In this Bite‑Sized Bees episode, Laurence Edwards of Black Mountain Honey conducts his weekly April 30th inspection at the River Apiary in North Wales. He discovers that the colonies have filled two full supers with a rich, wildflower honey, evident on every frame in both the top and bottom supers. The strong spring flow is driven by a mix of wild garlic, bluebells, dandelions and other minor nectar sources, even though the main later‑season sources such as horse chestnut and sycamore have not yet opened. Edwards notes that recent warm days have allowed the bees to collect abundantly, but forecasts predict poor weather for the coming weeks, a common challenge in North Wales. Consequently, he plans to postpone any honey extraction until June, when he will reassess the supers and possibly harvest a spring crop if conditions permit. He emphasizes the importance of a large bee population inside the hive for robust spring flows, and mentions that the hive remains active even at a warm evening. The video ends with a reminder to subscribe and enable notifications.
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Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping and a super short Bite-Sized Bees. So I'm down at the River Apiary today, going through, checking all my colonies, doing my weekly inspections. It's the 30th of April and the bees have filled 2 supers of honey. As you can see from this frame here, like, it's full, it's a completely full frame. And it's not a fluke, like I've pulled out one frame and it's a heavy one. You look into the box there, they are all like that. Every single frame in both the top and the bottom super. Caught me a little bit off guard because I was just coming here to do swarm inspections. I put 2 supers on all of these 2 weeks ago and they've repaired them, they've drawn them out where necessary, and they filled them with some really, really good honey. It's not been that warm the past week, but it's obviously been warm enough for the bees to go out and There is a really, really strong flow on here at the moment, so you get the coordination of 3 or 4 different plants. So you've got the wild garlic, the bluebells, and the dandelions, and then a few other little titbits for them as well, and they're just going crazy on it. Like I say, it's the 30th of April today. We've got another good 4 weeks of the spring flow. We've not even had the horse chestnut, the sycamore, or anything like that yet. So these bees are in such a good position to take advantage of this. Unfortunately, the next few weeks look terrible in terms of weather, and this is the problem that we always have in North Wales. Now, we're not going to try and steal this honey off them too early because it just gets you into a little bit of a mess. We'll assess where we are in June, take a look, and if there's any honey in June, we'll take it off and take a little bit of a spring crop. But as you can see, spring crops are very much a thing in the UK, and I really do like a spring crop. We're nowhere near any oilseed rape here, This is prime wildflower Welsh honey, and I can't wait to try it. So it's 7 o'clock in the evening here. Every single bee that lives in this colony is in here, so they are annoyed that I'm opening them up. Pretty warm evening though, no problem going in there. You can see though how many bees are in this colony. That is the key, I think, to getting good strong spring flows. And I'll show you again where we are, say, on the 1st of June, because it may well be that I've got 5 supers on here. May well be that it rains for the entire duration of May and they eat all of that and I'm feeding them. Just don't know what way it's going to go at the moment. Obviously this is a great start, but the weather really doesn't look that good. So hope you enjoyed that one. 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.
