BS HONEY BEES POLY HIVE REVIEW - UK EXCLUSIVE

Hi, I'm Lawrence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping and another UK exclusive polyhive review. So in this video, I'm going to review the brand new BS Honeybees 11-frame polyhive. I am so excited about this hive. I've been waiting for ages to get my hands on this. First thing to say is massive, massive thank you to Dan and Tristan down at BS Honeybees Not only have they sent me this hive free of charge to review and to show you guys, they have also sent me the very, very first poly hive that's come out of the press. So this not only is the first poly hive that's come out, this is actually the prototype that they've been testing, and I'm lucky enough to get the first bite of the cherry on this one to give it a review, show you just how good it is. So as per all of our other poly hive reviews, we're going to do the same format. We're going to review the roof, the crown board, the. The feeder, the super, the brood box, the floor, the mesh, the tray, the entrances, the frame spacing, and the runners. We're going to cover every single little detail of this hive, top to bottom, give you a real understanding of all of the brand new features that they've managed to cram into this hive. Now, I'm sure Dan and Tristan won't mind me saying this, this hive has taken a good, good while to get to market, and the reason that it's taken so long to get to market There's been a few delays along the way, but it's because these guys are real true perfectionists in terms of the details, the features, and the functionality that they wanted to put into this polyhive. They weren't happy to go with the first iteration, the second iteration. There's been multiple iterations of this hive where it's come back, they're changing things, they're tweaking it. These guys are experienced bee farmers managing hundreds of colonies. They know what they're doing when it comes to bees, and they definitely know what they're doing when it comes to designing polyhives. You can see it in the BS Honeybees 2-in-1 nuc. It was such a good design. As soon as it came onto the market, it was by far and away my favorite poly nuc that was available. And it's by understanding those features and the functionality they wanted to put into that poly nuc that meant that they were right up there in terms of a market-leading product. Now I'll just get this out of the way. This video, I'm not going to compare this to any other poly hives on the market. This is just going to focus on the features of this poly hive, and I'm going to talk to you about why I think it's a really, really good poly hive. Later on in the year, we'll do some comparison videos. We'll compare it against the other ones, but this is a UK exclusive. We're just going to focus on how good the BS poly hive is and talk to you about all of its different features. Let's get on with the review then. So as I've mentioned, this is the prototype hive. This has been going back and forth between the guys down at BS Honeybees, back to the poly manufacturer, so it's a little bit grubby. So So when you get your one, if you're going to buy one of these hives, obviously it'll be brand new, nice and white and clean. And it brings me on to my first point in the review really, is that they're not going to offer this as a painted option at this moment in time. It's going to come unpainted. And as you know, that is always my preference. Means you can paint it up any color scheme that you want. It helps keep the cost down a little bit as well. You get a little information leaflet with it, tells you which paint to use. I would recommend an exterior-grade masonry paint. Or you can use an exterior-grade gloss as well. You can use a water-based gloss or an oil-based gloss. But if you're going to use oil-based, just do a little test patch to make sure you're not going to melt it. Some of the oil-based glosses can melt. A lot of them are fine. I like to use a bit of spray paint. It's nice and quick and you can do some really cool designs on it. So similar poly density to the BS Honeybees 2-in-1 Nuc. This is 120 grams per liter density. So really nice dense polystyrene, not going to deform when you touch it. You can feel it's really nice and solid. Right, so straight away onto the roof then, and you lift the roof up and it's really nice and weighty. You can feel there's a lot of polystyrene in here. Obviously you've got that extra density, 120 grams per liter, but there's a lot of density in it, a lot of strength. It's not going to deform. It's telescopic, which I know is an American term, means that it comes down over the hive like that, going to protect you from any sort of water ingress whatsoever. Then inside you've got a lip It's not the deepest of lips, and we'll cover that a little bit later in the video, but you could definitely get a thin roll of fondant in there. So it's about 12mm deep, so if you wanted to feed fondant directly onto the frames, if you rolled it out nice and thin, you could definitely do that. But don't read too much into that yet, you'll see why when we get further down the hive. Nice branding in the middle there, BS Honeybees got their nice stamp on the middle, and then in terms of the top, it's smooth. There's no neat features on the top. It's just a bog-standard roof, which is what I like. No hive straps, nothing like that. Nice straight roof, good density of material, good thickness of material. A really, really good quality roof. So then we move on to the feeder, and it's probably a good time to say I'm not aware of how they're going to sell this hive. So I don't know if it's coming with 1 super, 2 supers, 3 supers, crown boards, feeder, queen excluder floor. I'm not sure. All I know is what I've got is what I've got. And I'm just reviewing it piece by piece. So I'm sure the guys down at BS Honeybees, they're going to release this. This is imminent, this poly hive. So this is coming out very, very soon. They're going to release the pricing and they're going to release the configuration in which they're going to sell the hive as well. So next one down for me is the poly feeder, and this is a really, really good poly feeder. So it's a poly Ashforth feeder, but it's got 2 slots, so it's effectively a dual Poly Ashforth feeder. So like my other feeders I've got, you have your single slot on one side. Here you have 2 sides, and you'll see why they've got the 2-sided slot later on. But what it means is you've effectively got double the space for feeding, and what that does is it allows the bees to really come up there quick and absolutely destroy whatever syrup you put in here. The other thing that's really good with this is that if you want to invert it, it's easy to invert. It works perfectly well, and you don't have the, the central slot in the middle like you would a Miller feeder. Miller feeders work fine, but it is a little bit annoying if you, if you want to invert the feeder to feed fondant. I find an Ashforth feeder, or in this case a dual Ashforth feeder, much, much easier for my own needs. Now, one thing that you'll definitely notice straight away is we've got plastic mating faces, and I'm a massive fan of plastic mating faces. It just protects the poly. So when you're getting your hive tool and you're weaseling it in, trying to chisel them apart, having that protection in the form of an embedded plastic mating face Just gives you that additional life on your product. I've got other hives here, and I know I said I'm not going to compare it to other hives, but they don't have the plastic mating faces, and you do get hive tool damage over time. And it's nothing that can't be remedied. It makes it look a little bit unsightly though. It's just nicer to have a nice neat solution— plastic mating faces embedded into the design. Obviously you've got your 2 Perspex windows like that. They just pop out. And then obviously when you come to use this, you need to give it a really good coat of paint on the inside, probably 2 or 3 coats. Again, exterior-grade masonry paint works really good on the middle. I personally use an oil-based gloss in my feeders. I find that works really, really well, and I find personally you get a little bit less mold that way. Right, so onto the underside of the feeder, and you'll be very, very pleased to hear that they've got the bee space integrated all the way around. So you see you've got your plastic mating faces here, you've got a central slot in the middle there. We'll come to that later on in the video, so don't go anywhere. You've got your entrances either side, so 4 single entrances, and then you've got your bee space there. So when you place that on top of this hive, which is a bottom bee space hive, you maintain your bee space underneath, which is really important. It effectively renders a feeder useless if they don't put that space in. So really nice to see that they've integrated that into the feeder. As far as I'm concerned, market-leading feeder. You can't get any better than that. I know a feeder is a very basic thing to design, But I think they've done a really, really good job on here. The fact that it's dual, I like that, means you can feed very, very quickly and then come back and top up again. They're going to really quickly draw that feed down. And again, this has got a little bit of a party trick, this hive. You can probably guess what it is already, but we'll save it for when we get a little bit lower down. Right, we'll move on to the crown board then. And this is a very, very interesting crown board and a very interesting addition to a poly hive. So most other poly hives on the market, you get a thin piece of plastic and they just chuck it on. And I'm not naming any names, but I'm not a fan of that plastic sheet, especially on a bottom bee space hive. I don't think it works very well and it's certainly not easy in terms of managing your bees. So I'm a bee farmer. Dan and Tristan down at BS Honeybees, they're bee farmers. And what we look for when we're going out and we're managing numerous colonies, like I've been out today, I've gone and inspected about 120 colonies, just a quick break of the seal to see what's going on inside. And then I've had to put either the feeder, upturned feeder, or crown board back on. It's those little things that, that lead you to a design like this. So they've done away with a plastic sheet, and they're saying we're not putting plastic sheets on our bottom bee space hive. This one, you get an integrated poly crown board. And I'm a massive fan of poly crown boards because it gives you the ability to really regulate that temperature over winter. You've got all of the polystyrene on top of the hive, It sits in the place where you want your insulation. So you don't want it cracked like that, letting air flow through. If you're going to have ventilation at the bottom, you want the top to be as well insulated as possible with no cracks whatsoever. That means if you do get condensation in your hive, you're going to get it on the walls. Condensation on the walls just isn't an issue in polyhives. Condensation on the roof or at the top of the hive going down over the cluster is effectively one of the biggest killers I think you'd get in polyhives. So to have this really solid poly crown board sitting on top of this hive is, is definitely the way forward. And then you've got a poly feeder sitting on top of that as well. So as we said before, very, very similar setup to the feeder here. So you've got your plastic mating faces all the way around like that, nice and strong. You've got this integrated piece in the middle there, talk about that in a bit. You've got your top bee space, so on top of frames like that, when you put the crown board on, you've got A space in order for the bees to move around on top of the frames. That's integrated into your crown board. You've got really, really nice deep poly, must be about 15 to 18mm deep, really solid, strong poly, lots of insulation on the top. You've got 2 holes, and 2 holes really is a good move. You'll see it's got a party trick, but 2 holes is good because it means you can move the, the feeder around or the crown board around in order to find where that cluster is, and then obviously you can just pop your fondant directly on top there. Now remember I said about the roof maybe not having quite as deep a rebate as I'd want in order to feed fondant directly on the frames? You've got the crown board. So if you wanna feed a big massive slab of fondant directly over the top of a brood box, you can flip that round, do it directly on the frames. You've got an integrated eke in the crown board. And then also you can switch it round that way, If you're the kind of person that wants to feed fondant above the crown board, appreciate some people do, then you can feed it this way round as well. Also, that integrated space there is perfect for any treatments that you're doing. So if you're using an Apiguard treatment, any other varroa treatment that requires an eke, you've got that in here. This is effectively what I use in terms of my multipurpose crown boards, but way, way better than those because this is made of poly and it comes with a hive. So again, in terms of where I'm going to rank this, this is right at the very top of the UK market. This really is such a good crown board. I can't wait to get bees in here. Everything I've seen so far, really, really excited and really like the features and the way that Dan and Tristan have put the thought in and made this a really top quality product. Right, then we move on to the super. And as you can see, I've just gone around and gathered some battered frames. Save me going into my, my superstore over there. So excuse the frames that are in it, but this Super here takes 11 frames. So nice to see they get a full 11 frames. Really drives me mad when you get 10 DN4 frames or SN4 frames and then only space for an SN1 or a DM1, because it's not really usable. So you get the full 11 frames in this Super. It's a bottom B-space design, so everything sits nice and flush. It is exactly the same external dimensions as a wooden National, and I know that is so important to some people. They want a poly hive that's fully, fully compatible. They want everything to work. They want the dimensions to be the same. They want to be able to chop and change it as you wish. And with this hive, you really, really can do that. So talk a little bit more about the super, and I'll pop a wooden national on just to see how they work together. So as with all the rest of the hive, you get plastic mating faces, and these are embedded really nice strong plastic mating faces. Bottom bee space hive. You have handhelds on all 4 sides. You know, that's something I always look for, and it seems to be a common theme amongst other manufacturers. You get 2 really nice deep ones, and then you get 2 that are just a little bit shallower, but no problem whatsoever. I would comfortably lift that up from any which way, any way at all, and you can get a really good firm handheld on it. So nice to see that you get the 4 handhelds. So there's something else that's really nice to feel is when you pick this up. This is solid. Like, you pick up some poly hive supers and they're quite light. They've managed to keep so much polystyrene in here, and because you get that extra density as well, it feels solid. The walls are solid on all 4 directions. The reason I buy poly hives is for the thermal efficiency, and you can see they've not scrimped. They've not said we're going to use less material and try and come up with a cheaper product. They've kind of stuck to their guns and gone with a nice heavy solid product. So really good to see. Another really nice feature in here is the fact that you get an integrated embedded metal runner. Now I've not seen this on any poly hive where it's been actually integrated like that. There's probably one out there, so if you see one, stick a comment up and prove me wrong, but this is a first for me. I've not seen that before. So you get the durability of a metal runner embedded into a poly hive, so you're getting all of the good insulation, and then you've got the plastic mating faces to make sure that it's durable with your hive tool as well. So you're really getting the best of all worlds really with this design, combining those materials to give you the most effective polyhive by using those different properties to the best of their ability. Now again, this is like the worst kept secret in the world in terms of this video. You can see a nice little slit in here and we'll come on to that a little bit later in the video. Now you know me, if you watch my polyhive videos, there's certain things that I always look for in terms of my polyhives and one of them is space above the floor. Frame lugs. These guys are bee farmers, they understand this, they've worked with hives that don't have this space above the frame lugs. For anyone, for someone who's got 1 or 2 hives in their garden to people who are running kind of 1,000-hive operations, really happy to announce that you've got the spacing here, so you're not going to have the issue when you go to lift anything up of pulling the frames up from the boxes underneath. So again, like, we're working from top to bottom here, and every single feature that I talk about Every single box or component that I pick up, I'm thinking they've done a fantastic job here. There's nothing that I'd look to say, oh, they could have done that, this would have made it better. They're just coming out component after component and just getting it spot on. Right, we'll move on then. I didn't get a queen excluder with this. I do not know if it's coming with a queen excluder, and if it does come with one, I don't know which queen excluder it's coming with. I've just gone and pulled a standard 460mm by 460mm, so a standard national queen excluder. And put that on the top like that, and it fits perfectly. Right, onto the Brood Box then. Really nice design, very similar to the Super. So you've got your 11 frames all the way along, black plastic mating faces all the way round. You've got your embedded metal runners. It sits on a bottom bee space. You've got handhelds on all 4 sides, 2 deep on that side, and then 2 ever so slightly shallower on that side, but good work all the way round. You've got your spacing above the frames below, so the frame lugs below, Means that if you're gonna go with a double brood configuration, they're not sticking together. You've got your branding on all 4 sides, and then it's got a party trick. So BS Honeybees, you can probably guess what their party trick's gonna be. It's a really bad secret that I've kept throughout this video, but it's a really, really good trick. I'm so, so excited about this poly hive. So let's assume, and I'll get onto the floor in a bit 'cause the floor does work with this and you need to understand it a bit. Say you've got a box full of bees, so you've got 11 frames of bees in your brood box, and you're sitting that on your floor like that. Now, the eagle-eyed amongst you would have probably noticed something with this, is that the entrance to the hive doesn't go all the way along. And the reason that the entrance to the hive doesn't go all the way along is because you have an entrance on both sides. So you have an entrance on that side and you have an entrance on this side here, so they can fly out there and they can fly out the back. And if you want to use this and run this as a single colony, obviously you can just close one of them up, have them coming from the front. Either way it suits. So let's imagine you've got this colony here absolutely full to the brim, 11 frames of bees and brood. You've got your queen in one side there as well. The colony needs to be split or you want to do something with it. If you take out the 11th frame, you get an aluminium Dibond divider, and this is not only A polyhive. This is a 2-in-1 polyhive. So you know the guys, BS Honeybees, they are renowned for their 2-in-1 polynuc. They have now brought to the market the very first 2-in-1 polyhive. And obviously the trick, very, very simple. You take out that middle frame and the divider just slides right in. And you would manage this exactly the same as you would with your, your 2-in-1 polynuc. So you'd identify where your queen was. Run the queen over there. This side here, they start drawing out queen cells, and then all you've got to do, rip out those queen cells, add another queen in, or let the best queen cell go, and then they can remate from here. You can do your splits in the polyhive. This is such a versatile polyhive, it really, really is, and hats off to the guys down at BS Honeybees. They've come up with this, there's nothing else like it on the market, and I just think they've put so much effort into the thought, Of the details and the features and the functionality that I just know they're going to sell so many of these hives. Really, really like the design. I'm curious like you, and you're probably looking at that and thinking, that's not really going to work because there's not going to be a seal. What are you going to put on top? Is there going to be a clear board that goes over the top of it? If you just rewind a little bit and you remember these central divisions that they put on the crown board, that they put on the feeder, when you put this on here, It gives you the ability to seal those 2 colonies and make them completely separate. And then all I would do is if I was kind of managing this and had 2 separate colonies in there, I just move that over to there, maybe pop something on it just so it's not going to fall off, and then I can manage this colony here, do whatever I need to do, do my inspections. And then vice versa, move that one over, pop something in so it's not going to go, do my inspection over here. And this is why this hive's taken so long to get to the market yet, because these This is a difficult, complex design, and any little thing that goes wrong with this and it renders the hive a bit rubbish. And they've just taken their time over it and they've made sure that every single little detail is actually going to work. So I'm so excited to get some bees into here, do some splits, do some 2-in-1 videos. We'll do a good few videos on this hive later on in the year, show you how it all works. So that's it for the Brood Box. I know we said it had a bit of a party trick, and I'm sure you guessed it all at the beginning of the video, But I think what a great party trick. Definitely nothing else like that on the polyhive market in the UK anyway. Gives you lots of flexibility and lots of versatility into the polyhive. Right, so we move on to the floor then, and as you can see, you've got your varroa mesh split into 2. You've got your groove down the middle, that's where the divider slot sits in to give you that seal to keep the colonies separate if you want them. You've got an entrance at the front, an entrance at the back, Nice big solid poly mating faces. You've got an aluminium Dibond tray, really, really nice fit. Just about enough space to get that out with the detritus on. That's something I always look for. Just about got enough space to get that out so you can actually monitor what's on there nice and easily. 4 evenly spaced feet sitting at the bottom, and then a really nice clever design of the actual entrance reducer. So you can have it fully open like that, And obviously you can have the front and the back one open at the same time, and then it closes up directly like that if you want to have it on mouse guard mode. And then these come straight out, and then you can close it up fully like that with ventilation still built in if you want to move your colonies around. These are stuck on the front of the floor, which means that you can do everything with the box in place. You don't need to take the box off to start messing around. And then if you want to just open it up to one or two bee spaces, you can do that as well. So really, really good entrance reducer. Lots of thought gone into it. Gives you great flexibility in terms of all of those different features that I've just mentioned there. Final thing I want to talk about in this review, we've been through all of the features now, is the compatibility with the Wooden National. And I know that is really, really important to some people, and it's important to me as well. And the exterior dimensions are exactly the same. So this is a bit of a battered old Wooden National. It fits perfectly on the top. B spaces are correct, so bottom B space, bottom B space. The exterior dimensions are exactly the same as well. So if you're looking for a hive that is perfectly compatible with a UK national and you want to go for a poly hive, you've got a hive here that's perfectly compatible. So there you go. That's the review of the BS Honeybees two-in-one poly hive. Now I think we're a little bit spoiled in the UK having such. Good quality polyhives coming out onto the market really does make it difficult for people in terms of a decision for which polyhive you're going to buy. So stay tuned to this channel, hit that subscribe button. We are going to put this hive through its paces this year. We're going to do comparisons with other polyhives that are on the market. We're going to tell you what our favorite one is. But in terms of this video review, there is nothing, and I literally mean absolutely nothing, that I would say I could improve polyhive. The guys are bee farmers, they've been through it all, they understand what they need, they've taken all of that knowledge, they've consulted with the bee farming community, and they have come up with definitely a market-leading polyhive. We've spoken about the roof, the feeder, the crown board, the super, the brood box, the spacing, the divider, the floor, the insert tray, and there is just nothing that I don't like. And if you watch my channel, you you know that I will pick up things and say, "Oh, I don't like that," or "I wish they'd done this a different way." There's nothing. It's literally a perfect hive. Now, is it my favorite hive? You'll have to wait until we find out on a separate video. I'll compare it against some of the competition. But without a doubt, it is at the very, very top end of the polyhive market in the UK. Without a shadow of a doubt, I'm going to buy some of these. I'm going to run this one as well, the first UK prototype on the market, and you'll see plenty of these videos throughout the year. So thanks again to Dan and Tristan down at BS Honeybees. A, for creating such a fantastic hive, absolutely love it. B, giving me the opportunity to give my subscribers and my viewers another UK-exclusive polyhive review. And also just for listening to all of the feedback, constructive feedback from people who keep beehives in their garden, to intermediate beekeepers, to full-scale commercial bee farmers. They take on board that feedback and they really do make their products very good. So they come up with innovative products, they tweak them, they make them better, and they're just kind of on that constant iterative road to improving everything they do. So if you're in the market for a polyhive, without a shadow of a doubt, I can highly recommend this product. There's nothing not to like about it. It's coming to the UK market very, very soon. check out the guy's website. I'll stick it up at the bottom there. I'll put on some links to the product as well and the links to the website just so you can go and see what they're all about. So I hope you've enjoyed the video. As always, please hit the subscribe button, please hit the bell so you're notified of every video, and I'll see you next time. Thanks, Laurence.