Heather Season Review - Static Heather Apiary - Heather Apiary Snapshot

In this video, I'm going to review my 2021 heather apiary strategy, and I'm going to give you a snapshot inside every single colony at this apiary. Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping. 2021 was the craziest year to date, and at this apiary, I took a real change of direction as to what I've done for the previous 4 or 5 years. In that I've turned this into a static apiary. This is the first year I've had this as a static apiary, so in this video I'm going to talk to you about why I made that decision, how well it turned out, what I'm going to do going forward, and I'm also going to give you a snapshot of every single colony in this apiary so we can compare it and see how many of them get through the year. Right, first off, static apiaries are obviously apiaries where you leave your bees, you don't transfer them in, transfer them out, they stay there all through the year. 365 days. Previously, I used to bring all of the colonies up here, cherry-pick my strongest colonies from each of the apiaries, brought them up to the heather just in time to get the flows. I'd harvest my heather honey crop, I'd take the colonies back down to their respective apiaries, and then I would repeat year on year. Now there's definitely benefits to doing that, and I think a lot of heather apiaries, you couldn't really do it as a static apiary because they're just barren moorland that only flower for about 4 to 6 weeks of the year. And then all of the other periods of the year there's nothing around and the bees would just die. So a lot of apiaries you couldn't do that with, but we're really lucky here in that there's a lot of other forage all around. We're on the fringes of the moorland, and I took a bit of a gamble saying I'm going to make this a static apiary, not fully knowing how good the forage is going to be everywhere else. So I made sure that I checked. I didn't want the bees to starve, but I took that plunge because I just don't have the time to To be moving the colonies up here and moving them back down again. And also the access into this apiary is very, very tricky. If it rains, I can't get the truck up here. The slope is just too steep. So it means that I have logistic issues as well. So I really wanted to make it a static apiary. However, I'm over the moon that I turned this into a static apiary because it has gone so, so well. It was my second ranking highest yielder in terms of the summer crop. that I got off the bees here. So before the heather flow started, I came up, I took off all of the supers that were full of non-heather honey, and that was the second-ranking highest apiary out of all of my apiaries. Even though I targeted this apiary for the heather flows, I wanted to build them up, make sure they were strong to get the heather. It's performed really, really well as a spring and a summer apiary as well. So over the moon in terms of honey, no issues whatsoever. Previous year I left them up here. I got excellent overwintering performance. I got 23 out of the 24 colonies through, which is a really good percentage. So I'm happy that they're not too exposed over winter and they can handle anything that the winter's gonna throw at them. And last year was really bad. It was down to about -17, -18, loads of storms, loads of wind, loads of rain. It was about as bad as it's gonna really get. So that brings me up to now. I'm really happy that I've chosen to keep this as a static apiary. Definitely going to keep it as a static apiary going forward, as long as the landowner is happy to have me here. Saves me so much time going and collecting the colonies, bringing them back up here. It really does cause me a bit of a headache at that time of year when I'm particularly busy doing all of my honey extraction anyway. So for the remainder of this video though, I'm just going to go and take a look at the rest of the colonies up here, because I extracted and took off all of the heather honey around the first week of September. I came up All of the colonies were heavy in the brood box. Gave them 14 litres of invert syrup. I put the Apivar strips in as well, and now it's the first week of November, so I need to go around them anyway, get those Apivar strips out. I'm not just taking the roofs off just to show you what's inside. Got a genuine reason to be going into all of these colonies, even though it does seem like it's a bit late in the year. But that is what happens when you have the bees up at the heather. So I'll get my bee suit on, I'll go around, I'll show you each of the colonies that are up here. Some of them might be big, some of them might be small. We'll get a real mixed bunch, but I'll give you that snapshot to show you how well they fed throughout the season, and then we can evaluate it in the spring, see how many we get through. So here's the first colony. Big strong colony. Generally get this with colonies up at the heather. They tend to be huge. First week of November, this is what they're looking like. We'll get those Apivar strips out, close them back up, give them a bit of fondant, but I'd be Very, very surprised if we didn't get these ones through. Right, next up, again a super strong colony. Got the queen excluder on this one, little bit of burr comb there, but really good, covering 10 frames easily all the way through. You can see it there, massive colonies in this apiary. They're doing very well indeed. Well, it doesn't look like this one's quite as big, but believe me, it is. It's just the bees not coming out. You can see them, they're covering every single frame. 10 frames of bees, really nice big strong colony, gonna come through that winter well. Definite theme up at this apiary, up at the heather apiary, and this is what happened last year, all of the colonies were big, really big, super strong colonies. Remember, it's the first week of November, they've not got that long to get through the year, probably only 3 or 4 months, we're going to be into early spring. Great to see them this size at this time of the year. I know there'll be some small ones up here as well, but that's 4 out of 4 so far that are absolute monsters. Now this colony, very interesting. I took 7 frames of brood out of this colony back end of August, early September to make up loads of splits, knocked it back to about 2 frames of brood, and they've just completely taken off again. So really, really nice big strong colonies. They're going to get through the winter so well. Right, so here's a colony that doesn't look quite as strong as the rest of them, and again, you can't read into this. I remember last year I looked into a colony and I thought it was dead, thought it was dead at this time of year, and it turns out they were all just clustering at the bottom. So they may have just formed a nice big cluster, they're not interested in coming up to the top, but you can still see seams of bees all the way across. So I'm taking it that this is on 10 frames so far. See how they get through the winter though. Another nice big strong colony here covering all of the 10 frames. That's just a little dummy frame in the corner. Nice smell as well. I love getting in close to the bees, they smell so good. Great to see. I'm so happy with the quality of the bees. Obviously they had a bumper heather flow this year and it's resulted in bumper-sized colonies going into winter. So I'll stay ahead with the feeding, I'll make sure they've got fondant, From what I can tell so far, they're looking very, very good. Right, this is really interesting. This colony here was the one that I was almost certain was going to be in trouble because we didn't get any honey off this colony. Struggled to build up. It got requeened late in the season, superseded itself. But look at them now. That queen's definitely been out and mated because this colony was not that big a couple of months ago while that superseder was going on. Bodes very, very well for next Well, things are going from good to even better. I cannot believe how big and strong all of these colonies are. That's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 that I've done so far, and they're all monsters, every single one. So hopefully the rest of them are going to be like this, but it doesn't get much better than this when you're looking in your colonies early November, taking those Apivar strips out. They're big, they're strong, they're not the heaviest, little bit light, but we can top them up with fondant. These are going to be so good next year. So even the swarms are looking strong. This swarm landed early July, gave me 2 supers of heather honey, and now it's filling 10 boxes going into November. So really happy, big strong swarm. So I genuinely can't believe just how good the colonies are up here. Again, got some burr comb, got some brace comb in between that feeder, so something I need to sort out. Not going to do that now though, but they're just so big. And this is what you get when you Dense colonies down. They fit the box so well, they fit every single nook and cranny, which means they can cluster up well, they can maintain brood, they go into winter strong, they come out of winter even stronger. Right, next up, complete mirror image of the colony next to it. Berkhome there as well, boiling out over the top. Big strong colony, 10 frames, really heavy this one as well. Can't ask for much better than that. So this one not boiling out quite as much, but still easily over 10 frames. Going to close these up, get that Apivar strip out, take a look at the rest of the colonies. But there's not really been any at the moment that I would consider to be a dud. Right, next colony, a little bit more well-behaved, really nice and quiet, this one, very calm. But again, covering all of those frames just goes to show how Cramming the bees down like that, they are so big and so strong and just well and truly ready for winter. Right, this is a really interesting one as well. This one swarmed in May 2021. I got a super of honey off them even after they swarmed in the same year, and now they're filling the box completely jam-packed full. So they've well and truly recovered, really good to see that. Hopefully they won't swarm so early in 2022. Another absolute belter. This was a double demaray. This queen was so insistent on swarming just when we got into heather season. We double demarayed them, 2 14x12s, and they filled both of the double demarays. This was by far and away the biggest producer and nearly got 100 pounds of heather honey off this colony. They look even better going into winter, filling up all those frames. Hopefully they'll do the same again next year without so much effort in those double demarays. This is one of only 2 national deep colonies up here. Everything else is on 14 by 12. Again, this one had 7 frames of brood pinched in September for making up some nucs, and I think they've probably recovered from that looking at how many bees are coming over the top. Really, really happy with this one. This one was the 2nd biggest producer of the year. This had 7 supers taken off it throughout spring, summer, and autumn for the heather. Really, really big colony, this one. It's not quite as big as some of the other colonies up here now. It's got a little bit of space over on that corner, but you really can't read into that at all. Looks healthy, looks strong, covering all the frames. Hopefully does well again into 2022. I thought we were going to open this one up and there was not going to be any bees in here. This was a real problem child colony throughout the whole year. Had swarms, had supersedures, had non-matings, had requeening. I'd pretty much given up on them. I was very close to shaking them out in August, but I thought there might be another queen in there, so I'll give her a chance. And she's definitely repaid my faith because they were about a quarter of this size in August, and now, okay, they're not covering all of the frames, got a couple of empty frames on that end there, but that is a healthy looking size bee colony going into winter. And the final colony, colony number 20 at the Heather Apiary, Just like the rest of them, boiling over. Honestly cannot believe how strong they are this year. We had a good heather flow, they would have piled on the broomed, and then we've had a really, really mild September and October which has just allowed them to keep on going, get that ivy flow, get the pollen in, get them up to size. Just need to make sure that a few of them have got enough weight to get them through, but I am so, so happy with this new So there we go. That's the snapshot of all of the colonies that are up here. Real variation. Some very big, strong colonies. Some angry colonies. Some much smaller colonies as well. And no doubt you will get late season supersedger up here. I do think that's one of the issues at keeping them up at the heather, especially a site like this where they're going to work all year round, is that you can burn your queens out very, very quickly. So I think there might be a couple of late season supersedgers in there. where either the queen's not mated properly and I've got an issue, or they've had a brood break where the queen's gone out to mate and they're just playing catch-up. So I'll get smaller colonies going through winter. I've not gone in to go and do those checks because I've not really got the time to do it, but also by the time I'd known there anything was wrong, kind of into October, getting towards the time where it's a little bit too late to do anything about it. They overwintered really, really well up here last year, and I remember doing the video saying there's 24 colonies up here, And then I did a bit of an evaluation in January, February, and my estimate was I was going to get 19 of them through because opening them up they didn't look very good when I was topping them up with fondant. And then ultimately I got 23 out of the 24 through. So you can't read in too much as to what the colony is doing when you open them up. The size of the cluster, where they are, whether they're at the top or the bottom, or how light the box is— as long as you give them enough fondant, you can get very, very small clusters through. And then as we know at this apiary now, the spring buildup is very good, very strong, and they can catch up really quick. So I hope you enjoyed that video. 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. Bye.