How Did This Hive Get So Huge? Demaree Method Explained & Applied

The hogweed definitely wasn't that high last time, neither was the nettles. So a quick recap on what we did in the previous video, and I'll feed you out to the previous video here, link should be in the top corner. These 2 boxes up here, top box and the second one down, they were the original brood boxes, so they were at the bottom. This box here, the 14x12, that was a new box that I introduced, and I put the single frame of emerging brood plus the queen, and then filled it out with a mixture of drawn comb and foundation. That was the preemptive split that I did, and then we followed it on and saw that brood nest start to expand and all of these boxes here start to fill with honey. I did promise you at that time, and you can see it's grown up quite a lot since then. It's about 8 weeks now since I did that Demerara split, and I just want to show you how well it's worked. The bees haven't swarmed. I cheated a little bit. I have gone in there and checked, so we've still got the blue clipped queen in there, the previous queen that was in there, and there is a lot of honey in this colony. And just to talk a little bit more about why we do Demaray splits, or why I do Demaray splits, it's to target the main flows with the absolute maximum number of bees as possible. And it's just worked perfectly on this colony here. It really has coincided with the beautiful weather, maximum flows Has peaked and coincided with the maximum number of bees in this colony, and the brood nest will start to retract now that we've gone past the summer equinox. So again, enough of me talking. I'm going to get in here top to bottom. I'll pull out a couple of frames from each of these boxes. All 4 of these are honey, and then we'll go through every frame in the brood box and I'll show you how much it's expanded. So you always know things are going well when that is the top box and you literally cannot reach up take the video of it properly. Try and get a little bit higher, but that is my arms at full stretch. They're 7 foot up in the air and the bees are all the way up there. That can only mean one thing— there's going to be a lot of honey. Right, so that box there is really, really heavy. I'm going to put that down now and have a look at some of the frames. So here is the top box, all the frames. I'd say this one here is pretty much an average frame here, 50% capped state, full of nectar. And then there's quite a few that are like that as well, probably 80% capped. So even in that top box, there is a huge amount of honey. I could feel it as soon as I took it off, knew it was going to be heavy. But yeah, look at that, loads of capped stores. Very nice indeed. So then we move to the 14 by 12 box, and I'm gonna have to put that down because that is just too heavy to lift. 14 by 12 boxes full of honey are outrageously heavy, especially when you're lifting them from that height. So I had to put that one down. Let's get in here, have a look how much honey is in the 14 by 12 box that used to be the brood box that we switched up to the top. So this is the top of the 14 by 12 box. As you can see, full of bees, lots of bees. Let's get inside, see what the frames are looking like. So here we go. Some very nice frames full of open stores there, starting to cap it all off as well. And then this frame down here, very similar. I love when you get frames like this where they're empty at the bottom. Just starting to draw them out. You get the full range of stores. You'd be amazed how much honey you get in a 14 by 12 frame, effectively 3 super frames. So that one there is like a full super frame, and then you've got another bit down at the bottom. So lots of honey in that box. Really happy indeed. So then we move on to the 2 National Deeps that we were using as supers. I'm expecting there to be a lot of honey in there, probably a little bit more than in these 2 boxes. And these 2 boxes are jam-packed full of honey. You can just see though, look in the air, you can tell this colony's not swarmed. Look how many bees there are. It's nearly 7 foot tall, this hive, and it is full to the brim with bees. And that is because we did the Demarée split at the right time to stop that urge to swarm. That's why it's such a powerful manipulation, because it, like I said before, it gives you the ability to stop them swarming, but also to time that maximum capacity of bees. With the flows, and then you end up with boxes like this, which is just stacks and stacks of honey. So then this is the first national deep, and I love it when I see the little bit of brace comb in the middle like that. They only ever do that when they're full boxes. You never see it on an empty box, so it's a really good sign. I'll pull out a couple of frames, show you how much honey is in here. And as suspected, jam-packed full of honey. Said it before on a Demerara split, you don't get this One box is full, let's go and work on the next box up. They scatter it around a bit, but everything here is capped, is obviously full, and then all of this stuff down here is probably 70 or 80% full. They will cap that in the next couple of weeks, no problem. It's just coming up to the 20th of July at the moment, so we've still got maybe a couple of weeks that they're going to be able to go out and get forage around here. They will finish all of this off without a doubt. So in terms of weight per volume, that's, that's the heaviest one so far. That Such a heavy box. I reckon we've got 35-40 pounds of honey in this one. And then on to the next box down. Now bees are getting a little bit cranky here, but looks like it's full again. I'll get inside, pull out some frames, see what we've got. So this is the one that started off as foundation. As you can see, fully drawn out, full with honey, and they started capping it all as well. So every single box is full of honey. And they're in various stages of capping it over. That's definitely the lightest box, but it's still pretty heavy box, maybe 15 or 20 pounds of honey in that one. And then we're going to see how the brood box is looking. I know this is what you've all been waiting for. I'll show you every single frame in the brood box if these bees will let me, because they've gone a little bit crazy. I've not looked in these for a good week or so, and they're at maximum strength. Strength now. This is one of the downsides that you get with this: is that you get monster colonies, and not in an aggressive way. They're not really trying to sting me at all. I blocked their route, so they don't really know where they're going. But you just end up with huge, huge amounts of bees, and for some people that can be a little bit off-putting. So this is what the brood nest is looking like now. I said it before, but look how many bees you've got in that brood nest, and that's not even the half of it. 'Cause there's so many out that don't even know how to get back in 'cause I've blocked their flight path. But I think you'll agree that is a full brood box. So I thought it was potentially gonna be a nightmare 'cause there are just so many bees here. There you go, that's the queen, the exact same 2019 blue queen with her wing clipped as we had before. She's stayed put. And then that is the frame that she's on. So I'm gonna flash up all of the other frames now, show you how good they are. Right, so you can see she has been very busy indeed. And would you believe it, they have got swarm preps going on at the bottom. So I've timed this perfectly because they're trying to swarm. Uh, they couldn't have timed it any better really. This is the first time I've looked in these for about 10 days and I've got the queen. So I'm gonna have to do a manipulation. I'll do that on a separate video though, but I'll just go through all of the frames here And show you how well they're looking. So there's my next frame full of brood, brood in all stages, nice ring of capped brood around the edge, and then loads of larvae, loads of eggs. Really nice looking frame. And I know this is going to seem like it's a setup, but honestly, it is not a setup. They have started swarm preps in the last 10 days when I've not checked. So we have swarm cells over there. Like I said, I will deal with that in a, in a separate video. Separate video. Need to take care of that because they will swarm. But goes to show how good that preemptive demerare is. It's knocked them back 8 weeks and it's allowed them to get that big and that strong, and then it's allowed me to do the manipulation later on in the year. So there's the next frame, lovely frame of brood. Gonna keep on going now, plowing on. Let's get to the next frame. There we go, another lovely frame of brood. This colony Really is so strong. And then the final frame, really nice pollen frame there, but they are starting to backfill. They are losing a little bit of space, bit of congestion, and that's probably why they're looking to swarm now. So there we go, that is what a colony looks like 8 weeks after I did a Demarais split to stop them swarming. And how well has it worked? Like, just look at the amount of bees that we've got here. Stupendous amount of bees. And we've delayed it enough that gone to swarm again. And some colonies, they will just try and swarm on you. But what we've done in that preemptive split is we've delayed that for at least 8 weeks, giving us the chance for the colony to build up that much, give us a bumper spring and summer honey crop. And now we've got the ability to do a split. So what I'm going to do here is I'm going to do a simple Pagden split, easiest one to do at this time of the year. I'm going to use those queen cells. I'll split I'll split it out from the queen. I'll put the colony next to it there. I'll let the bees choose where they go. Really, really simple. So if you enjoy watching beekeeping videos, especially where there's so many bees like this and you want to know a really good artificial swarm method, make sure you hit the subscribe button because that's going to be the next video on the channel.