In this vlog, beekeeping enthusiast Laurence Edwards provides a live January update on his experimental concrete beehives, which many had predicted would fail. He opens two concrete hives—one empty and one with a single deep Langstroth box—while handling a heavy camera setup. Contrary to expectations, the colony inside the concrete hive is alive, with bees covering multiple frames. Edwards notes some condensation on the hive’s lower edges but observes that the top bars remain dry, indicating effective insulation from perlite mixed into the concrete. He expresses cautious optimism, acknowledging the hive’s extreme weight and the physical strain it may cause during honey extraction, and promises to revisit the colonies in spring. He also invites viewers to submit questions via a link in the description.
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Last year I bought myself two concrete beehives. People said it'll never work. People said it was rubbish. People said the bees will die. It's too cold. It's too dank. It's not good for bees. I've not been in and checked them yet, so this video could go horribly, horribly wrong, and we open it up and it's a big dead colony of bees. And I have to say, I'm not overly confident that there's going to be lots of bees and live bees in there. So I'm going to do this live. We're going to look inside. Going to give you an update on my concrete colonies of beehives in the last week of January. If there's a cluster of bees in there, doesn't mean anything. Doesn't mean they're they've got through winter. I'm just giving you a snapshot to see whether they're dead or whether they're alive. Let's jump straight into it then, take a look, see if there's any bees in there. So these are my concrete beehives. One on the left's not got anything in, and then that small one on the right is just on a single Langstroth deep. I know it looks very shallow. It's got a cool little entrance board in it as well, and as you can see, it's not been touched at all. Even if all the bees are dead in here, I don't care because these are the coolest looking beehives in the world. I want some to go in my garden, and they'd make amazing planters. So this is going to be pretty much impossible. I've got to hold a really heavy camera with a gimbal, which is generally a two-handed job. I try and do it one-handed and open up a concrete beehive lid at the same time. So I'll try my best. Here we go. Let's see if we've still got bees. Right. I think I saw some bees in there. That was almost impossible. Let me put the gimbal down. I'll open it up, take the lid off, and give you a real snapshot inside my concrete beehive. And there we go. They're not dead yet. In fact, they're covering loads of frames. Like, I'm just looking at them coming up now. They're coming up all the way over that side, seams of bees here, and then they're covering all the way over to there. So it's looking pretty good. As I said, I'm not making any judgments whatsoever yet. This could be a failing colony that's going to die, but they've not failed yet. And what's really interesting to see, what people said was going to happen is there was going to be tons of moisture in here. And you can see on the, the lugs where the colony isn't keeping it nice and warm, there's a little bit of condensation, but take a look at the middle. Those top bars are looking very, very dry, which means that they're getting enough insulation on the top of the colony through the perlite mixed into that concrete to actually keep the colony nice and warm in the right areas. So I'm over the moon with this. I'm not saying I told you so. I have to say I was pretty skeptical this would work as well, but they're still here, they're still alive, and hopefully we can get them through the year. So there we go. For all the people that said they were definitely going to die, they're definitely not going to get through winter, you're not completely right just yet. I'll follow this up in April, in May, and we'll see whether they actually manage to get through. There's no getting away from it though. It is a very, very heavy beehive. Not for people who are a bit weak. I'm a little bit weak as well, so it is heavy, and I've still not had a super full of honey out of them. And when that day comes, I'm genuinely worried because I do think I'm going to break my back. But there's bees in there. They're not dead yet. If you want to ask me any questions, there's a link in the description. Send the questions in and I'll answer them in my live streams.
