How To Start Beekeeping – Everything You Need Before Getting Your First Bees

Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping. Today I'm going to talk to you about preparing for your first nucleus of bees. So up until this point, I'm going to assume that you've done your homework, you've done your research, and you definitely want to keep bees. Either in your garden or they're in a separate apiary. That's a really important caveat to this video. Don't follow the steps in this video unless you're 100% sure you want to keep bees. Ideally, go to your local beekeeping association, do one of their open days, actually get hands-on with some bees before you make the leap into buying all of the equipment that you need, because beekeeping can be a very, very expensive hobby and there's quite a lot involved in it as well. So just make sure before you follow the steps in this video that you're 100% certain you want to keep bees. And obviously I encourage you to do it. It's a great hobby, really, really fun. All the family can get involved. It's nice to keep bees. You help save the bees and you get lovely honey at the end of it. So it's always a big thumbs up from me. I think it's a great pastime. Right, so preparing for your first nucleus. What we're going to talk about in this video is the different type of nucs. Are on offer. So we're going to go through all of the different types of nucs, we're going to talk about the equipment that you need to buy in terms of kind of the actual hives and all of the ancillary items that come with that, we're going to talk about personal protective clothing, so your bee suits, your gloves, your wellies, we're going to talk a little bit about frame sizes, making sure that you're getting the correct nuc to fit the hive that they're going into, we're going to talk a bit about location, where's best to keep bees and where's best not to keep bees, We're going to talk about something that's often missed, I think, in these videos, and that is feeding. When to feed, when to stop feeding. We're going to talk about what to expect on the day, a little bit about the timings, a little bit about the preferences in terms of timings, and just generally what happens on the day when you collect your nuc. We're going to talk about the first inspection, so maybe a week, 10 days after you've installed the nuc, the first inspection, what you should be looking out for. And then we're going to talk about weekly inspections after that and kind of the ongoing management of the colony throughout the different stages of the season. The final thing we're going to talk about is swarming and how to reduce the chances of your colony swarming, because a colony and a nucleus colony can swarm in the first year. So you need to follow a few simple steps to make sure that that doesn't happen. And that's it. So there's quite a lot of content in this video, probably going to be about half an hour long, but I wanted to do a really, really good Detailed video for all the people that are buying nucs for me this year. Do you want me to sit down, watch the video, make sure you understand all of the key steps as I follow in my beekeeping, and then for me to give you some recommendations on some of that perfect kit as far as I can see it? Right, so we'll get going with the video then. Final thing to say is if you want to become a member of our YouTube channel now, it's £4.99 a month and you get early access to all of these YouTube videos. So some of them can be kind of 3 or 4 months out of date. If you sign up to the channel membership for £4.99 a month, you get the videos as and when they're recorded. So this one today is being recorded on the 21st of September, should be uploaded by the end of the week. It will go live on the free side of the beekeeping channel probably around January or February. You may be getting a 3 or 4 month head start on the free videos that are on the channel. Right, so let's crack on with the video then. So the first thing I want to talk about is the different types of nucs that are available on the market. And the different frame sizes that are available. So if you're buying your nuc from Black Mountain Honey, we stock 2 types of nuc. We do a 5-frame nuc and we do a 6-frame nuc. And the 5-frame nuc comes in a Correx transport nuc container. That's not to keep bees in for any longer than 24 hours. And then the 6-frame nuc, which costs a little bit more, comes in a poly box. So you get your own poly box that you can take away with you, and then you can use that for kind of swarm manipulation later on in the year. If you ask me which one is better, I always say go for the 6-frame with the poly nuc box. Costs about £30 or £40 more, but the boxes cost me £30, so you're pretty much getting the extra frame for free. The colonies don't get moved out of the boxes that they overwinter in, so it's just a lot more kind of easier on the bees. There's no transport required. I would always say go for the 6-frame option and always go for the poly box option. Gives you a lot of additional benefits in terms of on the day as well when you're transferring these colonies over. We send out a number of these 6-frame poly nucs in the post, and they're fine for kind of like 24 hours in the postal system, but then when you get them home, you've probably got like up to a couple of weeks depending on the size of the colony. You can just leave them in the poly box for a couple of weeks, and then you can transfer them over into their full hive. So as a choice between a 5-frame and a 6-frame, or a Correx nuc and a poly nuc, I'd always go with the 6-frame poly nuc option. Now, in terms of frame sizing, this is a really easy mistake to make. Make sure you choose your frame sizing. That's the first thing you need to do. So say, right, I want to keep bees. Next thing is, what's the frame sizing I'm going to use? And the most popular frame sizing in the UK is the standard national sizing. We only sell bees and nucleus colonies on standard national sizing. We don't do them on shallows, which is what we use for supers. We don't do them on 14x12, which is actually what we use, like this colony here is on a 14x12. We don't sell nucs on 14x12 format unless you kind of specifically ask us for that, and then we can put together a package for you. We sell them on standard national deep frames. Not Langstroth, not commercial, not Dadant, not Manley, none of the other frames. We use national frames, and the reason we do that is because that is what the majority of people in the UK use. No other reason, there are much better frames than National, but don't let that put you off. The, the kit in the UK is designed for the National market, and the kit in the UK for the National market is the cheapest that you will get. So I would recommend a National frame hive. So in terms of where you're getting your nucs from, obviously I'd like to recommend Black Mountain Honey as your nuc supplier. We do nucs for collection and we do nucs for delivery now, so anywhere across the UK we can supply you with nucs. If you're not going to get it from me, and I do have a very, very limited amount left at the moment, so the chances are you're probably not, just try and get them from a reputable breeder. I mean, someone who's not going to give you— put together kind of a nuc for £100 and give you like loads of old rubbish frames and give you like a swarm that they captured last year. The main important thing that you're getting with that colony is you want to see a good amount of stores, you want at least 3 frames of brood, preferably 4 frames of brood, You want nice healthy brood. You want an overwintered queen from the previous year. So for 2021, you want a 2020 queen. Just make sure you're getting it from a reputable breeder. Make sure that it's on the correct frame sizing. So let's talk a little bit about the equipment that you need. Now I suspect if you've kind of already placed an order for a nuc, you would have bought a lot of this equipment. If you haven't, wait for the sales. They get a lot of good sales kind of later on in the year, especially around the kind of December. January time, so just into the new year, kind of first 2 weeks of January, you can pick up some really good sales. You can go for a wooden hive or you can go for a poly hive. I have no preference really over the 2. They're both really good hives. It's completely dependent on your situation and what you want to get out of your bees. There are benefits to one and benefits to the other, and I've done a separate video. I'll pop it up in the corner, poly versus wood. But just make sure you buy the hive and it's on the correct format. So a national hive in poly or wood. Now, if you wanted me to commit to a specific hive, I'm happy to do that. And I would go with an Abello poly hive. That's my kind of hive of choice at the moment. And that is the hive, if I was going to go out and buy a hive, I would go with the Abello poly hive. Comes with a floor, a brood box, a queen excluder, 2 supers, and a roof. Comes in a variety of colors, has loads of really good benefits in terms of the poly. But also it's compatible with all of the other wooden stuff that you get, like crown boards and queen excluders. So other things you're going to need, you're going to need a smoker. Now, I wouldn't worry too much about spending a load of money on a smoker. You can pick up some really rubbishy ones from like £5 or £6 up to £50 or £60 for like a really good quality Dadant one. If you've got 1 or 2 hives though, I would just get a really cheap smoker. They're cheap and cheerful. The bigger ones, all you really get out of the bigger ones is kind of longevity of the smoke. So the smoke lasts considerably longer. If you're just inspecting one or two hives, just go for one of the cheaper ones. Really kind of doesn't make a massive difference. Go down to Simon the Beekeeper, go down to Abello, pick up one of their cheapest smokers that they do, and that should see you good for at least a couple of seasons. See if you like the hobby, and then you can upgrade your smoker at a later date. The smoker that I use, or the smoker that I ran over recently, so I'm using my backup now, but I'm going to buy a new one, is the Daydent XL. That's my favourite smoker. It's about £50 or £60, but it's built to last as long as you don't try and run over it in your pickup truck. And you can fill it up, and I mean, mine lasts for 3 or 4 hours at a time. You don't need to keep on going back and refilling it. So that's definitely my vote for the smoker. Then again, you need a hive tool. That's the next on the list of equipment. Choose a hive tool. It doesn't make a huge amount of difference which hive tool you get. Some people like the J-shaped ones, Some people like the regular shaped ones. I like mine that kind of sits on my little strap. It really doesn't make a massive difference. If I had to make a choice, I'd go with just a regular hive tool. I'll show you a picture of it there, but they're all much of a muchness. The J-shaped tools are good, but they do force you into levering the frames in a bit of an unnatural way. And you speak to some commercial bee farmers, they really don't like the J-shaped ones because it leads to a lot more frame breakages, which isn't a good thing. So I would just go with a standard, cheap-as-you-like hive tool. Now, a quick thing that I forgot to say about the hives is that if you're buying your hives secondhand, make sure you sterilize them. So if you're getting a wooden one, you want to scorch it with a blowtorch. If you're getting a poly one, make sure you kind of submerge it in some water with some bleach. You want to kill off all bacteria, all kind of spores of any type. The only thing it's not going to kill off is AFB. If there's any suspected AFB, you want to burn all the equipment anyway. New kit is definitely better, and the price between new kit and old kit isn't massive anyway. So I would always recommend new kit. If you're using secondhand kit, make sure you sterilize it. Well, the next thing that I'm going to recommend on this equipment list is something that always gets missed off of the equipment list. And when I'm running through this checklist with people when they come to buy their nuc, it's often missed off and they don't have it and they have to go out and buy it and it causes a bit of an issue. And that is a feeder. So just make sure when you're buying all of your equipment, you buy a feeder. I don't mind which feeder you buy, all of them work well. So you can buy a Miller feeder, an Ashforth feeder, a Rapid feeder, an English feeder, loads of different types of feeders. You can have a frame feeder if that's what you want. My recommendation is again an Ashforth feeder. So Abello do one, Swenty do one, Paynes and Maysmore do one. So if you've gone with the Paynes or Maysmore hive, Get the feeder to fit their hive. But I would always recommend get the biggest feeder that you possibly can and get it from day one. It's a really important piece of kit, something that's often forgotten. Now, when you're buying your kit as well, it comes with 2 supers. Chances are you're probably going to only really need 2 supers in the first year. If you can get some extra supers at a cheap price, I'd get them. I think a good average to aim for for each hive is 4 supers. That's what we use here at Black Mountain Honey. We make sure that we've always got 4 supers per hive. It can catch you out a little bit because some hives use more, some hives use less, and in really busy seasons it's probably not enough and you need to extract and then put the boxes back on straight away. But 4 supers is a good average, and if you live down south, you know what I mean, you probably will fill them in at least your second year. So make sure you've got enough spares. While we're talking about spares as well, the other thing that's really important to have is a a poly nuc box. That is the number one best piece of advice that you can keep. Keep it close to your apiary at all times. When you're doing your swarm management, a poly nuc box comes in so valuable because you can drop the queen in there, put the lid on, keep her safe while you're doing your inspections. You can make splits, you can do various things with a poly nuc box. And if you've only got one hive, it's great just to have that on standby. So instead of buying one for new for £30, when you get your nuc, ask for it to come in a poly nuc box. Breeders will give them away for kind of like £25-£30 extra on top of the nuc price. It's a really good investment and an excellent spare to have. So the next thing to add in terms of equipment is the frames and foundation. Now don't get caught out with this one. You need frames for all of your supers. You need foundation for all of your supers. Make sure you get the right frames— national frames and national super foundation, and then for your brood box, you don't need the full amount of frames. Remember, when you buy your nuc, if you're buying a 6-frame nuc, you only need an additional 4 or 5 frames depending how many frames your box can hold. So you don't need to buy all of them. So what we do at Black Mountain Honey is that you can— we can offer you the chance to buy those additional frames and foundation at cost price. So as opposed to going away and buying 10 and having 5 that you literally can't do anything with, We'll give you the chance to buy those additional 5 at cost price, so we'll literally sell them to you for the exact same amount of money that we buy them for and just give them to you when you come to collect your nuc. So we don't do that on our deliveries unfortunately because it's just really difficult to deliver them, but we can do it on all of our collection orders. So just make sure you don't order too many frames and foundation for your brood box. And then the final thing on the equipment list is you need some sort of stand. You can see here I use tyres, I use pallets, I use plastic pallets, I use breeze blocks, I use anything that isn't a really expensive stand. There are some lovely stands on the market. Abello do these kind of splayed out metal ones that you add your wood to, and they're really good top quality stands that will last forever. They're very expensive though. And when you've got a lot of colonies, I just use plastic pallets. I find they work fine. So you can make yourself a nice stand, you can do whatever which way you want to do it, but you need some way to get that hive Off the ground. You can see here, do you know what I mean? If it was on the ground, it'd be really difficult to manage, but where I've got that there, it's just at the right height, and then I'm not damaging my back when I'm kind of going and doing my brood inspections. So they're the main things really. There's not a huge amount of equipment that you need when you come to start beekeeping. I've covered the main ones. You need your hive, you need your hive tool, you need your smoker, you need your feeder. Obviously you need to go and buy your nuc, and then you need a stand to put it on. They're the, they're the main ones. As soon as you kind of get into beekeeping, you realize there's loads of other stuff to buy, but for the first few weeks, that's the main things that you need covered. Things to not go and buy: don't start going and buying extraction machinery, don't go buying uncapping machines. You don't need any of that stuff at the moment. My advice, if you're keeping 1 or 2 hives, you literally do not need anything. Just crush it into a sieve, crush it into some muslin, some pressure on it, do a crush and strain method. We'll show you in a separate video, and that is how I would extract all of my honey if I just had 1 or 2 hives. Right, so the next thing to talk about is protection equipment. So we're talking bee suit, we're talking gloves, and we're talking wellies or shoes. So we'll start off with the bee suit. My advice, definitely go for a top-to-bottom bee suit, a full-body bee suit. You know I love my BB Wear Ultra Suit, but it is a little bit pricey. And I think if you've just got one or two hives in the garden that are a nice temperament, potentially a little bit of overkill. I would, however, recommend the BB Wear Classic top-to-bottom full suit. It's built so well. That would be my recommendation. I wouldn't go for a smock. I used to use a smock and the bees just get up there. It's not nice, especially if you ever come across some nasty bees. It's much easier. And my recommendation would be a top-to-bottom— Suit. Full bee suit and then you're well protected. Next thing is gloves. Now if you can start off using nitrile gloves and make sure that they don't get up your wrists, that is definitely the way forward. It's by far and away the most hygienic way to deal with your bees. That would be my recommendation. The next one is they do what's called a mapper rubber glove, and you've probably seen me using these in my videos. So that's the blue glove that comes down to about there, and then you have like a fabric section there. They're about £10 or £12 each and they last for ages. I'll probably get through 2 or 3 of those in a season before I start kind of like snapping them on hive ratchet straps and things and making holes in them. But they're really, really good. What I wouldn't recommend is anything that you can't wash without heavily degrading it. So don't go for a leather, goatskin leather or calves leather. Don't be fooled into thinking you're going to get kind of a more, a better feel for your bees by using leather. If you want a better feel, use a nitrile glove. If a nitrile glove is too thin for you, whether stinging you through it, you can use a marigold, just kitchen washing up marigolds. They're really good as well. And then I would use the nappa glove. So if you want my recommendation, it's a blue long-sleeved nitrile glove. That's what I would go for. If they're stinging you through that, try a marigold. If you still can't get on with the marigolds, go for a blue nappa glove. And they're the 3 that I would go for. Final one is footwear, and I always say go with wellies. Wellies is definitely the way forward. I know some people don't like wellies, and they say it doesn't give them enough support, but I say you're not using the right welly. So the welly that we use is an Agil, if I'm pronouncing that correctly, Parkours Outlast. This is the picture of them here. They're not cheap. I mean, I use them because we go out on loads of hikes, we take the dog for a walk. They're excellent, really good wellies. They've got an amazing— it's called an Outlast lining. It wicks the sweat away so you don't get really hot in them. It's got excellent ankle support, really good sizing. Most importantly though, the bees can't get in there and you don't get any fatigue and any splits. Always wear your trousers on the outside of the welly just so you can see the bottom part of the shoe, and then you've got excellent protection. So good protection on the gloves, get the right gloves, get the right wellies, get the right bee suit. Full bee suit and you'll be protected from any bee stings. But obviously, I'm just going to throw the caveat in there now, you will get stung. Bees sting you, and at different times of the year they get grumpy. There might be not enough food around, or they might not like the forage that's available, or it might be too hot, or it might be too cold. You'll get stung. As a beekeeper, you will get stung, so you just need to be prepared for that. And if you have a really bad allergy, beekeeping is definitely not for you. You shouldn't keep bees if you're allergic to bees. Right, the next one is location. Have a real long hard think about where you're going to keep your bees. Plan it out before the day. Don't just kind of think that's where I'm going to keep my bees. Put it there, set up your hive there, imagine the bees flying in and out of it, imagine what it's like on a really busy day. Check out some of my videos and see what the colonies are like on a busy day. Do you want that kind of activity on your patio? Because even the best Nicest, gentlest bees, do you know what I mean? If they come flying past and get stuck in your hair, they think they're being attacked and they will sting you. So if you've got kids or grandkids or anything like that playing around in your garden, I wouldn't suggest putting bees in the garden. It's just something that I wouldn't do, and I say that from experience because I've had lots and lots of bees in my garden. Now, that's not to say that it doesn't work in gardens. Not all gardens are the same. If you've got the space to do it in your garden, that's great, and you can make it work. I had a chap last year bought a colony from me called Simon, and I know he's happy for me to share this video with you, so I'll put it up there now. He built the most amazing contraption in his garden, and what he did is he put some posts in the ground, he put some clear Perspex up, and what it did is he built like an artificial screen to stop the bees flying in the direction he didn't want them to fly. So he's put the bees right up against the fence, put some nice clear Perspex Along the side. So what he can do is he can stand there behind the Perspex, watch the bees, get all of the benefits and the nice things about watching the bees, but the bees have to come out and go and fly off in that direction, and there's just no issue in terms of the flight path. So it can work in the garden, just have a long hard think about it. Once you've put your bees in there and once you've installed the bees, and we'll cover that later on in the video, you cannot say, right, I want to move them from over there 10 meters in the other direction. You just can't do that with bees. They know where you've put them and they remember that location. They won't find the hive. So unless you want to kind of move it a foot a day and kind of gradually move it to the new position, which can be really frustrating and awkward, I would just make sure you get the correct position as soon as you possibly can. And my advice, like we're doing in this video, I'm giving you my top tips and my advice as well. Find an out apiary. It makes beekeeping so, so much easier if you can find someone else's land to keep your bees on. A farmland somewhere out the way, some woodland. Loads of people want bees on their land and they don't want to have to manage them. So all you need to do is, I mean, just ask around. People are very, very accommodating and want to keep bees on their land. You just need to ask the question. So I'd always recommend keeping bees on someone else's land. So like I said, in terms of setup, just make sure you get your hive set up before you kind of get the nuc being delivered in the post. Especially wooden hives, they take a while to set up. I remember putting together my first hive, took me ages, and it's really difficult to put together. Once you put a few of them together, you get the hang of it and you get to know the kind of different bee spaces and what fits where and where to glue and what to screw and what to nail. But the first time round, it can take a while. And then obviously, once you want to put that in the location and work out the flight paths, just get it done. Get it done over the winter when it's quiet. Give yourself at least a couple of weeks notice before that hive, before that nuc's going to come to you. Make sure you've got everything in place. Make sure you've got your feeders, your sugar syrup, your frames, your foundation, your smoker, your bee suit, everything. All of the things we're listing in this video, make sure they're there. Do you know what I mean? 3 or 4 weeks before the nuc is due to come. So my cutoff for that would kind of be middle of Feb, back end of Feb. Try and be fully prepared by then, and then you're ready for whenever that nuc turns up. But we'll give you notice if you bought the nuc from us. We'll give you at least 1 week's notice before it's ready for collection or before it's ready for delivery. Right, so on the day that the nuc comes, so we'll do the collection side first and then we'll do the delivery side. So on the collection side, I'll give you a notification a week in advance, and when I say a notification, I will call you up and I'll either text you or call you, and I'll make sure that I get a positive response back from you. Obviously, there's the outstanding money to be paid But as soon as we've kind of agreed that and the funds are sorted, we'll give you that notification 1 week in advance and we'll let you know the day that the bees are ready for collection. So say for example it's on a Saturday, we'll do it as early as we possibly can on a Saturday morning, say kind of any time from 7 AM onwards. We'll agree a mutual time with you. We do a number of pickups throughout the day, so we might have kind of 10 or 15 people coming, so you'll get a dedicated time slot. Please try and stick to the time slots, it makes kind of the COVID management so much easier. And then what you'll do is you'll drive over to us and we will give you the nuc. It's as simple as that. All you do is you come and you pick up a box of bees. The bees are more than happy kind of sitting in the car for a couple of hours. All we say is though, if it's a warm day, just keep the windows down. Don't bring your family, don't bring your kids, don't bring your pets along with you. It's just best to come kind of on your own, With space in the car to put that nuc of bees, come and collect it, get it back home, and then you want to put it straight into the spot where you're going to keep your bees. Now what I'm going to do here is I'm going to refer you to another one of our videos, and that video is about adding a nucleus into a beehive. So we've done a full video, lasts about 20 minutes, and gives you all of the details as to how you put a nucleus of bees into a beehive. Don't want to kind of make this video unnecessarily long, It's already kind of getting towards the 30-minute mark, so I'm going to lead you out to that video now. Just follow on that video there, you can watch that one at your leisure. So I know I touched on it in the video that I've sent you off on to watch there, but what I would say, and I've probably changed my recommendations for this a little bit over the years, is as soon as that nucleus is installed within the hive, so you've found the correct location, you've put the hive there, you've let them reorientate out of the nuc, You've come back later on in the day, you've swapped the frames over to the hive, and then you've taken the nucleus away and put the hive back in the position where the bees have orientated to. The first thing you need to do is you need to put the feeder on. So the setup that you're going to have at this point is you're going to have a very similar setup to what we've got here. This is, in effect, the setup that you will have. You'll have your floor, you'll have your brood box that will only have 6 frames in it, and then you'll have empty foundation frames there and empty foundation frames there. You'll then have your queen excluder, and then you'll have your feeder on top. So it's either an Ashforth feeder full of syrup and then the roof, or you'll have an empty super with either a rapid feeder or an English feeder in that. And the reason I just kind of make note and make reference to that setup there is that is what it's going to be like for a good few weeks. And what you want to do is you want to build that colony up, and the way you build that colony up is by feeding them 1:1 sugar syrup. Or you can give them 2:1 syrup. What you need to do is just slow and steady. Yeah, so don't fill the feeder up with 14 litres because all they'll do is they'll suck it down and put it into stores. You want to simulate a flow which stimulates brood rearing. That's what you're doing in the spring. You're doing it, you're saying to the queen, we've got a regular supply of nectar here, we want you to expand the size of this colony. So by doing that, feeding them kind of 1 or 2 litres every 2 or 3 days, The bees are going to go up there, they'll take that feed down, they'll draw the foundation out, they'll store a little bit of it, they'll alert the queen, they'll say to the queen, lay like crazy, there's a really good flow on here, we can get big, we can get prepared for the season, get that colony nice and big and expanding. Then I'm going to show you, send you out to another video now, and that video is when to add a super to your colony. So you can go away, watch that video at your leisure, but the gist of it is When 80% of those frames are drawn. So with a 6-frame nuc in a 10-frame box, all you're looking for there is an additional frame either side completely drawn. So 80% of the frames are drawn, you add your super on. And take the feeder away. This is where people have had issues before. They just keep on feeding. They just think, well, it can't hurt the colony if I feed them too much. And that's wrong. It will make your colony swarm. Guaranteed way to get your colony to swarm within the first few weeks is you feed, feed, feed, feed, feed. 8 weeks later, the swarm's gone. Because what you're doing there is the colony's building up, building up, building up. It's got no space to go. It fills up, then it gets natural flows on. The colony gets filled and filled and filled with syrup or nectar. There's nowhere for the queen to lay. She lays a queen cell, and then that's it, she's gone. That is how to make your colony swarm. So follow that advice. You want to feed Feed the colony as best as you can. Get them to build up to 80% of the frames drawn out. Take the feeder away, queen excluder on, super on, and then you monitor. Then you're into your inspections. So the next thing to say is the first inspection. So once you've kind of followed the advice that I've given you on how to put your nucleus into a beehive, the next thing you need to do a week or ten days later is you need to go in and do your first inspection. Now we're going to do a new video of this later on in the year. We've not done this video yet. We're going to do a video detailing exactly what to do on your first inspection, but here is a kind of like a bit of a preview of that video. And all I'm going to say is don't worry about seeing the queen, that's really not that important. Yeah, you don't need to see the queen. What you're looking out for is you don't want to see any queen cells. Yeah, so 10 days later, no queen cells. And 10 days later, you want to see eggs. If you see eggs and no queen cells, that colony is exactly where you need it to be, and you can just close the colony up and continue feeding them if they need it, or you can take the feeder away and put the super on. Completely dependent on the conditions, how well they've taken down that syrup. But what you don't want to be doing is kind of going through each and every frame worrying about seeing the queen. All you're likely to do in that situation is to damage the queen. And that's not what you want to do. So just look out for the eggs, make sure there's no queen cells, close them up. Then you're moving into weekly inspections, and this is really important. Yeah, beekeeping is about regular weekly inspections and giving the colony what they need after you've done your inspection. So you want to get in there, just get into a routine at the same time every single week. We do ours on a Saturday morning. We go around every single colony, And we know we're on 7-day intervals. That way, very unlikely to lose a swarm. Not to say that you might not have missed a queen cell, or one might be forming literally the day that you're there and you miss it, but the chances are you won't kind of get any swarming if you do those 7-day intervals. And then what you need to do is you need to take immediate action as soon as you see a swarm cell. So we've got loads of videos on that. Take a look at some of the swarm management videos that we do. Colonies can swarm in their first year. I know people say that it's highly unlikely. It's not. Like, colonies will swarm whenever they want. That is what bees do. We try and breed our bees as best as we possibly can to stop them from swarming, so we don't kind of make splits from swarmy colonies because we think that breeds excessive swarminess into them. We make on-demand splits from colonies that show signs of non-swarminess, so we So we're trying to breed that out of the bees, but ultimately bees will swarm, but we try our very best to stop that happening. So we've got loads of videos on kind of how to do your weekly inspections and what to look out for, and I'll feed them up in the top left-hand corner. Take a look at some of the other videos we do. Loads of information at Black Mountain Honey on how to manage your colonies. So the final thing to say in this video is enjoy your bees. Don't get too stressed out about it. Like I sometimes do, like it's supposed to be a hobby. It's a really nice thing to do. It's great for your mental health to go out there, enjoy your bees, take your time over it. Don't get stressed out about finding things like you find a swarm cell or something's not gone right. You learn from it and see it as a kind of challenge. You know what I mean? If you see a swarm cell, what can you do differently next time? How can you manage that to kind of maintain honey production? Can you do a demarée? Do you want to do a split and then you've got 2 colonies? I mean, it's really interesting. You can just see everything as a challenge, but it can be very easy to get stressed out about stuff. So my main tips are, I mean, you want to avoid that colony swarming as best as you possibly can, but the ultimate aim is you want to keep that colony alive. That's your ultimate aim. You want to get it through the year, get it through the next year, maybe make some splits from it, and then you become self-sufficient in your bees. So final couple of other things to say is varroa treatments. So we do an Apivar treatment in autumn on our bees. We also do an Apibioxal treatment, which is like an oxalic vaporisation treatment, in December. So when you get your bees in April or May, the mite load should be relatively low. There will be mites there because there's mites on every single colony of beehives in the UK. The management of the varroa mite is about keeping that level as low as it possibly can be. Once you get that nuc, the responsibility is yours to keep that level of mites low. So if you get that nuc and then you don't treat, the chances are within a couple of years that colony will fail due to high varroa load. So what I would recommend in terms of a varroa treatment is using an Apivar. So it's an amitraz, which is a miticide treatment after you've taken your honey supers off around August time, and then preferably an Apibioxal, so an oxalic-based treatment around December when there's minimal brood. And those 2 treatments are really easy to administer, really quick, and they keep that level down to a manageable level within the colony. So I hope that's been useful for you, and I really hope your adventure into beekeeping is a successful one. Final word of warning is that it's massively addictive. So this is— if this is your first year in beekeeping, just remember this video when you're watching it and you're getting your first nuc and how excited you are, and then fast forward 12 months or 24 months You'll have 6 hives, or almost guaranteed to have 6 hives in that time. It's addictive. You split the bees, you take over colonies from someone else, and before you know it, you're kind of into the bee farming business and you're supplying honey to everyone across your region. But it's really great. Just kind of embrace it. The biggest challenge, and my biggest challenge in beekeeping, is keeping the numbers of bees down. Exponential expansion is really, really easy with bees. You just have to add hives and feed, and you can turn 10 hives into 1,000 hives in a few years. The difficult thing is saying, right, I've got 100 hives, or I've got 10 hives, or 5 hives, and next year I want to have the same amount of hives. That is the real challenge of beekeeping. And if you can crack that early on in beekeeping, so you've just got 1 or 2 hives and you want to stay at 1 or 2 hives, you've pretty much mastered it. That is what the best beekeepers do. is they don't make unnecessary splits, because the splits that you make will damage and hurt your honey production. So I hope you've enjoyed this video. Selling nucs is one of my favourite things. I love kind of selling nucs to people, and then I really like them when they send me the videos and show me how the colony's doing, show me pictures of the honey that their bees have made. I mean, I love all of that. So if you, if you're watching this video and you're buying a nuc from me, please do keep me updated. Send me some pictures, send me some videos, tweet me on social media, or follow me on Instagram. And we'll share kind of some of your success stories on how well your nucs have done back in their respective homes. So thanks for watching my video. As always, please hit the subscribe button, especially for the people who are new beekeepers. We do new videos every single week. We've got over 130 videos on our YouTube channel covering pretty much every beekeeping topic you can wish for. We do loads of new videos every week. It's a great resource for new and experienced beekeepers to come. and find out information on what to do with their bees, how to extract their honey, how to treat for disease, how to manage swarms, loads of stuff on there. So please do hit the subscribe button, hit the bell as well so you're notified of every video that we do. It'll get— you'll get a notification directly to your phone and then you'll never miss any of our videos. So thanks for watching and I'll see you next time.