'm also doing it like it's kind of— it's not so much about the money for me, it's about the views. I do— I want to take over the world. So, Ian Steffler and Cameron Reynolds are great, but you're doing a brilliant job for UK beekeepers. Do you follow anyone particularly? Oh, thanks very much. No, not really. I don't watch too, too much on YouTube. I'll tell you who my favorite YouTuber is. You can guess. Yeah, I don't think you— well, you probably would get it eventually. Um, it's Bob Binney. Yeah, Bob Binney is my favourite YouTuber, uh, because he's— I just, I just really like him. Like, I, I mean, I don't know Ian Stepler or Cameron Reynolds, um, but I think they're both really, really fantastic beekeepers, but I just, I like Bob Binney's style. I'll do a really good Kamen Reynolds impression though if anyone wants to hear it, but you have to promise him not to come and look at this video. Not that he'd care. Hi, I'm Kamen Reynolds. Hi. I also do a really good Stuart from the Norfolk Honey Company one, but I'm not going to do that impression because I don't think he likes me very much. Hi, I'm Stuart from the Norfolk Honey Company. Can we— yeah, I've done it now, so there you go. You can send him the link. I'm sure they would take both of those in jest. You're telling me it's midnight, so if they weren't perfect impressions, then— but yeah, so I don't follow anyone in particular, but I do always compare myself to how many views they're getting. I do. I'm so bad for it. Like, I have a serious issue with comparisons. So when you have, you have this on TubeBuddy, it tells you like all the different views and stuff, and you can see kind of like obviously their subscriber count versus their views. And I kind of like, I go on to Cameron Reynolds' one and I think, oh, he's getting— he's got like 500,000 views this month and I've got 80,000 views. But I think, you know, if I wait another year and I get like if I go on this growth, I could be like 250,000 and he might be 500,000, then he might be a bit scared, but he'll probably be on like 700,000 then. So I just think, I think you'd always be behind people like that, especially like Cameron Reynolds, because his videos, his videos are amazing. I just, I think the US beekeepers do have a bit of an advantage though over kind of little England because we're so small. I think most of the US people can't understand what I say, so I do try and like be clear. I hope you can understand me. It's not like it's like an accent thing, so I think US sometimes struggle to understand some of the like the accents. But obviously like the US YouTubers, they got so many people to go at. Like if you make it big in the US, you've got You look at like, um, Barnyard Bees and some of those people, it's like 200,000 subscribers. They put a video on and like within an hour, like 50,000 people have watched it. So I do, yeah, I'd love, I'd love to have that many. The thing, the thing that I like to think though, and Cayman Reynolds has got this in his favor as well, is quite young. So if I'm 35, I could be doing this for another 35 years. So I've got like 5,000 subscribers now, so if I go for another 35 years, I reckon I'll be on at least like 10,000 by then. So, uh, Right, introduced mated queen for hive with chalk brood in cage. After a week, they were super aggressive to her in the cage. Left her in cage for second week to see if they'll calm down. Do you think they will? They're definitely queenless. That's kind of what I'm thinking there. 99 times out of 100, if they're being aggressive to the queen in the cage, it's because they're not hopelessly queenless. So there's either eggs or larvae or a capped cell. Capped cell can make them really aggressive, or there's a virgin knocking around somewhere. Um, so you need to double-check all of that. Yeah, sounds like there's either a cell Julian, your apron's fine. So if your apron's fine, it's been checked out. I wouldn't I wouldn't worry too much about it. You get alerts all over for everything. Ainsley impression. Oh, what did he say? Because he got he did like he did because my neighbor made some scones and he's oh that's a lovely delight scone. And it's like something that's been passed down through the generations. Little birdie told me that. Yeah, you're a legend, Ainsley Harriot. What a legend. Oh, thanks, Jackie. You've been here a while as well. Some people are proper putting in the long shift tonight. I'm quite amazed. Oh, thanks, Brian. Cheers. Oh well, I'll definitely do this again. Like, it's got to midnight now. There's still 60 people. It'd be— I'd be really interested to see what the stats are like on this. Um, can I review an extractor for an 80+ hive area? Yes, I can. I'll do, I, I'll do my best with extractors and stuff, but the problem is, it's like, like you look at all those reviews I did for like hives and stuff, I'm quite happy to like buy a hive for like £100, £150, do a review of it. Um, But the honey extraction side is much more difficult because they're so expensive. And like, if you— if I, if I bought like a £3,000 extractor and used it once, I'd probably sell it for like £1,500. And I don't think I'm going to make £1,500 on the YouTube review. Um, so I, I've been speaking to Damien at Abello. So what he said is I can go up there and review all of his products. Um, And just kind of like work my way through them. And so I might do that if we get some time, just go through. But this— what kind of one you're looking at? What, uh, what kind of honey are you extracting and what kind of frames are you thinking of? Because, because I'm looking at changing my extractor because I've got at the moment 24-frame radial. But it's also got like a 6-frame swing cage in it as well, so you can do like 6-frame heather on a swing cage. And I'm thinking of changing it all out now to do like a 24-frame swing cage on like a mix of OSR and possibly— Yes, if you're doing heather, I would go for either a full swing cage, like a 12-24 frame one, so you can do like 24 Shallows doubled up, or 12 National Deeps on a swing cage. Or go for— give you products free in terms of your own set. All right. So I'd go for one of those, or go for like the Abello one that does a mix of the two, because trying to do heather tangentially is so difficult. Like, it's the most time-consuming thing in the world. So definitely go for a swing cage one. Abello do do. I've only really had much experience with their Abello ones. I know Carl Fritz do very, very good extractors as well, so take a look at some of the Carl Fritz ones. That's probably the number one bee farmer one that people use, but I think the Abello ones are great as well. Have a look. I think I think Abello have got a collection only deal on a big ball swing cage extractor. They're really good. Angus, don't the manufacturers give you products free in return for review? Yes, there's some. In some instances they do, and I always say it on the video. I know some some places get annoyed when they think my reviews are biased, but I'm not. They don't pay me to do the reviews. I um so so some do give me them for free. Some I message some people and just say, "Look, can can you give me this for free? I'll do." review of it. And I'd say 99 times out of 100, I don't get a response back, which is fine. But sometimes they do. But definitely not for like big stuff like extractors or uncapping machines or things like that. Like, everything's paid for. Um, I've had a few freebies, and they're mostly like, like a nuc here and a hive there. Um, I don't think you're too, too much into in return. I think as the channel grows I do think, I do think more people will approach me for that. I've had to turn down a few people for some reviews. People want me to review like garden strimmers and stuff, like Chinese ones, um, and I'll just say I'm not going to recommend it unless it's something that I genuinely think is good or related to beekeeping, or give it like a bit of a critique. So Have I seen Clarkson on Amazon Prime? Apparently he keeps bees. I can see you being on that and sorting him out. Yeah, I've not seen that, no, but that's a good shout. I'm trying to pimp myself out to Countryfile at the moment, so if anyone knows anyone on Countryfile, I think that'd be a good way in. But I do like— you joke, I was properly, uh, I wouldn't say flirting because I wasn't flirting, but with the producer both Ainsley and James Martin on TV, trying to convince them that they should do— they should put me on ITV1 to do like a full beekeeping series because I think it'd be quite good. Apparently there's one in New Zealand called Beekeeping Wars, and it's like they have like proper turf wars out there with like people's whole apiaries getting set on fire and then people like helicoptering in new, um, big colonies of bees onto the Manuka, middle of nowhere. And I think, I think it'd be good. I think it'd make a really good channel over here because, like I said, I could not believe quite how cutthroat the beekeeping industry is, from a level, from kind of like hobbyist level and like the associations, through to bee farmers, through to supermarkets, through to everything. Like, it is cutthroat, and people I remember the first shop that I ever stocked honey in, like a local deli, and they came to me and said, can we stock your honey? And I said, yeah, yeah, stock my honey, that's fine, but thanks very much. And there was someone else who was stocking honey there, and I know this guy didn't like me, and he got really angry, and he went down to the— he went down to the deli and he properly had a go at the owner. You can't sell honey to this guy, this guy feeds his bees sugar syrup and then sells it off as honey. That was the first shop I ever stocked, and you've got someone straight away slandering you and just telling lies because he wasn't happy about it. There's loads of stuff like that goes on, but yeah, I'd love to be on telly, be good, a bit of a goal. Gotta call it a night, don't stay up too late. Thanks for a great session. No worries, cheers Kevin. Uh, yeah, we don't sleep in the same bed. It's weird that we've got— she sleeps with my 3-year-old daughter because they've always slept together. So I'm in the spare room which has got Sky Go, so I'll probably go to bed in a bit and I'll probably watch some peep show, something like that. Um, can you do some cleaning vids on the extraction? Or just before I say this, I'm out of questions there, so I will just keep on answering questions if people want me to, um, but I'll go to bed otherwise. Uh, more than happy to carry on talking about anything though. So can you do some more cleaning vids on extraction equipment please? Looks a long job. I can do— I'll do that. I didn't do it last year because I got someone to help me do it because it was, it was a long job. Um, I'll do some this year on, on how to clean them. The one with the extractor, I've Run the extractor just full of water, kind of like lukewarm water, not hot. Don't put hot water in your extractor. Wrecked an extractor doing that. So cold water, and then just run it cold on a couple of cycles. You need to take it apart at the end because the bearing gets a bit of water in it, but that's definitely the easiest, quickest way of getting the extractor cleaned. Most of the other stuff, I take it outside and pressure wash it. That's pretty good. Don't do it on like a high pressure on any of the bits that can break, but you can just pressure wash a lot of it. And then the final thing is, I can't remember the company, I think it might be Viking Direct again, but they sell— I'll do a video specifically on this product because it's the product I use on everything. So it's a food-grade hygiene cleaner and it comes like a neat solution and then you water it down and use it as a spray. And oh my God, it like burns you so bad. So you need it in the right concentrations. You don't get it on your skin. This food is properly certified food grade, so you can use it on like— you can, you can wash out like honey jars on it. We don't, we don't wash our honey jars because they come like sterile, but it's certified for that. Um, but it's great. It is the best thing ever for getting off like propolis or wax or grime or honey. Just the best thing in the world. So I will do a video on cleaning all the stuff because it does take long, and there's probably like a few good tips for people cleaning stuff up. It's good. Right, I'm all out of questions. I'll give it a couple of— oh, question. Great work, thanks for your answers. Dave's off. Thanks, Dave. Does a swing cage extractor take the Wobble out of extraction? Not really. It's, it's like it's in cages, and then it spins one way and turns them one way and spins the other way and flicks them the other way. So all you're doing is like a tangential extraction. So you have the frames are kind of like perpendicular, parallel, whatever way to the, to the face of the extractor. So it fires the honey out from both sides, but it doesn't really get rid of the wobble. You can bolt an extractor down, that gets rid of the wobble, but you can break the legs by doing that. You can put them on casters, but then they walk across the room. I put mine on casters and took it straight off again, didn't work. The best tip for stopping wobble, and I'll tell you this tip and you'll do it and you'll be like, oh my God, it's the best tip in the world, it's a really good tip, is don't empty the extractor until it's like needs emptying. So like just extract and like first few frames, or like maybe the first couple of goes, you just hold it so like wobbles like that. Let all the honey come out, but don't, don't let it come out. And then as you build up like a base of honey at the bottom, it properly steadies it. And then all you're doing is you just let it go, let a bit out just as it's coming up to the bearing, and just let a bit out and close it up again. Keep on extracting. and then go up to like 70 or 80% of the capacity, and that works. That's perfect. It doesn't move at all then because you've got a big ballast. Sorry if this has been asked, I'm late to the party, but how many hives do you have and do you have another job? So yeah, I've got 100 hives, and I've been trying to get the number down. And yeah, I have a full-time job, so I'm a construction project manager. a construction company. Um, and yeah, it's quite, quite an involved job, so I fit it all into my spare time. It's very much a hobby. So thanks, Julian. I'm glad you enjoyed it. It was long— longer than I expected, actually. 3 hours and 15 minutes I've been talking for, and it does not feel like that long at all because I, I very much enjoyed this evening. I've been meaning to do this for ages, uh, and it's one of those things that I didn't think anyone would dial in, and I thought it would be a bit like, uh, I knew there'd be a couple of people. Some people do kind of follow everything, and it's great. Like, the people who do that, thank you so much, and they comment on everything. And I knew there'd be a couple of diehards here, but I'm amazed how many people have been, how many comments and stuff. I'm just scrolling up through the comments there. Great, love it. So please that it's been useful for you all. Much better than Kate says. Good. Yeah, what I want to do, yeah, is I want to do a collaboration with some of them, and I've been messaging them all saying let's do a collaboration because I think it'd be good. Um, like I said, I'm— I am crazy on the numbers, and the last month we were the most popular beekeeping channel in the UK. Um, so we overtook— we overtook Stuart, uh, from the Norfolk, Honey Beans, whatever it is. And I'd love to do collaborations with the American guys because I think it's just something different, something a little bit different. And I know the American people do like the accent, so I'd love to piggyback on all their subscribers basically and get them to all follow me as well. So I can understand why they don't want to do it, but yeah, feel free to recommend, you know, one of their videos. I'm up for doing collaborations with any of them. I think it'd be good fun. Oh, cheers, cheers, Peter. I'm— I've seen some emails come in, so I'm hoping you— I'm hoping you've sent me it. I will send you a jar of honey for that. I do loads of competitions on all things, and I'm mad at my word, so you've got the answer. Even though you're a Chelsea fan, I'll send you a jar of honey. How do I clear my bees' honey off supers? If, if that's not a loaded question, then I will answer it. I'll answer it anyway. But I did a video of how I clear my supers, and I posted it on a few Facebook groups, and I had to take a break from social media for a couple of weeks because I was getting so much abuse. I think I'm over it now. I clear it with a petrol blower, and I think I'm willing to stand up to anyone to say that it doesn't harm the bees. But people didn't take it that way. People hated it, really got an issue with me using a petrol blower on the bees. So I open up the boxes, I stand them up, I blow all the bees out. Within half an hour, they're all back in the hive and I've taken their honey. So that's how I clear them. But you won't find a video of that because I get a lot of abuse for it. Soda crystals in warm water cleans anything and food safe. Yeah, soda crystals are really good as well. It's just, it's a bit gritty, but soda crystals are really, really good for like grimy stuff. How many hives would you say that you need to make a living from bees? So I answered this one earlier on as well, it depends on how, what your end game is, so if you're looking to sell nucs, or if you're looking to sell honey by the jar, or you can sell honey by the bucket, it kind of depends really, different Endgame as to what you actually want. So I think, and also define make a living, because if you want to make like 15 grand a year, then I think you could probably do it on like 30 hives, 40 hives. Make 100 grand a year, you're gonna need more, aren't you? So it's— you need to define what the living is, but you can definitely make a living from bees. especially in— I don't— I'm not— not in the US. I know you can because I see people go to the pollination, but I know it is highly, highly competitive. They pay really good rates for pollination out there. Um, but in the UK, you, you can make it as a beekeeper and make a decent living off it, but it is hard. It's hard work to kind of break through. Um, but the demand's there, big, big demand for honey in the UK, but you need to, you just need to make sure it's nicely branded and you do your marketing right. Social media is massive, takes a lot of time to do all your social media and get your brand up to scratch, and then to get your website up there, and then the SEO that goes into the back of the website. And then I think the diversity is the big thing, so as opposed to, unless you're going to be like on 500, 600 colonies and just sell honey in a bucket, You need to do everything. Can you sell nucs? You sell queens, you sell honey, you sell gift packs, um, beeswax wraps, lip balms— like any little thing you can do to extract more value out of your hives. If you're actually making a living from it, you've got the time to do it, then you really need to do it. What do I think of England's chances in the Euros? See, I love this— questions aren't about beekeeping are good. No chance. England have got absolutely no chance. But what I will say today is how bad is what happened to Christian Eriksen? That was seriously made me kind of like sit back and contemplate life for a little bit. So I do, I do wish him all the best. Um, but England's chances, a chance. England are rubbish at football. Um, I'll be supporting them, definitely. I'm not support— I'm not supporting Wales, uh, because I'm, I'm not Welsh. shy of English, but I think we'll be— I think we'll go out like in the first round after the groups. Have you seen Vino Bees Barns? So I have, I have. Is this, is this the frame thing that he's talking about? So I know he lost all his bees, isn't he? And then he's got these new big frames. So I think it's cool, and I think it'd be a good, like, a good YouTube video. Oh my God, they're massive! Like, how's he going to inspect frames that big? It'd be really, really interesting to see how— I will follow it a bit. Um, just making sure it doesn't turn off. Um, but yeah, so I've seen them. I haven't watched it in detail, but I, I— they're huge. They're ginormous. Uh, so would I ever go full-time beekeeping? Um, no, I would— I will go full time beekeeping when I retire from my job, and the earliest I can retire is 57, so I might go full-time beekeeping in 22 years. I'll have a good stab at my proper career first because I do a bit better at my actual job. Jim tried it today. What's that about? Tried it today, works fantastically. You, Dirt Rooster, Cayman, Bob Binney, Mr. Ed, and David from Barnyard Bees would be a must-watch. Well, like, like battle royale or like Royal Rumble. Be fun, wouldn't it? I would, I would love to meet all of those guys though. It'd be cool. Like, no competition or anything, but— I'm sure you're aware, but Bob Binney has your back concerning blowers. That's good to hear. Like, it's, it's so funny because I drove past someone today and it's the first time this ever happened, but someone was like, are you Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey? And I was like, yeah. And they were like, oh, we watch your videos. And I was like, that's the first time that's ever happened. And I was like so happy. But Bob Binney posted on one of my videos, just said nice video. And like, I like giggled like a little girl. I was like, oh, he posted on my video, like, he's great. Um, so I do like— I'm— yeah, I, I do kind of look up to all of those people and what they do on YouTube and their growth and stuff. And I do try to emulate them and, and shamelessly copy a lot of what they do. Um, and yeah, hope that there's— hope there's a place for me within, within the YouTube algorithm. What makes me think Stuart Spink doesn't like me? I don't know, he might, he might like me, um, but I just, yeah, I've commented on a few, a few of his posts when I was, when I was younger, when I was building the channel, and no response whatsoever. So complete radio silence. And obviously doesn't put comments on anymore, um, and yeah, that's about it really. So I, I have no, no basis for that whatsoever. But I think, like, I don't know, if I was, if I was him and I had a complete monopoly on the YouTube market for the UK and then decided to go down a route of Patreon, which is what he does, and makes people pay for all of his videos, and then someone else came along and started doing the videos for free, I'd probably be a bit annoyed. He's not got basis to be annoyed because I'm, I'm doing for free what he charges people good money for. And I've seen how much he makes on Patreon, a lot of money. But we won't do that, we'll stick on, we'll stick on YouTube. Julian's still trying to go to bed, but whilst on the subject of American bees, they seem a lot more calm than UK bees. Um, David from Buy No Bees Inspectors, yeah, in t-shirt. It's, it's true. Like, I look at some of the American beekeepers, like the Texas Texas Bee Works, the lady who does that, and I just think, whoa, like, your bees are awesome. Why are my bees not that calm? But I've got some colonies that I like, you know, I could inspect some of them in like a t-shirt like that, but just not all of them. And this is, this is an area that I'm really, really trying to improve. And as I, as I try and get my numbers down, because I'm not just trying to increase colonies to the nth degree and go as high as I possibly can, Really strategically trying to do the opposite at the moment, and trying to do the opposite whilst keeping the, the quantity of honey the same, but the temperament as good as I can possibly get it. So I'm going to do a lot more work trying to kind of get my bees to as gentle as I can possibly get them, just to make, just to make the videos a bit better really, but to also make my kind of my beekeeping a bit more enjoyable because some of them are just vicious and it's not nice to— not nice to deal with colonies like that. You found pollen in your first super, what can you suggest? So there's nothing wrong with pollen in the super, some people like pollen in the super. Bit of a pain because you can get like— it's a bit mouldy when you store it and stuff, but the pollen mites do clear it out. But I would suggest that the There's probably not enough space for them to keep it in the brood box, so you may need to take out some frames in the brood box or increase the size of the brood box or go double brood or something if you don't want pollen in your super. I wouldn't worry, worry about storing pollen in the super. They'll probably use it at some point, though they don't tend to move pollen around. I don't think they move it around at all. Well, I think you just stick it in there, not like honey where they'll move it to where they are. Yeah. Angus, you got me worried now because I, yeah, I've not kind of thought about the Stuart thing. I've just kind of always assumed that he didn't like me because he didn't respond to my comments. But like, now having actually sat here and said that, it sounds ridiculous. So I'll probably retract that comment. Um, he definitely won't like me now after I did my impression of him, but I'm not going to do it again. Impression again. I do. Yeah, that's just me having a little bit of fun. Right, good night, Matt. Yeah, the Ainsley video will drop soon. I just got to find a good, suitable video that we can put it on, but it will be out. Keep an eye out for it as well. It's called Ainsley's Mood Foods. It'll be out in September, and it's just— yeah, it's me and Ainsley cooking pizzas in my back garden. It's pretty good. It's like a proper film crew this time, so not like like the James Martin one where it was all pixelated and a bit, a bit done via Zoom, like a proper film crew. So it'd be quite cool. Well, I'll give it a couple more minutes for anyone to do any other questions. Like, I am happy just to kind of talk on, but I'll only talk on if there's any more questions. So we're at 3 and a half hours. Yeah, I think we're good. It's a pretty long stream. Well, I think that's it. I'll call it a day then. So thanks everyone for dialing into this. Um, I really enjoyed it, really enjoyed talking about it. I will do it again as well. I don't think it's the kind of thing I'll do like regularly. I'm not gonna do it like twice a month or something. I'll probably do it like a couple of times a year. I think, I think I might do one like Christmas time. Christmas time is a good time to do one when everyone's not doing beekeeping and just sitting around not really doing that much. So I will do a few of them in the future. But I do say thank you to everyone, like thanks for dialing into this stream, thanks for contributing to my channel, thanks for watching my videos. It's, it's kind of down to all All of you that I put so much effort into it, because if I'd have just started doing a few videos and no one watched them, I would have given it up by now. I'm good at starting things and giving them up, but if they go well, I do stick to them. And YouTube is going down very, very well for me at the moment, so I do appreciate it. I appreciate all of your comments and all of your contribution to the channel. And I've just seen that someone's come from, come from New Zealand as well. So my granddad was from New Zealand. I was just thinking the time difference there, you've probably just got up, so you're expecting me to be like vibrant, ready to go. Um, but yeah, this is, this is the end of the stream. So that is it, bang on 3 and a half hours. So thanks everyone, I really, really do appreciate it, and I'll catch you all next time. I'll just, just to finish it off, I'll do, bye, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Nancy Nanny. All right, see you later.