Don't Heft Your Long Hives - Do This Instead!

In this video, I'm going to show you how to heft a long hive. Right, scrap that. You clearly can't heft a long hive. I could probably pick it up, but these hives are so big and so heavy, I'm not going to be able to use my 4-finger technique on them. I think I could barely get them off the ground, they're that heavy, and they might weigh, say, I don't know, 60-70 kilos without the bees in. And then with the bees and the stores, they might weigh 100 kilos. I'm making up those numbers, but in order for me to go and heft them and actually be able to tell what's going on by lifting it up, putting it back down again and saying, oh yeah, they need an extra 1.5 kilos of feed, is nonsense. You just can't do it. And it's a little bit of a frustration really. And that's just the way with long hives. You can't do any sort of hefting. So in this video, I'm going to give you an alternative method and a few little tips and pointers as to what to look for how to set up your hive to make sure they've got enough feed to get them through winter. So first thing I'm going to do, I'm going to open it up, take the insulation off, and I'm going to identify where that cluster is. That's really important here. We need to know where the cluster is. If the cluster's here, in a normal hive, when they go through their stores, they move upwards. It's quite simple. That is the only way bees will ever move in a vertical-based hive. They don't move downwards to get to food because they start at the bottom, eat all of the food that's there, and then they move upwards throughout the winter. And whatever you find in the spring is always bees in the middle, empty underneath, stores above. It's predictable, it works every single time, and it's really, really easy to know what's going on. In a horizontal hive, it's completely different because the bees are always at the top. So instead of having bees here and they need to make a decision, a natural decision I guess, is whether they go down for food, which they never do, or up for food, which they always do. In a horizontal hive, they have to make a decision. Do they go left or do they go right? You've got the bees here. Do they go that way or do they go that way? And this is where it's really easy to get yourself in a little bit of a pickle, because you could have a colony, big colony of bees in your long hive here. Big cluster in the middle. Over that way you've got 20 kilos of stores. Over that way you've got 20 kilos of stores. The bees pick away, they go that way, and they leave behind 20 kilos. And what happens is, as they move all the way to the end like that and they finish the stores, they're not going to be able to get all the way back over there if the temperature doesn't suit them. So in this video, I just want to talk to you a little bit about that, and I'm going to give you a little tip which gives you the ability to look at the direction of where that colony is going. If you know the direction of where they're going, you can look at where the stores are not in the correct place, and on a relatively mild day, you can move things around to make sure that the bees are working with you in the direction to where the stores are. And it's such a simple way of doing it, and this is the reason I leave my monitoring boards in all the way throughout the year, but especially in the winter. It gives you the ability to see where those bees are uncapping those frames of stores, and it gives you a clue as to which direction of travel they're going in. So here is my monitoring board. This came from this side of the colony, and it's set up exactly as the camera would see. I've got the majority of the action over there, this side of the hive, and then this side, not quite as much action. What I need to do next is I need to go in and see where the cluster is. I reckon the cluster is going to be on this side of the long hive As opposed to back towards that way. And if you look at this board here, you can see a fresh break in terms of fresh wax cappings. So I think the cluster is going to be over here moving towards me. That is perfect, and that is where you want them to be, because if you think about it, if I've got the cluster on this side here, so this end of the long hive, and they're moving that way, that's the only direction they can go in. They can't go any further that way because the hive ends. And that means it's really easy for me to just do a quick check, open it up, see where the stores are, realize they're moving that way, and then I'm confident the bees aren't going to starve over winter. Let's get in, let's have a look. It'll make more sense once I get the camera on it. Right, first off, let's just say what an incredible cluster of bees. How good does that look? These are on a national deep over, say, 10 frames, and they're pretty much filling it up. I'm really, really happy with that. Check out these bees. Big strong cluster of bees and they're doing very well indeed. Now look, look at that on the monitoring board. They started off over there and they're clearly moving their way over towards this side here. You can see it, see that fresh line just moving along there. This is where they've worked through all of the stores and this is the direction of travel. So I'm not going to get myself into a position where the bees are going to start moving that way because obviously the hive ends. The only direction they can move is that way. And just looking at this now, I know that all of these frames were filled up. They've used up probably half of their winter stores, and then this half over here, that is still good to go, and I've got the bees clustering up on it. So I can't go in, I can't do a heft, but what I know, this half of the colony over here These stores are either completely used or mostly used. These stores over here on this half, they're still there, and the bees have got a little bit of a buffer because I'm not seeing anything on the monitoring tray. So okay, I can't heft my colony, but what I can do is I can get in and double-check these stores. Not going to do it today because it's a little bit cold. Check that there's enough stores in there, and if there isn't enough stores in there, I know where to I put them over here because that is the direction of travel. Now if you'd set up your colony in the middle like this here, and the bees could go that way and they could also go that way as well, then you're going to get yourself in a little bit of trouble here. And what I would suggest doing is blocking off one direction, putting in one of the dummy boards there with the cluster up solid against it, and forcing the bees to move in one direction And then put the frames at the other end of that cluster. So I hope that made sense. It's a little bit difficult to show you that on camera, but what you need to do is identify the direction of travel and make sure that the stores are in their trajectory, in their path, so they're not going to go the other way and miss them. It's not as straightforward as lifting it up and saying they've got enough weight. You need to make sure they've got enough weight and they're going in the right direction. If you want to know more about my long hive journey, click on this playlist here. I've got about 6 or 7 videos showing how I've moved on with my long hives throughout the season.