Got A Flow Hive? You Need THIS!

If you need a colony of bees for your Flow Hive, this is the nuc for you. At Black Mountain Honey, we are massive fans of the Flow Hive. Whether that's the genuine Flow Hive, the fake Flow Hive, or one of the many variants that they produce, there is no denying that the Flow Hive is incredibly good fun and really good to get all of the family involved in beekeeping. I've got tons of beehives. If I could only have one single beehive in my garden, It would be a Flow Hive without a shadow of a doubt, 'cause there's nothing quite like going down there in the morning or late in the evening when the bees are really settled and chilled out. One of the main things that we try to create at Black Mountain Honey, and just opening the back of the taps and getting yourself some honey fresh from the hive where it's still warm from the bees. There is nothing quite like that. But if you're buying yourself a Flow Hive and you're spending good money on probably one of the best beehives out there in the market, you want to get the very best bees for your beehive as well. So what we've been trying to do over the last few years at Black Mountain Honey is breed buckfast queens that are suitable for the back garden. So the first sign of a really calm colony of bees is when you take the lid off, they don't just all fly up and go everywhere and try and attack you. You can see if I try and tap the surfaces here, you'll get the occasional bee coming up to say hello. But even if I just like rest my hand on it like that, the bees don't care. They do not care that I am here. And that is the real first test. If you've got bees and you open up the roof and they just go whoosh and you get a big black cloud of bees, they're going to sting you. They're going to be really, really aggressive. Now I should probably practice what I preach. I've said these are calm bees and I've come fully armed in like Armageddon bee wear. So let's take that veil off and let's see how calm these bees really are. Now a lot of beekeeping with calm bees is all about super calm genetics, but it's also about treating the bees with respect, Not moving too quickly, not squishing them, not bringing attack pheromone into the colony by reusing gloves across different apiaries, and just giving the bees the respect that they really do deserve. Now I can see lots of eggs inside this frame here, really nice, super calm bees, and I can just sense just from the way that the queen is laying up the cells in here that this colony is really about to take off. So when I'm going from frame to frame, I'm always making sure that I'm putting the bees back in exactly the same order, making sure that the frame spacing is correct, making sure I'm not squishing any bees as I take them out. Because as soon as you squish a single bee, you get more bees trying to sting you, and then more bees get squished, and it just kind of snowballs out of control. What I'm seeing on this frame here is beautiful pollen. I'll try and get my face out of the shot so it'll focus for you. You can see there, natural pollen. The bees are going out and they need that pollen in order to grow. That is the bees' protein. We're just carefully putting it back in there again. And if you've not noticed yet or you're not sure what the difference is, these here are Langstroth frames. Now Langstroth frames are the most widely used frames in the world, and in the UK we generally use a frame called a National frame, which is slightly narrower with slightly bigger lugs. And that's been the standard in the UK for like 50, 60, maybe even 70 years now. But I find that the Langstroth frame is better for the bees, and I personally like it easier to hold on the lugs as well. I quite enjoy the small lugs that the Langstroth gives you. If you're getting a Flow Hive, you need Langstroth frames. Only Langstroth frames will fit inside a Flow Hive. So we sell quite a few nucs at Black Mountain Honey, and we, we rear the nucs specifically to sell. Now that might sound like I'm boasting and saying that we're selling a lot of nucs, but there's a really important message behind that, which is we're not selling nucs as like swarm control management. We're not selling nucs as a way to get rid of old manky comb. Look at that comb. That is brand new this season, about 2 or 3 months old, and these are the combs that will be going out to people in 2025. So as I said, it's an important note that because If you're just buying them from someone, you know, someone on Facebook, and you're thinking, well, they're, they're quite a lot cheaper than yours, in my view, the quality is not the same. You don't want old black manky frames from someone else because these frames here, they have a lifespan of only about 3 years. And if someone's giving them to you after they've used them for 4 years, what they're giving you is a real mess in terms of disease. Black combs harbor viruses. And that's why you see unhealthy bees on black combs. But the fact that we're specifically rearing the nucs to order to make sure that customers get nice fresh new combs like this, you've got 3 years before you actually even need to think about replacing these combs. Now I don't know how many other people who sell nucs in the UK can do an inspection like this on their bees. This isn't a piddly little colony, this is 8 full frames of Langstroth. It is equivalent to a full national-sized colony. And not a single bee has flown up at me yet, and not a single bee has shown any signs of aggression. And that for me is what we are all about. Got a couple buzzing around there, but I know they're not going to go for me because they're not inclined to sting. The aggression has been bred out of them, and it doesn't mean that the bees will never sting. If they deem me to be a threat, then they'll sting me. If a mouse tries to go into the colony, they'll sting the mouse. If a wasp tries to go in, they will kill the wasp, but they do not see me as a threat because of the way they've been bred and because of the way that I'm handling them really nice and calmly. Now what I've just found on this frame here as I've been talking is our 2024 green-marked F1 Buckfast queen, who is a daughter of some of the German breeder queens that we've got that we use in this apiary up here. Really good-looking queen, extended abdomen. We don't clip the queens that are in our nucs, but we say to people, once you get your nuc installed, probably a good idea just to clip that queen to make sure that she doesn't fly off with a swarm, protecting your investment. So what's next for this colony here? They're getting ready for winter now. It's the middle of July. They've got about another month left to build up. We'll probably put extension boxes on these ones here just to ensure that they've got sufficient space, and then we'll do a little bit of reshuffling with frames to make sure that they've got the right configuration to get through the winter. In 4 weeks' time, we'll put the Apivar strips on, and then we'll leave them for 8 weeks to get that viral load down, And then in October we'll give them a final feed before wrapping them up for winter. We'll do regular checks on them over the winter, just hefting them for weight, but then come the spring this colony here will be ready for sale. And you never know, if you buy a Langstroth nuc from us next year, you could have this exact colony of bees. If you've got any questions about any of our nucs, National, Langstroth nucs, give me a shout at blackmansinhoney@gmail.com. I'm more than happy to answer any questions you might have.