In this solo vlog, Laurence Edwards of Black Mountain Honey walks viewers through the 2021 heather honey harvest for his "My First Nucleus" series (episode 22 of No‑Nonsense Beekeeping). He begins by apologising for missing equipment and being repeatedly stung, then shows the empty apiary boxes and explains that the heather crop is the best he’s ever seen, estimating a 25‑40 lb yield from the colony. He inspects each frame in the super, describing the degree of capping, honey colour, weight, and moisture considerations, noting that frames are not always fully filled or capped but overall heavy and high‑quality. He comments on the pure, golden‑amber heather flavour and the consistency of the harvest across frames. After the inspection, he mentions the next steps: clearing the super, consolidating the colony into a single brood box for winter, applying Apivar strips, and feeding the bees. He previews episode 23 where these post‑harvest treatments will be shown, and ends with a reminder to subscribe. The video blends practical beekeeping data, personal anecdotes, and forward‑looking colony management plans.
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It's episode 22 of the My First Nuclear series. I've forgotten my audio kit, I've forgotten my second camera, I've forgotten my tripod, but the bees have pulled in a really good heather harvest. Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping, episode 22 of the My First Nuclear series. I do apologize, I'm getting absolutely battered by the bees at the moment. I'm forgetting everything, I've just got too much to do. It's that time of the season. But I can't let you guys down. We need to do episode 22, so I'll do it as best as I possibly can. I'll show you the colony, I'll show you the crop of heather, and then we'll follow it up later on in the year doing our Apivar strips, doing the feeding. I just want to show you though in this episode how much honey they've pulled in. They didn't pull anything in in that last week, uh, the gamble didn't pay off, but they didn't take anything away and they capped off the honey really, really nicely as well. So I'll go through each and every frame in the super today Not going to look in that brood box again, I'll save that for episode 23, but I'll show you just how much heather honey they've produced after we took off all of the blossom honey as well. So let's get inside the colony, see how well they've done. So if you have a look around the heather apiary, things look very different today. I've taken down every single one of the crops from up here. That big stack there, that's just empty boxes, that is due to go. There's nothing in them, but the bees are still intent on robbing them out. So unfortunately I didn't get to do a video. This time of the year is just too hectic because you're trying to extract all of your honey, you're trying to take off all of your heather. There's just nowhere near enough hours in the day to get anything done. So again, that'll have to be a video for next year. But the harvest this year from the heather is the best I've ever experienced. Absolutely insane. Probably talking £50 or £60 average, I would say, from the colonies up at this apiary. I've not checked the other heather apiary that I've got at the moment. Not quite as good as this one, but I'm so, so happy with how the bees have done up here. Right, this one though, I've not taken the honey off yet. I've saved this one to make sure that I can do the video just to finish off this little series. Let's get inside it, take a look, see how much honey they've produced for the 2021 heather harvest. Right, so this is what the super's looking like. I lifted this up before when I was doing my checks and it is really, really heavy. I don't think they put that much weight on in the week though, but it was just a heavy box last week. What I'm going to do though is I'm going to go through every single frame today. I'm going to show you every single frame, how much honey they've stored in it, how well it's capped over, and then the week after I'll show you into the brood box and show you what's going on down there. But I think you'll agree though, they have come on so well in the past 6 weeks. Always see this with our heather colonies. If they're good strong colonies and you bring them up here, then they just get bigger and bigger and bigger. Lovely to see all of those white cappings in there as well though. The smell is sensational. I've tasted some of the honey as well up here and it is the purest heather, it really is. If anything, on my palate, a little bit too pure. I prefer a little bit of a blend, but good to see that they're going and foraging on real good quality pure ling heather. Right, let's pull some of the frames out. I'll start on the left-hand side, work my way over to the right. Let's see what our crop's like for So that's not a bad start on frame 1, and that's the outside frame, not entirely capped over, but I'm just going to get these off. Always going to see a couple of frames like this on the outside though, so you can almost discount the outside frames, but a very nice start. Right, next frame. This is really, really good. This is frame 2, so I would expect them to get better and better as we work towards the middle, but this is pretty much perfect. to get them fully capped over. Does happen, um, and if you give this colony another week, then it would cap them over fully. But it's not going to make a huge amount of difference to the moisture content because they've had a good week to get that down to the correct level. But really, really happy with, A, the amount of honey that's in there, and B, how well they've capped it over as well. So next frame along, you can see they've not completely filled them up. They're not full all the way to the edges. And I'm glad I didn't put that super on and leave it on because we didn't actually get this box completely full. However, ling heather, it's such a valuable commodity. You don't need a huge amount of it, and my other colonies have performed so well because they were up here for a good 3 weeks longer than this colony here. But still, the weight in these frames is quite substantial. They've really packed it in, so I can't wait to get inside and get this honey extracted. Onto frame 4 now, and you can see they're really making good progress on capping that off. Down on this side here, we're pretty much 100% capped. And then as you move over, that is their prime objective this time of the season. You can see some of those cells there, they're working on those, capping them off nicely. I just can't wait to get this into the extraction room. The smell is so good. Right now, that's what we're talking about. We're on to frame 5 here, and this is Pretty much perfect. Doesn't get much better than that. Like, okay, they haven't completely filled it right up to the edge and it's not 100% capped, but if all of my colonies performed as well as these ones did every single year, I'll tell you what, I would be very happy. Because sometimes you come and do all the effort up at the heather and you literally get nothing, not even a single jar of heather honey. This year we have done very, very well indeed. Right, frame 6 then. It just gets better and better. I hope this goes all the way through to the end. They're getting heavier and heavier, more capped every single frame that I get to. Let's see what's on the next frame. So probably onto 50% caps now, and not full up to the edges either. But look at the color of that honey. I'm not sure how well it's going to come out on camera, but it really is the most amazing golden amber color. Frame 8 then, and we're getting lower and lower again, probably only 30% capped here, but still a really heavy frame that will yield a surprising amount of honey in a national deep frame. Frame 10, and they've packed the honey in. I genuinely can't believe how much honey they've got in here. The capping is going down. They would have capped all of this off if you left it a little bit longer, but I'm just so happy that they filled this box with honey. So second to last frame, and it hasn't really petered out that much. We're probably talking 50% capping all the way through. Very consistent in terms of the level of weight as well, so it's not dropping off. They've not pushed it all over to one side. This is going to be a good, I reckon, 25 to 30 pound yield in this colony that came up here really, really late. And the final frame, down to about 20 or 30% capped, but still a nice heavy frame. The bees have really done me proud up here. They came up here late, they built up late, but They got to strength just in time for the flows, and they've given me a really good heather harvest for 2021. So what I'm going to do now is I'm quickly going to clear these using a blower. I'm not going to show it on camera just because I've not got a tripod with me, I've not got anything with me, but onto the next episode you will see that the, the super's gone, the national deep has gone, and they're going to be condensed down into a single brood box, and I'm going to have my Apivar strips in there as well, and they're going to be fed. So I'm kind of jumping a little bit ahead, but I'll link you out to other videos here because I've covered this on loads of different videos this year. There's no need for me to do this in this series as well. So episode 23, we'll come back, they'll have the Apivar strips on, they'll be fed, they'll be down to a single brood box for winter, and I'll have that honey in the jars. So there you go, that's the end of episode 22. I think you'll— No-nonsense beekeeping, you get to see every single sting. That one is probably the worst one of the year, straight on the eyelid. Right, I'm gonna be quick. Episode 22 went well. We probably got, I reckon, 30 or 40 pounds of heather honey there. Really, really good harvest. I'm totally scared of these bees stinging me even further, so I'm going to call it a day there. 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.
