Ep 19 - My First Nucleus - Heather Honey

We're on to episode 19 of the My First Nuclear series. Another week at the heather, let's see how much honey they've produced. Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping, episode 19 of the My First Nuclear series. We've had another week at the heather, the weather's not been that good, we struggled to get above 20°C, it's It's been a little bit drizzly, but there's definitely been spells when the bees would have been out there. The heather is looking great, it really does look nice, and this year we just haven't had any good weather at all. I was looking at my calendar as well, and last year I had taken my crop off already, and it was an okay crop, but the last 2 weeks in August last year were a complete and utter washout. The upcoming week is looking really, really good. It's around 21, 22, 23 degrees, Very, very still as well. Only one or two mile an hour winds forecast, if you can believe it. Last video, it was blowing a gale up here. The bees do not like going out and flying, and the heather doesn't yield when it's really blowy like that. This week, not been quite as bad. It's been a lot more still. Not been quite that warm though, and still been a little bit drizzly. But next week, I am banking is going to be the big yielding week up here, and if it isn't, then it's a complete washout for the whole heather season. But what I have learned coming to the heather is that it really does surprise you. The bees do not need 4 weeks to collect a good heather crop. They can collect a good heather crop over a weekend. It is amazing when they get the conditions right. If you've got the bees there, they'll pack away supers of honey in a weekend. It really is quite amazing. So I always hold a little bit of hope until I get to the very last week, first week of September, and then if there's nothing in the boxes, they're definitely not going to do much September. So I'll get my bee suit on, I'll get inside the colonies, and I'll see what they're looking like. So it's always a good sign when it's half 6 in the evening— you can see how low that sun is there— that the bees are still out flying. This definitely isn't the biggest and strongest colony I've got up here. I do recommend if you're getting your bees ready for the heather, they should be stronger than this. But it'd be interesting to see how much they foraged. They're definitely on it, like the smell throughout the air is just heather central today at the apiary. And what's What's so encouraging is I've got a week of just glorious weather ahead. 21, 22, 23 degrees, no wind, really, really nice heather weather, and the plants look in prime condition. So if we can eke one good week of weather, maybe we're going to have to put another box on this one. We will see. Let's get inside though, see what they've done into that top super. So that is very encouraging indeed. If you can remember what this was like last week, we were covering maybe 4 or 5 frames, they are covering about 8 or 9 frames now. Apart from these 2 frames down here that are pretty much empty, they are really, really working that well. You have a little creep down inside, you can see little tinges of white wax as well. That is always a good sign. Let's pull out a couple of frames, see what we've got. Now the bees are in such a good mood today. You know they're on a flow. All they care about is getting that heather honey. And look what we have here, 2 nearly capped frames. And I say nearly capped as in they're starting to cap them off now. These are full to the brim with heather honey. They're moving on to capping. The smell is just like nothing you've ever smelled before. I love coming and looking at the colonies up at the heather. They're just so well behaved, especially when that flow's on. You can see if you look at some of the bees, look at the dances that they're doing. So many bees coming back telling them where that honey is. It's over there just to the right, but look at the amount of bees that are doing the dance. That's always a really good sign as to the strength of the flow. All they want to do is go and collect that honey, and they will do it late, late into the evening when they're on the heather moors. I told you it can happen so quickly up at the heather. One week your boxes are empty, you come back a week later and your boxes are full. One thing I have learned though is that the heather is that try not to run before you can walk. Got a box here, 9 out of the 11 frames that are in this box got honey in them, got a couple that are still just drawn comb, and out of the 9 that have got honey in them, maybe 6 or 7 are full and then 3 of them are only partially full. What I'm not going to do is say let's get another super on there now or another national deep, because what I want them to do is I want them to really cap the frames well. I want them to pack it in well because extracting heather is an absolute nightmare. What I'll probably do is I'll come back and check on this one in about 3 or 4 days though, because I know that the weather is going to be really, really nice up here. So I do want to give them every single chance to fill as many boxes as possible. I also don't want to have to extract loads of partially full frames, and especially with heather where you have the issue of moisture content as well, I'd much prefer to have 11 really good quality capped frames As opposed to say 15 or 16 partially capped frames. That's my bit of advice for today though, is one full box is definitely better than 2 partially full boxes, especially when it comes to the heather. Let's take a look down in the brood box though. Just gonna have a quick flash down there, see if they're backfilling it with heather, which I suspect they are now that we've got heather up in the super. See if we can find the queen, see how many frames of brood they're on. I'm really happy with the status of this colony though. Just before I do that, you, you can really, really feel that the weight's come on. I've Definitely going to get myself a digital scales next year just to do the heather to show you how much they can put on in such a short amount of time. That is probably half full, I would say, and they've got another week to go. I reckon we're going to fill this box up now. So as suspected, they are backfilling the brood box with heather. They always do it if it's not full of brood. Come heather season, they will fill it with heather, and they'll fill it with heather honey before they fill the super with honey. If you're on a full national deep system though, You've not used these frames for any varroa treatments, then you can simply take the honey-filled frames, lift them up top, and replace them with something, either drawn comb or foundation, back in the brood box. Obviously shake off all the bees, make sure there's no queens upstairs. It means more honey for you, and it means you can just backfill with syrup later on in the year. So there's my queen, she's looking well. She's just going to go back down there as usual. Brood's looking good though. You could definitely see the brood nest contracting. One of the obvious signs that they're going to contract that brood nest as well is where you can see they're starting to syrup fill cells in the middle of the brood nest. They don't do that early on in the season, they leave them open for the queen to lay new eggs. Obviously not fussed about laying new eggs in here now. You will get a bit of that moved up overnight, but it's an obvious sign that the brood nest is contracting now. We're over about 5 or 6 frames of brood, and then we've got about 3 or 4 frames of stores. And I'm going to pop some of those stores up into the super, and I'm going to replace it with a drawn comb that's not being used down there. So just a little bit of jiggling around makes things work for the beekeeper. And how about that? I told you there was going to be a dramatic increase in yield this week. I reckon they've put on maybe 10 pounds of honey. But do not miss episode 20. Episode 20 is going to be make or break for this colony. The weather could not be any better for next week. I know I've said it before. I'm predicting though next episode we are going to see a national deep full of honey. The national deep can be anything up to about 40 pounds. We get 40 pounds of heather out of this colony here, I'll be really happy with that. I'll be a little bit amazed. Maybe I'm being overly optimistic, but what I do think is what are some of the other colonies going to look like because they are monsters. I hope you enjoyed that video though. I hope you found it useful, and I hope you're enjoying the series. 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. Bye.