Laurence Edwards checks on his nucleus colony after winter and finds it thriving with six to seven frames of brood. He over-fed it with baker's fondant before access to the apiary became restricted, but the bees barely touched it. He converts the hive to a double-brood setup to encourage wax drawing and protect against future cold.
We are back in 2022 with the My First Nucleus follow-up series. So don't worry, I'm not going to go crazy. I'm not going to do a new episode every week, but I just thought you'd like to see how that colony from the My First Nucleus series has overwintered and how it's building up for spring. So okay, massive spoiler alert there, it definitely didn't die. This is the video we're going to do today. I'll get inside it. I'm not pulling out any frames, it's way too cold. I'll take the fondant off though because there's way too much fondant on it, and I'll show you just how big and strong that cluster is around the 7th or 8th of April in 2022. I'm over the moon though. 25 episodes I think we did last year. This is the 26th. Just gonna give you that snapshot of what it's looking like early spring, and then we'll do a few follow-up videos later on in the year. So I'll get my bee suit on. Let's go and take a look at the My First Nucleus Colony 26th episode. So this is how the colony went through winter. We took it down to a single national deep. I overfed it so much, this colony, because I didn't quite realize just how much they'd packed out that brood box with their head of stores. And even though when I hefted them they were quite light, I reckon they found something late on in the year because they've literally not touched the fondant that I gave them. I always think, okay, it is a massive waste of fondant when you're doing it like this. The problem that I have up at the Heather Apiary is that the access gets really restricted quite early on in the year. So if you come to a point and you haven't fed them enough, then you just can't get the fondant up to them. So you're kind of having to go on little buggies and all on these little dirt tracks. It's an absolute nightmare. So we always prefer to overfeed them. Have the insurance policy, and I'm left with a bit of a problem now, which is I've put way too much fondant on, especially this one here. Every other colony in this apiary, they got six kilos or six point two five kilos, so half a block of baker's fondant. This one here, I did it later, and I didn't want to take down half the block with me, so I gave them a full twelve and a half kilogram slab of fondant. I reckon they've taken down two kilograms of it as an absolute maximum. So don't be alarmed; there's way too much fondant on there. The plan for this one and for all the colonies up here is that I'm going to underbrood box them. So I'm going to lift. the original brood box up, put a new brood box underneath, double brood configuration with foundation only, with the aim to try and get them to use that additional fondant that's on the top of the frames to draw out the wax foundation underneath. Means that if you get another cold snap, no problem for the bees at all, they'll just cluster up in the top box. And if you get some good incoming weather, then the bees should hopefully start to work that fondant down a bit. As soon as you get to a point where they're covering all of the frames, they've drawn them all out on a double brood configuration, I'll take off whatever is left in terms of fondant on top of those frames, and I'll just either melt it down, use it as syrup, or discard it if there's not that much. You can see the bees flying though, nice calm gentle bees. We requeened these ones as well. Let's get inside, see how they're looking. So it's a little bit of a joke just how much fondant's left on here. I'm not recommending feeding your colonies this much fondant. As I said, it was kind of a necessity just to get the fondant up here and make sure they had enough. So here we go, this is the My First Nucleus Colony, episode 26. Looking pretty good, aren't they? This is what you get when you treat at the right time for mites. You feed them up, you get them strong going into winter. Okay, they had a little bit of a boost up here with the additional heather honey that was coming in, but don't they look good? Really nice, big strong colony. I'll pull out a couple of frames just quickly, see if we can find the queen, see if we can find any brood, and then I'm going to close them back up, get that other brood box on. So there's the queen, you can see her right in the middle. Same queen from last year, still marked. Had a few people tell me that their markings have been rubbing off. Remember, we marked that queen. She was marked about 9 months ago now, and you can see she is perfectly marked still, not rubbing away at all. That's why we use an oil-based marker. She seems quite happy. Nice ring of brood around the edge as well. Just see if we can find one more frame of brood. Good amount of brood in this colony. Counted about 6 or 7 frames. This one is a bit spotty, but she's laid all of that inside back up with eggs now, so I'm I'm going to be quick, don't want them to get cold. Really happy with how this colony is looking. I'm going to sort them out now and they're going to be a big strong colony going into 2022. All I'm taking here is a new brood box, new frames, newly wired with foundation, and I'm going to put that underneath the original brood box. That means it gives them sufficient space to move downwards and it means that if we get a cold snap then the bees aren't impacted at all. Hopefully they can use some of that fondant to draw out this foundation. Really easy, quick manipulation. We're now on double brood, original brood nest on the top. Gonna stick the queen excluder and the fondant and the feeder and the roof back on. We just leave them to it then.
