Episode 18 - My First Nucleus - They Have Found The Heather #BEES #BEEHIVE #HEATHER #HONEY

We're on to week 18 of the My First Nucleus series. Let's see how much heather honey the bees have collected in one week. Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping. What do you think? One week, let's see how much heather honey the bees have foraged. They've definitely been on it, I can smell it in the apiary, but it has rained, it's blown a gale, And it's barely above 18°C every single day. Far from ideal conditions, although again the next 2 weeks don't look that bad. I think though this heat wave that's coming is just going to be too little too late. I'm pretty much writing off heather season already. So I'll get my bee suit on, I'll get the smoker out, let's go and take a look, see how the colony's coming on. So you can see from the entrance it's not looking good. The weather's not too bad today, I don't think it's going to rain, But the temperature's not high, and again, 17, 18 degrees, they'll forage in that, it will yield, but it's windy. So exposed up on the moor, so it's really, really windy today, and I think the wind is putting them off. However, there is a little bit of activity. We're going to get inside. Hopefully I'll be able to show you a little bit of heather honey. I reckon they probably foraged a frame or so, maybe down in the brood box. Hopefully we'll be able to show you some heather honey this week. Let's get in though, see how they're getting on. So the first way of telling if they're foraging heather honey, you just get your head in there and you have a smell. It is the best smelling honey in the world and it is unmistakable. So I'm going to get in there, see if I can smell it. And it is just the best thing in the world. Like, I know I do this every single year, just kind of wax lyrical about heather honey. It smells so amazing, so pungent. They are on the heather flows, which is really, really good news. I'm so happy about that. We just want the weather to hold out. So I'll pull out a couple of frames. If you remember last week, that top box was empty. There was not a drop of nectar or food or capped stores or anything in there whatsoever. And the brood box was pretty empty as well. The way they work the heather is quite odd, and they seem to work from the bottom up. And I know they probably do that on other crops as well. But where it's so late in the season, you get the brood nest pulling in like that, contracting down. They build the honey stores up from the bottom. So you find that often you go in and there's just nothing up top. You go into the brood nest and it's 4 frames of brood and 6 frames of honey, and it's just like, ah, it's really annoying. This is why you hear of people feeding before the heather flow starts to backfill the brood nest with stores. So it means they have to put the heather up top, but we don't do that here. I just leave them to it. But the fact that I can smell it is really good. I'm hoping next week we'll see a dramatic improvement. But before we say that, let's see what they've done this week. And just lifting up this box here, there's a little bit of weight in it. It's not much. It's not when I'm like, oh, the box is so heavy. Definitely not. But it's not an empty box. See the bees on it as well? Going to be a frame. There's going to be some honey in here. So really, really pleased that the bees have found it. Let's get in, take a look. So this is what my top box is looking like now. Real good activity on this side of the hive. 6 or 7 frames of bees, and they wouldn't just cluster over there for no reason. They're going to be working those frames. I can smell they're working those frames. There definitely will be something in there. Let's pull out a few and see how much honey we've got. So as I suspected, not that much at all. Probably got 3 frames that are looking like this, but they have started to cap off. A little bit of honey in the middle there. And then on this frame over here, a little bit of capping again, but I tell you what, it is definitely heather honey. You can just tell from the smell. Quite difficult for me to show you how it's heather honey on camera. I'll get a little bit out though, I'll put it on the hive tool. I'll eat that when it's off camera as well, just so I don't get stung in the face. But good to see, this is a real improvement from last week, where last week we were struggling to find a single cell that had anything in it. Now we've got a couple of frames that are maybe 20 or 30% full. So let's get into the brood box, see if there's been any expansion. This is where I suspect we'll find a frame or two of really nice honey. So let's see how they're getting on down in the brood nest. So really nice, busy, packed brood nest. Looks a bit busier than it did last week, but I'm not really reading too much into that. The bees are just down there being busy as they do. I think though we're going to see an increase in the amount of brood Hopefully some more frames of eggs, and I think down here we'll find a couple of frames of nice honey as well. So there's my queen, she's looking in good condition. She is camera shy, she does not like being filmed, but the brood's looking good. Definitely laid more eggs. I know it is impossible to see in there, but she really has gone around the whole of that ring and laid another batch of eggs. It'll be too late to do anything for the heather, but it means that we'll have a nice strong colony going into winter. Another nice frame of brood there. Definitely increased in size, the brood nest this week. Looked like maybe 5 frames last week, we're definitely up to around 7 this week. And you do get that with colonies, sometimes it's just a couple of frames of eggs there, but there's a definite feeling that the colony is expanding again. If we get another 2 weeks of good weather, you just never know with these bees. And that's it for another week. I'd say that is significant progress on last week. I had written off this colony in terms of any heather yield, and I'm back to thinking, you know what, if we get a couple of weeks of good weather now, they can probably still fill that national deep up again. Time is there for them to do it. The colony is in a decent position in terms of strength. We just need the weather, and I know in North Wales that's a really big ask. In terms of inspections though, you might think it's a bit short, the brood inspections now. I don't even bother going into colonies up at the heather anymore. Chances of them swarming in the middle of August is so low, I kind of think, well, I've got 30 colonies up here, I might lose one, maximum I'm going to lose is 2. For the sake of doing 6-week inspections of 30 colonies, so 180 inspections, I'll just lose the swarm. They're not going to go anywhere, they're probably going to go into one of our bait hives up here anyway. So I do really reduce the amount of brood inspections and swarm inspections I do this late on in the Yeah. Hope you found that one useful though. Hope you found it enjoyable. Definitely tune in next week. You might see a nice big box of honey. We're moving in the right direction. We just have to see what the weather's got for us. 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.