Laurence Edwards inspects a hive at Thorne Beekeeping without protective gear, finding a small cluster of about six calm frames of bees. The hive sits behind a restaurant and is topped with a copper roof and insulation board. The bees have a 2 kg block of lemongrass and thymol fondant and don't need more feed.
So I'm spending a full day filming at Thorns, and I just thought I'd have to have a quick look inside this beehive. But I have left my bee suit at home, so I'm gonna go into this beehive really, really quickly to check to see if they need any fondant. That's the job that I've been given here. And just to see if there's any bees in there. There's a couple buzzing around at the entrance, couple of dead ones at the entrance as well. But I'm gonna get inside here now and see how many bees are inside. So first thing I have to say is, how cool is this roof? Like, I absolutely love the copper roof on these beehives. It really is a nice feature if you're gonna put it in your garden. So then looking in at the top there, they've got a super on top acting as an eke with a little bit of insulation inside it, and then there's a crown board underneath. So first thing I'm going to do is I'm just going to pop off that insulation board and see if we can see any bees through that crown board hole. So I've just kind of kneeled up here as well. It's like a really awkward position, but what's amazing here is the restaurant where I had lunch and breakfast today, which was delicious, is directly behind me. So people can kind of sit there, have their lunch. Should have probably done this at lunchtime as well, then people could have watched me getting stung. But it is a really, really nice location both for the restaurant and for the bees. So sitting inside there, we've got a full block still of Hive Alive fondant, an absolute full block of it as well. 2 kilogram block. It's the fondant that I like to eat myself. It's really nice. It's got like lemongrass and thymol in it. I don't think you're supposed to eat it, but I do quite enjoy eating that fondant. I'm just going to pull it off now and see if we can see any bees inside. So it goes to show the time of the year, not much activity at all. I'm going to be really quick here. I'm just checking them for weight, just checking to see what the bees are doing. I don't think they're going to need any more fondant, but we'll quickly get that crown board off now and just see how big this cluster is. And we have got inside there a lovely little cluster of bees, probably over 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, maybe 6, 6 and a half frames. Definitely what you would expect at this point in the year. You can see the bees clustering up in between those frames there. I've got one buzzing up a little bit by my face. But overall they are just very chilled out bees and they want me to put their roof back on. I'm going to close these guys up now though, because there's no need for me to be in them today. I just wanted to kind of pop in and say hello. Put that crown board back on, put the fondant back on. They'll use that for when it gets kind of a little bit warmer, but there's plenty of stores in there. Super goes back on there as well. Really good makeshift eke and then a nice piece of insulation. I think it's that way around. Keep the bees nice and warm. Insulation on top. And then that beautiful copper roof goes on to finish it off. So no stings in the face. The bees were very well behaved. These are the bees outside the restaurant at Thorn Beekeeping Store. I've had a really, really good day filming here.
