In this episode Laurence Edwards returns to the River Apiary to evaluate the strength of his nuc colonies and perform an equalising operation. He walks through each nuc, noting frame counts of bees (most around three frames, with a few strong colonies at six frames) and identifies which are too weak or too strong for immediate splitting. Using a systematic approach, he removes the best emerging‑brood frames from the strongest hives and adds them to the weakest, avoiding egg‑stage frames to maintain temperature stability. The goal of this equalising is to bring all colonies to a similar strength so that, within 1–2 weeks, ten evenly‑sized nucs can be split into twenty, then later into forty (and potentially up to eighty) colonies by mid‑to‑late summer. He outlines a timeline—full strength by early June, subsequent splits, and the logistical plan of moving colonies between apiaries. Throughout, he shares practical observations (bee behavior, a close encounter with a bee, weather considerations) and expresses optimism about achieving rapid expansion if conditions remain favorable.
Chapters
Right, so we're back in the apiary from hell, I mean the River Apiary. We're going to go through the nucs now and do a little bit of equalizing. Some of these nucs are already full, completely full, not quite strong enough to make a split yet but not far from it at all. And I would say on average they're over 3 frames, and then there's one or two that's just on a couple of frames. So all I'm going to do is I'm going to knock back the bigger ones, share the brood with the smaller ones. I'll give you a quick look inside each one first though, just so you can see the Status of them, and I'll leave that on the camera. That scared the absolute life out of me. I thought it was like a bear or something, but it was just a bee coming onto my face. It's the middle of May, and already these bees are looking really good. So I think with a little bit of equalisation, they are going to be full, definitely full come the end of May, which means that we can make our split, and then we are well set for forty nucs. So what I'm going to do today is I'm going to whip all of the roofs off all at once and just give you a quick run over just so you can see the average strength. And then we'll move some brood around just to do some equalizing. So that's by far and away the weakest one, still over only 2 frames of bees, and you can see if you get them small they really struggle to take off. That's the one next to it, slightly bigger I would say, maybe 3 or 4 times the size. And then the one next door again, that's over maybe 3.5, 4 frames now, but you can see they're coming along nicely. This one here, probably one of the smaller ones, covering still about 3 frames of bees though. And this line here is all pretty average, I would say 3 frames of bees, that's pretty much what I would expect. You can see again, very Similar size to the one previously, and then that one there has been going out and getting loads of honey. But yeah, again, 3 or 4 frames of bees. As you can see, there's a bit of a theme— 3 frames of bees, and then these last 2 are just monsters, completely full, 6 frames of bees. Final one, really nice strong colony. Let's start equalizing them now. So you might think equalizing is maybe a bit of cheating. It's not really. You're doing a favor to the smaller colonies by giving them a boost of single frame of emerging brood in between the 2 most active frames, and then you're actually doing a favor to the bigger colonies as well because it gives them more time to build up, to expand, to fill that box. I want them even. We're equalizing, taking from the good ones, giving it to the poor ones in order to try and get 10 equal-sized colonies which I can split and turn into 20. So a little bit of shuffling around with that brood now, and then we'll give it a week And I reckon we'll come back in a week to 10 days and we will have 10 even colonies. So these are the frames that I'm taking. I'm taking the very best brood frame from the strongest colonies, the one that looks closest to emerging brood, and I'm going to give that to the weaker colonies. Don't give them frames of eggs, try not to give them brood in all stages. You want big slabs of brood because they maintain their temperature a lot better than frames of eggs. Right, so I've been through, I only touched a couple of them, I just took from the strongest colonies Gave to the weakest colonies. All of those ones that were sitting around average on 3 frames, I've just left those because there's no need to equalize them because they're pretty much average anyway. Just going to give you a quick rundown now to show you all the front of these hives because it's really nice to see them all so active. So here we go, starting with that one on the right, that's the weakest, and as you can see, all of them have got plenty of bees now. Just a matter of time for them to boost up, get that brood working for them, And then the 3 over here, they are the strongest by a long way. 1 week, 10 days, I reckon they'll be full, then we can start thinking about splits. So I'm happy with the progress, gonna give it now another week, 10 days, maybe 2 weeks. I reckon though, 1st of June, they are all going to be full and they're going to be primed for another split. The split next time won't take anywhere near as long because we've got 6 frames of bees and brood to share. We'll split it into 3, we'll take everything to a new apiary, so we'll have 10 in this apiary, split those, take 20 to another apiary, do the videos there, maybe they're a little bit nicer, and then we'll get those 20 built up over 6 frames, and then we'll do the final splits and bring the 40 back here. I reckon we're going to be up to 40 come maybe middle to end of July. You never know, we might even get to 80 splits. Unbelievable. If we get to 80 splits out of a single colony starting kind of early May, that will be really, really something. We need the weather, we need good queens, we need a little bit of luck. This is going to be a fun one.
