Laurence Edwards inspects his long hive after three months and finds two strong colonies ready for winter. The 14 × 12 frame size naturally creates a protective ring of honey stores around the brood, which is essential for survival through cold months.
Right, it's been nearly 3 months since I last showed you in my original Hyde Hives long hive. We took out a nuc, we did the pushback, and then we let the colony build up completely naturally, and I have not been in there since. No inspections because the colony was knocked back so much, there's no point going in inspecting them because they're not going to run out of space. Should be a decent heather crop on there now. The heather crop here has been outstanding this year. In today's video, I'm going to give you a top-to-bottom look Both of the colonies in my Hyde Hives long hive. Right, it's been a long, long time since we were last in this colony. Just to refresh your memories, we took a really big split out, we knocked them back to 3 frames, we pushed the frames, the brood nest, all the way to the back, filled it with foundation, and I have not been in here since other than to open the lid, have a cheeky little look, see what's going on. I've not been in, I've not inspected. I'm confident the same queens are still there because there is a lot of bees, and I reckon these will perform very, very well in 2022. Let's get inside, see how they're getting on. Right, so as you see from last time, the colonies have really, really grown. 2 colonies in here, one on that side, one on the other side, and these were knocked back to 3 frames and a handful of bees. Really grown nicely. Let's get inside, double-check the queens are okay, see if they got any brood, see if we got any honey, and see how well they did in 2022. So I had some people say that you knocked this one back too much, and they might have been right. Maybe I took it back a little bit, but for me, I'm not too fussed about running these for any honey production, I just want them to be as easy as possible. They've drawn the foundation out right up to the end. I've got a little bit of a gap in there, so I should have got some more foundation in there a lot sooner and they would have probably drawn it out. But this is still a really nice big strong colony, over maybe say 15, 14 by 12 frames. That's a good-sized colony for this time of year. Let's get in, see what we can see. So we've got some really nice frames of honey, Quite a lot of drones on this frame. They've not kicked them out quite yet. Good to see though that they've built up to the point where they can go out and forage that much honey. Counted about 7 or 8 frames so far, not completely full, mostly like this, but about half full, some with nectar and about half capped. And there we go, we've got some lovely, lovely frames of capped brood in there. Really nice pattern of brood. This is one of the reasons I do like 14 by 12. You get that ring of stores around the brood. Keeps them well fed even in the longest of winters, and especially important for a long hive where they can move around in strange ways. This frame here as well, looking really nice. Good amount of brood in here. Count about 6 frames of 14 by 12. Let's see if we can find the queen before we go on to the next half. Top of this frame here explains why there's so many drones in here. Got lots of wild drone comb in here. They're nice friendly bees though. I'm going to close this one back up and we'll go over to the second half of this long hive. So this half of the long hive looking even better. Full complement of frames, and you can just tell that they're doing so, so well in there. I'll pull out some frames now, see if we can see the queen, show you a little bit of that brood and honey. We're straight into the good stuff on this side. Beautiful frames of brood, really nice, big, healthy, strong colony of bees. These ones are going to get through winter, no problem. Got some lovely frames of honey, fresh nectar still coming in, brood in all stages, eggs are there. We can call it a day on this video. This colony is in perfect health.
