In this episode of the No Nonsense Beekeeping series, Laurence Edwards showcases the strongest and most productive colony from his River Apiary in North Wales, explaining why this apiary consistently delivers bumper honey crops. He begins by describing the strategic placement of the apiary to exploit Himalayan balsam and a surrounding deciduous forest that provides abundant spring (horse chestnut, sycamore, wild garlic, dandelion, bluebells) and summer (lime) forage, with a late‑summer flow from Himalayan balsam. Edwards uses a practical barometer—whether he can hide behind the colony—to illustrate its density and calm temperament. He notes that this hive has not received any special treatment (no splits, no extra nucs, no brood removal) yet the queen has expanded the brood nest rapidly, suggesting a robust genetics and management approach. He conducts a detailed hive inspection, moving from the top box downwards, describing the number and type of supers (national shallow, national deep), the extent of capped honey on each frame, and estimating the weight of the top box at around 20 lb. He points out that every frame in the top two boxes is fully capped, while the lower boxes show slightly less but still substantial stores, and one extra super added late in the season remains largely empty. The overall yield per hive is estimated at 60‑80 lb, which he frames as an excellent average for the North Wales climate, contrasting it with higher yields on the south coast of England. Edwards then focuses on the queen and brood pattern, highlighting immaculate, densely packed brood frames and a queen that lays continuously without skipping cells. He observes a natural contraction of the brood nest in mid‑August, which he plans to reverse later with a feeding regime of 1:1 then 2:1 sugar syrup, followed by varroa treatment and winter preparation. He emphasizes that the large numbers of bees should not be mistaken for aggression; the colony remains calm when he moves slowly. The video concludes with a sponsorship acknowledgment (Kimberley Clark Coleshill Mill – Wipool brand), a reminder to subscribe, and a preview of future videos covering late‑season feeding and winterizing.
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In today's video, I'm going to show you the best performing colony of the season. Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping. Video you've all been waiting for, right? Today I'm going to show you my biggest, strongest, and most productive colony of the whole season. And surprise, surprise, it is at the River Apiary. This apiary just continues to surprise me. I said it before, we targeted the Himalayan balsam here. We brought the bees here because we thought we can get them nice and strong going into winter, we can get some nice Himalayan balsam honey. And they gave me the biggest spring crop, they've given me the biggest summer crop, and they're probably going to give me the biggest late summer crop as well. So that apiary is just fantastic. And it's not the Himalayan balsam that's yielding down here, although I do get something from the Himalayan balsam. And you can see the ghost bees coming in, big stripe down their back. We covered it on separate videos. But in this apiary, it is the mature trees that give you the yield. Like, I just look around me, it's just forest as far as the eye can see. Deciduous woodland with amazing trees, perfect for really bumper yields. So in the spring, you've got horse chestnut, you've got sycamore, obviously you've got the wild garlic, the dandelions, the bluebells, everything that helps it along the way as well. And then in the summer, there is just so much lime around here as well. Deciduous lime trees, and the weather's been good this year to give us a really good yield on the lime. So I'll get my bee suit on and I'll show you my best performing colony of the year. Right, first things first, you know a colony is good if you can hide behind it. That's the barometer here. So if you can stand behind a colony and hide, it's definitely performed well over the season. If you can see over the top, then it's a failure. But in all honesty though, I'm a little bit crammed. These 3 hives here, These are the best three performing hives, and they just continue to jam pack the honey in. Really is quite remarkable. And what's even more remarkable about these colonies as well is that I've not nursed them in any way. I've not said right, I'm not going to take splits out of them. I've not done anything different to any of my other colonies in this apiary here. I've taken nuke after nuke. I've shed brood. I've stolen resource, and whatever I throw at this queen in this particular colony. She just expands that brood nest within a matter of weeks, and then they're back on track again. So I think I could have got more from this colony if I hadn't taken the nucs out, but obviously then I'm increasing the chance of the colony swarming as well. Regardless, I am very happy with this colony. So what I'm going to do in this video, I'll show you all of the different boxes, pull out a couple of frames. Got 1, 2, 3, 4 national shallows, 1 national deep, all acting as supers, and then we've got a big strong brood box as well. I'll show you inside there. I'll show you some of the patterns on the frames from the brood as well. Take a picture of that queen and just give you an overview of how big and how strong this colony is getting into the middle of August now. So let's get straight in, starting with the top. I'll work my way down. Let's see what the bees have produced in 2021. So I just rearranged things so I can stand on top. The first thing to say is when you have like a skyscraper of bees like this, you take the top box off, and everything's busy at the top, you know it's going to be jam-packed full of bees. So really good to see from the top to the bottom we are full of bees. That is the key to getting big bumper honey crops, big bumper colonies of bees. I know that sounds a little bit stupid and a little bit silly because obviously the more bees you have, the more honey you're going to collect, but I see loads of colonies and I see it from people on the internet and the colonies just aren't that big. And there's nothing wrong with colonies that aren't that big, Different breeds, different species of bee will give you different crops of honey and have different temperament, different abilities to overwinter, different abilities to combat disease. The bees that I keep though, they are big, big colonies of bees, and it's not for everyone. Not everyone wants to deal with big stacks of honey like this every year. They don't want to have to deal with all of the bees flying up. You see some of my inspections and there's just a lot of bees, and for some people, I do respect and appreciate that is not for everyone. However, they produce crazy crops of honey. So in North Wales, this is very, very good. And like I said before, this is a bumper crop of honey for us. So this is what the top of the top box looks like, and as I said, it's full to the brim with bees. And what's really nice as well is the fact that they're really calm. And this isn't the fact that it's a particularly calm colony, it's because they're busy and they're on a flow and Every single bee just has so much purpose, and at this time of the year, all they care about is getting as much honey as they possibly can. So I'll pull out a couple of frames and I'll show you just how well they've capped over the frames here and how much stores we're looking at. And there you go, look at that first box, and all of that honey is capped. They have not missed a cell on that frame there. I've broken the seal at the bottom, that's the open honey that you can see, But look at these frames. These are perfect frames of honey. Every single cell capped. And then look even further down into the hive. I've not picked out the best ones. Every single frame in this top box is completely capped. Got to be weighing at least 20 pounds, this top box. So it's always a good start when the top box is looking like that. I'm expecting every single box pretty much to be like that. I do move things around, so you might find one box is not quite as advanced as this one. Hopefully though, as we move through, they won't have gone backwards in the last couple of weeks and we will still see tons and tons of honey. Just seriously, that, that is the heaviest you can get a super like that. Every single frame completely capped off. That is a super, super heavy box. Right, next box down then. And as you can see, I've broken the seal a little bit on there, so the bees will have to clean all of that up. Let's get a couple of frames out from here and see what the Second box from the top is looking like in terms of honey stores. And no surprise at all, just as good as the ones above. You've got a tiny little ring around the edge of this one where they've not completely gone up to the edges, but yeah, we can definitely live with that. Lots and lots of honey in this box. Love the way they're capping everything over, not leaving anything to chance. Really good, strong colony of bees and Really heavy boxes of honey. So the next box down, this was the box that I put on as a little bit of a gamble last week, and they have not done anything to it whatsoever. So I'm just going to completely exclude that box, not even going to bother talking about it because there's nothing in it. So then we move on to the National Deep, that's next one down, and I can already see, you start to look down some of the cracks there, I'm thinking, yep, we are in business again. So I'll pull out a couple of frames from the National Deep and show you how much honey's in Those as well. So been through all of the frames on this box here and they are all pretty much like this. None of them are 100% capped, but they are pretty much 100% full. This one here, probably 70 or 80% capped. And then over in that corner there, we've got some fresh nectar coming in. So it goes to show you're still getting the flows mid-August here. I'd be very, very surprised if that wasn't Himalayan balsam in there. Nice light honey, plenty of ghost bees coming in here. But when you get national deeps looking like this after you've already pulled off 2 big supers, you've got to be really happy indeed. And then we're down to the final box, and it doesn't even look like there's that many bees in there. They've almost given up hope on this box because they've just capped everything over. You can see, you look down in the cracks, every single frame in here is completely capped. That's what we want to see. We'll pull out a couple of frames, show you the honey. And there we go, look at those 2 beautiful frames of honey. Just doesn't get much better than that. Put a lot of effort in on the bees and they repay us with such beautiful honey year in, year out. But this apiary in particular, they have gone for it this year and they have produced a bumper crop of honey. So I haven't said it yet in this video, this colony here is sponsored by Kimberley Clark Coleshill Mill representing their Wipool brand. So I thought I better get that one in. Do like the hive adoption schemes. Also, what I will say about this colony, and I know I've marketed this video as the, the biggest yield of the year, but I'll have to say there's very, very little between them. Like this one here, done a Demaray on it, it's full from about there down with honey. This one, very, very similar to this one, just full. Every single box is full barring maybe one that I've put on extra. So the one next to it here, that super there, not got a huge amount in, but it's got 2 national deeps full. And one national shallow full of honey. We're talking around maybe 60, 70, 80 pounds, I would say, is going to be an average yield in this apiary here. And I know that doesn't sound like a lot of honey, and it's actually not that much honey. I know people, south coast of England, they're going to be pulling in 200 pounds of honey per hive. We're in North Wales though, we have a very different climate. The season starts late, it finishes early, we get a lot of rain. So to get, say, 70-pound average is a really good average crop for me. I'm really happy with that. If I can get that across every single hive in this apiary and every single hive across all of my production apiaries, I'll be really happy indeed. Right, let's continue with the video then. I'm going to take off this final super. Let's take a look at the queen that's produced all of this honey, check out some of her frames of brood as well. So I'm back down on the floor now, no longer need my stepladder to get to the top of this hive. This is what the brood box is looking like. Let's take a look inside, see if we can find that queen. Right, before we find the queen, maybe let's take a look at some of her brood, because look at that frame of brood. It is just magnificent, end to end. That is what we like to see our queens laying. Don't even go like to round the corners off, they just go straight into the corners. I've said it before, this is how you get good yields of honey, is by having colonies that grow big and lay really nice frames of Just going to turn it around as well because I think it's worth looking at that other side as well. Not just one side, not just a fluke. She has laid that front to back, left to right. What an amazing frame of brood that is. Here's another frame of brood. Just check it out. This queen does not skip a beat. Every single cell is filled up, very few empty ones. This is a really good colony, really good queen. Just check out that brood pattern. So see if you can see the queen. I'll zoom in on her. She is doing the business for us. People get annoyed with the adverts, so I'm not going to say anything. I'll let the queen speak for herself. She's happily laying away though. She's produced all of those bees and all of the honey. She really is a bit of a superstar. So that's it for the video. I'm going to put them back together again now, but a couple of things to notice, I'd say, with this colony. One is the temperament of the bees, and I know, look at them, you think, oh, this is aggressive behavior. This is just bees, and this is just a lot of bees all wondering what's going on. Go back to the beginning of this video when I took the top box off, not a single bee flew up. You work down to the brood nest and then you're just going to get this, but don't mistake This kind of behavior for aggressive behavior. This is just me moving around in front of a very, very busy box of bees. If I was to stand here completely still, they'd just leave me alone. But the other thing to note about this colony as well is that it's mid-August now and there's a real noticeable contraction in the brood nest. It's coming down at a rate of knots. Middle of July and there were over 10 frames of brood every single one. It's probably come down to around 5 or 6 frames of Brood now. We're going to cover this in a later video though, because what I like to do come the end of August, I take my honey crop off and then I give them enough space, and then I start to feed them one round of 1:1 sugar syrup, get that colony and the brood nest expanding again, getting it nice and strong going into winter. And then I fill it with loads of 2:1 sugar syrup, and then I've got a big heavy colony going into winter, but I've got a big strong colony of bees going into it as Well, we'll cover all of that on later videos, so don't worry about that. If you enjoy the content though, please do hit our subscribe button. But that's it for the video. Like I said, all of the hives in this apiary have done very, very well. They're actually very similar to this in terms of yield. We're talking about 3 or 4 boxes of honey, and there's a mixture of national deeps and national shallows. I'm going to give it another couple of weeks though, because I think that we're still getting a little bit of a late flow. flow here from the Himalayan balsam. I'm going to take it as long as I possibly can, and then come the first week of September, I'm going to whip it all off, get the feeders out, get the varroa treatments on, get myself ready for winter. But I hope you enjoyed the video. Always nice to see the production of honey come the end of the season. I hope you enjoyed it. 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.
