Episode 8 - My First Nucleus - Adding Supers And Making Space For The Queen

Right, let's get in, see if we've got that queen accepted. Right, so the first thing we found is an empty cage. So there you go, we've had a successful introduction. If you are going to go and catch swarms, next week is going to be swarm central. This cow thinks it's going to be swarm central as well, so listen to the cow, he knows a lot more than me. Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping. We are on to episode 8 of the My First Nuclear series, and today we're back on track. Really happy to be back on track now. So we've got a queen, she's going to be laying because we saw eggs last week. The beehive is pretty much full of bees, so we're going to be checking them for space today. We're going to take a look at that chalk brood, see if they're clearing that out any quicker. And then obviously fast forward a few weeks, we're going to take a look at the new emerging brood and see if they've left behind any chalk brood. We're in a really good position now. We've got a full-strength colony, brand new 2021 F1 Buckfast queen. She's firing on all cylinders, laying up all of those cells in the brood box. Today we're going to be looking for expansion in the brood box, checking they've got enough space in the brood box, checking they've got enough space above the queen excluder. No matter what size box you've got up there. And I suspect today we're going to be putting on another box because I think the last week has been such tremendous weather. When you get strong colonies on good flows, it's quite surprising how quickly you need to add additional boxes. I know the normal train of thought is that bees is kind of slow and steady throughout the season, and maybe every couple of weeks you're putting on a super. But with Buckfast colonies particularly, I would say If you get them up to strength at the right time of the season, they can put on 4 boxes in, in 2 or 3 weeks. It really is that crazy. And what we've had in the UK over the past probably 10 days now is fantastic weather. It's been amazing. It's been 24, 25, 26 degrees. Really nice temperatures, really nice nighttime temperatures as well, which I find is excellent for honey production. So when we open up this colony, I am expecting to see A booming brood box, all of the boxes full of nectar. I reckon they're going to probably start capping some of that as well, and we're definitely going to be in a position to put another box on today. So I'll get my bee suit on, get the smoker lit, and let's get inside the bees, see what they're doing. Right, so let's get into the colony and see how they're getting on. You might notice we've got a few nucs in the background. This is our nuc apiary, so we've got about 20 or 30 splits here. They're building up with our F1 Buckfast queens. To really nice big strong colonies. If you're interested in a nucleus colony, we've got a few more in stock. Take a look, www.blackmountainhoney.co.uk. Right, let's get in here. Plenty of smoke, keep them nice and chilled. Let's take a look at how well that colony has expanded since the last week. So we normally start this video by lifting up the top box and just putting it onto one side and saying we're not interested in that. Very different now, now that we're into the flow season, which has come very late this year. We're definitely interested in that box, and the rule that we're using is that when that box is 80% full of bees, we're going to add another box on there. So I think as soon as we open that up, I'm predicting it's going to be 100% full of bees. But when it's 80% full, so if you've got a 10-frame box, once you've got 8 frames of bees in there, get the next super on. You want to do it earlier rather than later. Definitely don't wait until you've got a box 100% full like this one. 'Cause all they're going to do is they're going to start pushing that nectar downwards, backfilling the brood box. The queen thinks, I've not got any space here, there's not sufficient space in this beehive anymore, I'm going to swarm. So the first part really of swarm management and swarm control is ensuring that the colonies have enough space in the brood area, but also enough space to store honey. And if you think about honey, honey is just nectar that's been collected from plants, It comes into the colony here at about 80% moisture content, and then they fan it down to below 20% moisture content. So when it comes in, its volume is far greater than what it ends up like. So at this time of the year, you definitely don't want to get caught short. Make sure you've got enough boxes on hand for all of your colonies, so when those flows hit, you can get the boxes on really, really quickly to make sure they've got enough space to store that nectar, which means that you're not backfilling the brood box with nectar. Which is the perfect recipe for causing swarms. So let's get inside and take a look. So this is what the colony looks like from the top, and I've just given them a puff of smoke so they've pushed down a little bit, but all of the frames are really nice and drawn here. We'll get inside, we'll take a look at some of those frames, and I'll prove to you that they are, they are full, and that box really does need an additional box on top just to give them enough space. So we've got a box above a queen excluder, the Super, if you want to call it that, or your honey box, and it's full to the brim with stores and bees. So first thing we're going to do to this colony when we pack it up is we're going to add an additional box. Now I'm just going to go through a couple of the frames, show you the status. They tend to cap the ones in the center first, so I'll pull out a couple of those central frames. I reckon they're probably going to be capped. They're definitely going to be full of stores. So it's a good point to note again is that when you requeen a colony like this, the temperament doesn't improve overnight. These are not nice bees, very flighty, very in my face. It's about half 7 in the morning as well, and it's probably a little bit cold for them, for me to do this inspection. So again, I've got a box full of bees and I'm inspecting them at the wrong time. But just a note to say, you need to give it a good 6 or 7 weeks, couple of rounds of brood when you're requeening a grumpy colony to see real improvement in the temperament. So as we fast forward, we're only into week 1. We're not going to have had any bees that have the genetics of the new queen that I've put in there yet. So you shouldn't really be expecting to see any difference in temperament. Right, so I'm going to move that brood box, that rather heavy brood box, over to one side. We'll take a look in the brood nest and see how well that new F1 Buckfast queen is doing. Just moving that over, it is really, really weighty. If you're lifting boxes off and they're all heavy, get some light boxes on. It means you've not got enough space. Again, if you've got a grumpy colony or you need to inspect at the wrong time, the smoker is your friend. Really does help calm the bees down, gets them away from your face. You can just see the difference it's made there. Really does help. So always keep your smoker lit, always keep it on hand to deal with grumpy colonies. So here's what the brood nest is looking like now, full to the brim. What you can see in this corner here as well is with the Suyenti, you have a bit of a gap. They're drawing wild comb in that gap. That's always a sign that they're probably running out a bit of space in there as well. Maybe consider go double brood, but you just need to let your colonies tell you that. As you can see though, lots of bees. So it's really interesting what I'm seeing in the colony. I've gone through the brood box there. As always, I'll take a picture and go through every single frame in the brood box. But what I'm seeing is they have backfilled the brood nest with nectar. So the problem that I discussed at the beginning of this video has taken place. They've not had enough room, and I've underestimated the amount of space that the bees need in order to keep a brood nest active, enough space in the brood box, and for them to be able to store all of their honey upstairs. So what they've done is they've taken all of that nectar, they've started filling it upstairs, They've run out of space upstairs, so they backfilled the brood box. And as I've said before, this is the perfect way to get your colonies to swarm. So as we go through the frames here, you will see that all of these frames here have a proportion of nectar or stores in them. And really, at this time of the year, you're expecting to see very, very limited stores in the brood nest if you've given your colony sufficient space. So this one here, the queen's going to be going around thinking, Why have you introduced me to this colony? There is no space to lay. Give her a couple of weeks and she will be gone. She will swarm without a shadow of a doubt. So as we go through, you'll see there is some new eggs in here as well. There's some new larva. The queen is doing a good job. You can see from those frames already there is a nice pattern, although it's quite difficult to see when it's just eggs or larva. But she's doing the business. She's going through, she's laying up any space she can possibly find. And within a couple of weeks, we'll start to see new capped brood, and we can take a look at her pattern. And then once those bees start coming through, we can really assess the colony and how well that queen is performing in terms of laying. So what I'm going to show you now is a manipulation to ease congestion in the brood box, and it's a really simple manipulation, and it's one that's made so much easier by using boxes that are all the same size. I recommend this to everyone. If you can manage lifting a heavy brood box full of stores, Really good just to keep all of your brood boxes on the same size frame because it lets you do this manipulation. You'll see why you can't do it if you've got supers, so national shallows up top and a brood box underneath. And a lot of my colonies are set up like that, so it's not a perfect system. But what I'm going to do is I'm going to go through the brood nest, I'm going to find the queen, I'm going to put her off to one side so I'm not making sure that I'm moving her, and then I'm going to take all of the congested frames with nectar. I'm not going to take Any with any open brood whatsoever, and I'm going to lift them up into the new box. I'm going to backfill the space in the brood box with either foundation or drawn comb. So this is the box that I'm going to add on top of my original super. And I know I call it a super, I know it is confusing, but you need to get away from calling them supers and brood boxes. This is a national deep, and the shallower one is a national shallow. And anything you put above a queen excluder is is a super. So this box here is going to be used as a super because it's going above the queen excluder. I've got a mixture of foundation and drawn comb in here, and what I'm going to do is I'm going to replace frames from the brood box that are bound with honey this time. It definitely is honey because we're on a really strong natural flow. I'm going to replace them with either foundation or drawn comb. I'm going to be really careful though to make sure that the queen doesn't end up in the top boxes and that she remains downstairs. I'm going to go through all the frames Check where the queen is, put her somewhere safe in a cage, and then I'll do the manipulation, put it all back together again at the end. Right, so I can't find the queen. Nothing wrong with that if you can't find the queen. Difficult with colonies like this that are big, a little bit grumpy. You don't need to find the queen for this manipulation, we can do it without. So what we're going to do is going to go through the colony and we're going to shake off all the bees from those frames. We're going to look at the frames and any frames with any open brood, so eggs or larvae, They need to remain in the brood box. Everything else, if you've just got a frame full of stores or you've got a frame full of stores mixed in with a little bit of capped brood, we're going to lift those up and put them in the box up here. So I've made some space in the new box that I'm going to use up top. Got 5 frames in there, got space for an additional 6 frames, and I'm going to put that on top of the original super. I'm going to go through my colony now, shake off all the bees, Make sure there's no eggs. Make sure there's no larva. Get them into that box there, and then I'm going to backfill it with the frames that I'm going to flash up now. So some drawn comb, empty drawn comb, and some foundation. Remember, what we're trying to do here is give the queen additional space to lay in the brood box. Now we might come back next week, and we might double brood this colony. They're looking a little bit packed down there. I'm going to do this manipulation first, though. See if we can ease that congestion, and with the additional space up top. Hopefully they'll draw all of that nectar and stores up, put it in the boxes above the queen excluder, and that'll give me a double effect downstairs of making additional space. So I've been through this colony now, and amazingly there were 6 frames in there that didn't have any eggs or larvae in at all. So I've taken all of those out, they've gone upstairs. I've got my 4 frames with eggs and larvae. I've shaken off all the bees downstairs, so I know the queen's down there. All I need to do now is go through, put the frames of foundation or empty drawn comb into here, queen excluder back on, and it's stack everything together. So now I'm just taking my frames of foundation, frames of drawn comb, and I'm going to backfill this box here. I'm going to push the brood nest into the middle and put 3 frames either side. So now that's the manipulation complete downstairs. We've got our 4 original frames in the middle with eggs and larvae and brood in all stages, and then the 3 outer frames on either side are just the foundation and drawn comb. We know the queen's down there somewhere as well. So we can put the queen excluder back on now and stack everything back up. So that's it, put the queen excluder back on now. We've shaken off all the bees, the queen will be down there. We've seen eggs, we've shaken them all off. The queen's definitely not up there, I know that for a fact. She's going to be in the brood nest, so I can put the queen excluder back on to pin her down there, stop her going and laying up in the supers. So the beauty of doing it like this is all you need to do now is lift up these 2 probably quite heavy boxes and just plop them straight on the queen excluder. Then we can go on with our crown board or feeder, and then with our roof. So there you go, that's the manipulation complete. Bit of a complex one today, and this is what beekeeping is all about— going and looking at what's happening in your colonies, taking action to give them relief from whatever stress they're under. And at the moment, they're probably a bit stressed because of overcrowding. So just as a recap, what we've done today is we've gone through the super, and we've identified that there's not enough space in the super. We've gone through the brood box, we've confirmed that the queen is laying. We've not seen the queen. We've also confirmed that they've pulled all of that nectar and stores down into the brood box, and now that is backfilled and it is honey-bound. We've added an additional super. It's a National deep box. We've taken out all of the frames that don't contain any open brood, so no eggs, no larvae, and any ones that just contain stores or stores with a little bit of capped brood, We've lifted those up and we've put them into the top box. All of the rest of the space we backfilled with either frames of foundation or frames of drawn comb. That is gonna give the bees additional space to store nectar and honey upstairs above the queen excluder, and it's gonna give them additional space for the queen to lay, which should delay swarm preparations. And that's it for today's video. I have to say, this colony is a real frustration for me because they're pretty grumpy. One thing we didn't talk about in this video is the chalk brood, and the reason we didn't talk about it too much is that it seems to have really cleared up quite a lot. And don't think that that is a silver bullet by putting in the new queen and one week later the chalk brood situation has cleared up. All it is is that there's no larva of the correct age to be affected by the fungal infection. So we'll fast forward a couple of weeks on that, and then we'll look at the new frames of brood that are laid by the new queen and we'll assess where we are in terms of a chalkbrood infection. But although the weather has taken a turn for the worse today, the bees are a little bit more grumpy because maybe the flows have stopped a little bit or the weather's a little bit too cold, and they're generally just not a very nice colony at all, they're still a very prolific colony. They're still doing very, very well. Like, I would estimate you've probably got 30 pounds of honey in here. There's a national deep full to the brim, and there's quite a lot downstairs that they're going to bring up as well. So my prediction next week is we're going to see All of these boxes are going to be full of bees. They're going to have repaired any frames in this top box. Probably going to see quite a lot of nectar in this top box, and I would say we're going to see lots of frames of eggs and lots of frames of brood down in the brood box. So I hope you enjoyed that video. I hope you found it useful. 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.