In this instructional video, the presenter warns UK beekeepers that the typical hive kit—one brood box, a queen excluder, a few supers, crown board, and roof—is insufficient for the intense spring nectar and swarm season. He advises keeping a spare brood box for each hive and stocking 4–8 supers depending on whether the beekeeper plans a single or split harvest. The key recommendation is to purchase and fully assemble all necessary hive components (brood boxes, supers, frames with foundation, floors, roofs, queen excluders) by February, before the April‑June nectar flow, to avoid supply shortages and colony overload. He also suggests replacing the crown board with a poly Ashforth feeder from Abelo for a scalable setup suitable from hobbyists to commercial beekeepers. Throughout, he promotes his online "14‑Day Beekeeper" course as a way to quickly gain competence.
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In this video, I'm going to tell you why you need to get things ready in winter for the spring. I am, of course, talking about beekeeping equipment, and this one catches so many beekeepers out. I remember getting caught out by this one many times over because in the UK, the standard beehive configuration, the way that they sell it to you anyway, is a single brood box, a queen excluder, a couple of supers, a crown board, and a roof. And most people buy that thinking, well, that was the kit, so surely that's going to be enough to get me through my first season. And then they don't realize that it's quite significantly undersized. The brood box is there or thereabouts, although I recommend that everyone should have a spare additional brood box for every single hive that they have. But depending on your honey harvesting strategy, you should have up to 6 to 8 supers per beehive if you're going to do one extraction per year. And if you're able to split it into a spring and a summer harvest, then you should have at least 4 supers per beehive. You should have no hives that have less than 4 supers. And generally what happens is that beekeepers realize that around the mid to back end of May. They realize that they do not have enough boxes They do not have enough frames that are completely assembled with foundation in, just stacked up ready to go, which is exactly what your bees need at this point in the year. A single super, a single shallow box, a colony can fill up within a matter of days. I've come back to colonies where I've put a couple of supers on at that time of the year, and you come back and they are full. So if you've not got them on hand, if you've not got them stacked up ready for that really intense nectar flow, that intense swarm season, Then the bees will just get ahead of you so fast. All they need to do is go out and collect the nectar and bring it back. You've gotta start getting deliveries in and assembling brood boxes and making up frames and putting in foundation. And what happens with all of the beekeeping suppliers at this point in the year is they say, yep, we'll take your order, but it's probably gonna be 3 or 4 weeks before we can deliver it because there is a huge demand on because everybody underestimated how many boxes they need. So I do appreciate the irony of this video being released around the middle of May, and hopefully not too many of you will have made that mistake this year. We give people great advice within our course, 14-Day Beekeeper, and one of the top tips we give is make sure you have at least 4 supers for every single beehive that you own. And an additional brood box as well gives you the ability to do double broods, to go ahead, do a Demarais split, and to manipulate your colony to try to get them to limit the amount of swarming going on. It also helps offset numbers of supers that you need as well. But my recommendation for you is when you're setting up your beehives, when you're buying them in the winter, Get 2 brood boxes for every single hive with a minimum of 4 supers. And I'll even throw in my top tip as well, which is go ahead and buy the poly Ashforth feeder from Abelo and replace that for the crown board. That setup there is perfect for pretty much everyone from a beginner who wants one beehive in their back garden all the way through to a bee farmer running thousands of beehives. It's a simple, effective setup that allows you to scale. But the most important thing here isn't having the exact number of boxes. It's making sure that you have enough boxes at the right time of the year. And in the UK, that April, May, June period is the period where the bees accelerate much faster than you can keep up. It becomes a little bit easier as you go into July and August, but it's still pretty tough. And my recommendation to you is work out exactly how many supers you're going to need, how many brood boxes you're going to need, how many floors, how many roofs, queen excluders, everything, and have all of it ready, assembled, and finished by February. So if you're watching this video and you thought that was really useful advice, we've got tons of tips like that on our online course, 14-Day Beekeeper, that will turn you from a beginner to a competent beekeeper in just 2 weeks.
