Calm Bee Colonies – Proven Methods To Reduce Aggression & Enjoy Beekeeping

In this video, I'm going to show you what to expect of our F1 Buckfast queens. Now, you always have to take what you see on YouTube with a pinch of salt. Not everything stacks up, not everything is what it seems. I've had a lot of comments recently saying your bees are evil, bees from hell, and you know what, there are some colonies in some apiaries that need taking care of. No getting away from that whatsoever. I've got quite a good camera, it makes 9 o'clock at night look like 12 o'clock in the middle of the day. When you go into your colonies and you inspect them at the wrong time of the day, maybe even at the wrong time of the year if you're going in there at the June gap, the bees will seem so much worse than they actually are. This colony here was requeened early on in the year using one of our F1 Buckfast queens. The person who marked it didn't do the best job of marking it, and whenever there's any kind of minor defects, we always take those queens on and we use those ones ourselves, just so the people in the post are getting the very best of what's sent to us. But this is indicative of what you should expect from the F1 Buckfast queens that we sell. Big prolific colonies that are generally quite calm. And I say generally quite calm because it's almost a bit of an oxymoron where you have big, huge prolific colonies. You're not gonna get to a point where they're never flying up in the air. You will see different times of the day, different times of the year, the bees will react very, very differently. But this here is what you can expect from an F1 Buckfast queen. As you see, I've got the wrong color gloves on here today, very dark blue. The bees do not like dark colors, and if I go over the colony like that, very, very little reaction, if not no reaction at all. I've got to hold my hands up as well and take a little bit of ownership for some of the problems that I've been having with temperament. Yes, I should be going in and sorting out colonies where the temperament isn't correct, and I should do that earlier on in the year. But also I need to take a step back and slow down my beekeeping approach, making sure I'm washing my gloves in between each colony so there's no remnant of sting pheromone on there, taking my time, making sure I'm not crushing bees with my hive tool, with my hands when I'm putting boxes back together. I'm happy to own up to some of that stuff and say, you know what, I could definitely improve there. And I think going forward, that's really going to be what I'm targeting is improving my own beekeeping skills and then improving the viewing experience for you. So I'm just doing a clean sweep of this apiary. I've got my rush around videos. over there. I've got my no swarming video over there. I've had a lot of colonies in this apiary actually have been requeened now. And if you cycle back to April, May, beginning of the year, this was a really bad apiary. Like, I did not know what was going on. And it just turns out I've missed a couple of maybe supersieges or missed a couple of swarms, and some of the bees had gone a little bit rogue. Now, I'm not going to go out and tell you where I got those bees from, but all I can say is that the bees in this apiary that you were seeing earlier on this year they were not queens that I am selling. They were not queens I have ever sold. They were somebody else's queens, and they went down to the next generation, and they got violent, violent and aggressive. But they have gone now, so hopefully this apiary— I know I'm closing down this apiary, absolutely gutted, because that is genuinely all the way to the top full of honey, and the same with a lot of other colonies over here. But the reasons for that I've explained in a previous video. But we got the bees to the point in this apiary now where the temperament is Excellent, really, really good, and I'm very, very happy with it. And I'm also doing the right things— cleaning my gloves, slowing things down, doing it at the right time of the day, doing it at the right time of the year. And if you do all of those things, this is what you should be expecting. This was a very small colony early on in the year, as most colonies are. We requeened the queen because she was getting a little bit old. She was a blue-marked queen. We put an F1 Buckfast queen in around back end of April, early May, And now this colony here is on a double brood configuration, 14 by 12 brood box with a national deep underneath, so almost like double brood and a half kind of size. And she's filling it, completely filling it. Very, very prolific bees. They're also on 3 boxes above, 2 national deeps, 1 national shallow acting as supers, and I'm confident that the bees will fill all of those towards the end of the year. We've got about 6 weeks left in this apiary in terms of Real honey production. So I'm really keen to do this video. I've been meaning to do it for a long time, and I wanted to bide my time to make sure that the bees that I'm showing you for the F1 Buckfast are actually the genetics from that queen. They're not being interfered with other bees from other colonies. We're not in the middle of the June gap. We're not doing it at 9 PM at night. I wanted to give you a real honest opinion of what these bees are like, but don't trust me, see for yourself. So another thing that I've just been really, really rubbish at is not using my smoker enough. Smoker is the beekeeper's number one tool, and I've got really slack with it and not used it because I'm running out of time. And you know what, I can deal with the mad aggressive bees because I got my ultra suit on and they don't sting me. But that's really, really bad beekeeping. I should be responsible. I should be managing the bees. They shouldn't be flying up in my face. So I got my smoker, that's going to get lit every single time. I got my soda solution. I'm washing my gloves. I'm not transferring over disease. I'm not transferring over any of that sting pheromone. And look, it's made a massive, massive difference. All of those factors really have improved, like, how nice it is to come down to this apiary and actually do some beekeeping. So I've got my smoker, just a nice little gentle smoke. Just got a bit of straw, a bit of cardboard in there. Bees are not reacting, really nice. And then what I'm doing now, slow, nice slow movements, making sure I'm not crushing those bees. So let's get in and show you what some of these frames are looking like. So this is very indicative of what we're seeing in here. Really good quality brood end to end, lots of pollen, little bit of propolis. They're not the cleanest ones, you know, you do get a little bit of propolis with these Buckfast, but they're very, very prolific. And these bees definitely haven't even reached critical mass yet. They are going to keep on going up because they've got a very late start to the year. I'll pull out some other frames now and show you just how good this brood is. Like, I'm really trying to take my time here, and you see you get like a few bees flying up there. That's just where I nudged them a little bit. That's to be expected. This is a big, big box of bees. Just looking at this colony here, this frame got a lot of eggs on this frame. I won't show you this one, there's not much to see. But hopefully you can see from there the bees aren't flighty. Like, even if I kind of wobble the frame a little bit like that, They're quite happy just to sit on the frame. You've got a couple of bees buzzing around. That will happen with big colonies, but that's definitely not an aggressive trait of these bees. So again, just as I'm moving them, you're seeing you're getting a little bit of bees flying up. That's not too bad. We can deal with that. Get your smoker back out. Gone out a little bit, that one. So just going to get the bees from the air, a little bit of smoke, and that kind of sorts out most of them. Again, hopefully you can see as I'm pulling them out, not getting loads flying up at me. I'm not just waiting for them to go away. They're really nice, calm, gentle bees. They like to stay on the frame. And here we go, another really nice frame of brood. Probably between 14 and 15 frames of brood in this colony, and they're probably peaking. This is about the maximum you're going to get at this time of the year. We're past the solstice now. And these bees have been playing catch-up. That's why they've got such a big brood nest. But all of this brood is going to turn into bees, and I'm going to have a real good amount of bees for the right time of the season at this apiary. So just switching it around a little bit, hopefully you can see the queen. She's down there in that corner. That is our F1 Buckfast queen, and as you can see, she's got a little bit of paint on her wing, but she's still absolutely fine, and she is doing a very, very good job in this colony. So there you go. I just wanted to give you a real snapshot of what these bees can do, what the temperament's like, how prolific they are. And if you're interested in getting our F1 Buckfast queens, you can buy them on our website at blackmountainhoney.co.uk.