Heather Apiary - How is Heather Honey Produced - Heather Honey Combs

It's the middle of August and I'm going to show you some of the strongest colonies I've got at the heather. Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping. I have not done enough videos up at the heather this year, mainly because it's just been really, really bad weather, and every single time I come up here to try and do a video or show you what's going up at the heather apiary, there's like a storm or a hurricane or something coming in and I've just not had the time to get around to doing a video on it. So I do apologize, I am doing this video a little bit late in the day, but I just wanted to talk you through what I've done this year up at the heather, how the colonies have performed up here, and what the heather crop is looking like. So this is the first year that I'm using this site as a static apiary. Previously I'd get my big strong colonies, I'd bring them up here last week of July, I'd let them have 6 weeks or so on the heather, see what crop they got, And then take them back down again. Now, the site that I'm in, I love this site, probably my favorite site that I've got, but it's a real pain to get to. It is difficult, it's slippy, it's up big steep roads, and it's just really, really difficult getting the bees in, getting them out. So this year I thought I'd take the risk of leaving the colonies up here. I overwintered them up here. I lost 1 out of 24, so 23 colonies starting the year up here. And I thought what I'm going to do is I'm just going to let the colonies build up and build up. I'll probably have to feed them because the forage is going to be really bad, But I'm just targeting those heather float. Now it surprised me so much, this apiary. Probably one of our biggest yielding apiaries for the spring and the early summer honey. Couldn't believe it because we are on the edge of moorland here. We're really high up, nearly 1,000 feet here, but they have just outperformed any other apiaries. It will slightly be to do with the fact that I brought my best colonies up here, so I cherry-picked all of the best colonies from all of my other apiaries and brought them up here. So I've got good genetics up here. But good genetics is nothing unless there's some forage to go with it and there's some weather to go with it as well. And they have performed really, really well, probably averaging between 2 and 3 supers per colony, which in North Wales is really, really good. My strategy, however, has been I started off with a single 14 by 12 brood box and then building up into the season, I put a national deep on top of that, no queen excluder. So I'm double brood, 14 by 12, and then a national deep on top. I let the colony go and go and go in that configuration, and then I put the queen excluder on top, and then I put supers above that. And then around the middle of June, I took the queen excluder and I put that in between the 14x12 brood box and the National Deep, effectively turning the National Deep into a super and giving it enough time for all of that brood to emerge, for them to backfill it with heather honey. Now things have moved around a little bit since then, but if you look in the background, you'll see There's a mixture of national shallows and national deeps above a 14 by 12 brood box. What I'm going to show you in this video is I'm just going to pick out a couple of the really nice strong colonies up here and just show you how well they have performed. Really, really over the moon with how much honey they've packed in. I managed to get some supers off. I left some partially filled supers on, but they really are jam-packing it in this week. And then next week at the heather looks really, really good as well. So So I think over the course of the season I'm going to be easily surpassing £100 when you take into account the heather crop. Now next year I'll definitely do a few more videos on this about how I built the colonies up for the heather. I thought I was going to have to feed them. In this apiary here, I definitely didn't have to feed them. If anything, I had to keep them down, knock them back a bit because they were just getting a little bit too big. I didn't want to make loads of splits and double the number of colonies up here. But I think it'll be an interesting one to show it all throughout the stages of the season. Just how I get those colonies built up for the heather. I'll definitely do that next year. So let's get my bee suit on. I'll show you around a couple of the really nice strong colonies up at the heather. Right, so I'm not cheating and just picking out the biggest colony. This one is probably a little bit bigger, a double demeray. I'd say this is maybe a little bit above average for what we're seeing up here, but it's a good indication of the the kind of yields that are available up at the heather moors. And you will have to excuse. Uh, all the bees flying across the camera because you're in the way of maybe 4 hives' flight paths there. So I do excuse all of the bees flying across the camera. But this colony here, this is one of my standard heather colonies that's been up here all the way through the winter. Started off on a 14x12 brood box, then I double brooded it with a National Deep, so it had up to 20 frames of brood at the height of the season, the middle of June. I took that queen excluder and I put that down In between the 2 brood boxes, and at that point I started supering up as well. Now I've taken off all of the spring and summer honey, and these have been like that since probably the first week of July. So you might get a little bit of overlap with some of the rosebay willowherb, some of the bramble, some of the clover, but you do need that just to tide them over. I'd much prefer there to be like a little bit of rosebay willowherb in there or something, as opposed to having to feed them any sugar syrup. I'll show you though this colony here. So we've got 1, 2, 3 National Shallows and 1 National Deep, all as supers, and they're pretty much full, barring maybe a couple of frames that aren't completely full. Let's get inside though, take a look at some of the honey, take a look at the bees, and show you how the bees are getting on up at the heather. So this is the top box here. You can already see lots and lots of honey up in this top box. I'll pull a couple of frames out and I'll show you just how well the bees So I'm very, very happy with this colony. Beautiful white cappings, lovely couple of frames there. I'm not just choosing the best ones, you can see all the way down, all of the frames in that box are covered in honey and 100% capped. Right, next box down then, and again we have got lots and lots of honey there. I've broken the seal, the bees are going to be busy cleaning that up. But really nice frames, big heavy box of honey. I'll pull out a couple of frames and I'll show you what they've done in this box. And again, we're talking really nice capped frames of honey, beautiful white cappings, not quite as capped as that top box, but looking really, really good. Hopefully all the boxes are going to be just like this. So this box here, you can see the frames are a lot lighter, These have only been put on for a couple of weeks now, but they're really working them very well. I have no doubt this box come the end of the year is going to be completely full because the flow is well and truly on, and I reckon we've got another 7 to 10 days of it. I'll pull out a couple of frames though and I'll show you because this is the best indication that the bees are on the heather honey. So the color of that honey there is just perfect heather honey. If you were here, I wouldn't need to convince you because it smells of pure Pure ling heather. I'm going to get the hive tool on it though, see if I can show you just the consistency, because it really is a very different consistency. Ling heather honey, such a nice smell though. Really nice dark amber honey. I reckon come the end of the year, these are going to be full. So just to try and show you that consistency a bit, the way it goes up like that is gelatinous honey. Doesn't fall off the hive tool because it is solid. It's thixotropic honey. If that was any other honey, that would just fall off, but this is pure Ling heather honey. Onto the national deep then. This is where the majority of the honey is in here, and this technique has worked really, really well. So eight weeks ago, this was a brood box full of brood, and now it is a honey super, and it is. Is full to the brim with honey. Worked really well, giving me a bumper crop of bees that in turn has turned into a bumper crop of honey. Now these frames here, not fully capped, far from it, but absolutely jam-packed again with heather honey. This is the beauty of that technique, is that you leave nice open combs really close to the brood box at the right time of the year So they backfill it with heather honey. We've got a week left of the flow. No doubt whatsoever, these are going to be fully capped over in the next week. I'm very excited about this yield. Just lifting up that National Deep there, that is so heavy. Got to be at least 35 pounds. I'm going to struggle to put that up so high. I'll give it a go though, but that genuinely is the heaviest box that I've pulled of the heather so far this year. Right, let's take a quick look in the brood box, show you a couple of those frames, show you the queen if I can get a snap of her, just show you how big and strong that brood nest is to support a colony that can produce that much honey. So that's what the brood nest is looking like, obviously going to be covered all the way over, 10 frames of bees. Let's take a look how much they backfilled it with nectar. Maybe we'll see a little bit of heather honey down there. I'm hoping though we just going to see 10 frames of brood. I find it really interesting looking at brood frames at this time of the year because you normally think, yeah, doesn't look like that good a brood pattern, but it's because they're just using every single available cell to bring in the nectar, and then the queen's not got a chance to get around there and to lay an egg in it before they clear it up. They'll clear it up overnight, they'll bring it upstairs, which is what they're doing, but it's a really congested brood nest just because there's such a Good strong flow on. Here's a better looking brood frame though. Again, you can see, you zoom in, all of those cells in the middle, they're not just empty, they're filled with nectar. They'll end up going upstairs into the honey stores, but overall looks like a relatively good frame of brood. Now you might think I pulled that frame right out of the edge. That is the number 1 central frame, tiny little bit of brood there, and And they have just backfilled all of that with nectar. They will take it up, but it just goes to show it's getting late in the year. They're thinking about stores, they're getting ready for winter. Probably not going to have to feed them too much, these, because it's a really good strong flow on. Just a little bit of myth-busting for you as well. Eagle-eyed observers will notice there, got a blue queen. So that is a 2020 queen that has produced all of this honey. I like to keep nice fresh young queens up here, but that 2020 queen has gone the whole way through the season, not swarmed, produced a massive brood nest and a really super bumper crop of honey. So there we go, the bees are looking so good up at the heather. I've added on a few more supers up here because the next week, I've said it before, is supposed to be the best week of the heather season. I've seen how quickly colonies like this can fill Fill those boxes. So I've loaded them up, I've gone for broke. Hopefully they will fill everything that's on there. Welsh heather honey. I hope you enjoyed that video though. 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.