How to Stay Cool Beekeeping - Ventilated Neck Fans
Laurence Edwards of Black Mountain Honey tests a rechargeable neck fan under his beekeeping suit on a 30°C day. The £15 fan runs up to 30 hours, keeps his face cool during inspections, and stops the mesh from fogging his vision. He recommends it for beekeepers who overheat in their suits.
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Today I'm going to show you how to stay cool while beekeeping. I'm also going to show you how to limit your body temperature as well. Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping. Now that we got the cool bit out of the way, I can take the sunglasses off. Obviously, this video I'm just going to show you my new toy, which is a neck fan, and I'm going to put it to good use today. It's 30 degrees here today. It is absolutely roasting. I've got my shorts on, I've got my t-shirt on. I've drenched my t-shirt here before I came out and it's already dried up on me. And I'm just going to run these fans through their paces. Seen a couple of other beekeepers use them, and the one thing that I do have the issue with, with my, my Ultra Suit from BB Wear, is that if there's no breeze, it's not that much cooler than a normal suit. Obviously you get all of the sting protection from that suit anyway, it does rely on having a little bit of a breeze. So this set of fans here I got from Amazon. I'll stick my Amazon associate links up. We probably get 50p for each purchase through that link, but I have been wearing this all week at work. I've been sitting at home doing my Microsoft Teams calls. Everyone thinks they're headphones, and I just put these on and they are like the coolest thing ever. How have I not known about head fans before? But you put them on like that, can bend them around, get them to the point where you want them nice and comfortable. Then there's 5 settings on it. You can go through just a light fan up to quite a powerful fan. 2 fans bend all around like that. They've got a USB-C charging point and they take up to a 30-hour charge. I think when you have it on max, you don't quite get 30 hours out of it, but I've had it on for 4 hours before doing my beekeeping on it and it was really, really good. So all I'm going to do in this video, I'm going to stick my beekeeping suit on. I'm going to put this on underneath my beekeeping suit. And I'm going to go and inspect all 12 of the colonies over there. I'll come back at the end and I'll give you a real honest update as to how much of an improvement that made in terms of keeping me cool whilst I was beekeeping. I'll leave the sunglasses down there. So I'll get my bee suit on, get my smoker on, put my fans on, and I'll give you an update at the end. So all you can probably hear at the moment is the fans whirling. I've got them on full blast, and even putting the bee suit on straight away, it's so warm here today. It's just great. You get that nice breeze running across your face. As soon as you start doing a little bit of activity, you start sweating. It makes such a difference. So even from first thing of putting the B-suit on, this is making such a nice difference. It's actually helping the suit stay a little bit further away from my face as well, as opposed to clumping up like that. So I've got an added benefit that it gives me a little bit more room between the mesh and my eyes, which does help the visibility a bit. So I'm going to get into the bees now. See how well they perform. So I'm just going through this colony here and I've got the fan on. First colony and I've already started to sweat. It is so warm here today. Like, my BBwear Ultra Suit is so good in that it lets me wear shorts, it lets me wear a t-shirt. You can do it in your pants, like, if that's kind of your thing, but you do get a little bit of chafing on the suit. So I do like to wear something underneath it, even if that's just a vest or something. You do need some sort of shorts and a t-shirt underneath it. But I do find myself on a hot day that's still, then I do have issues with overheating still in the, in the Ultra Suit, especially on warm days as they are today. But I tell you what, having this fan just keeps your face so much cooler. And I appreciate the audio probably isn't the best here, but I just wanted to show you what it's like with the fan on. And you can tweak it round, you can push it up, but it's just blowing directly onto my face. It's absolutely superb. How has nobody thought of this before? And I know there's other beekeepers out there, especially in the US, that have done videos on this before, but I don't know, how have I missed this one? This is going to completely revolutionize hot weather beekeeping in the UK. If you're a beekeeper in the UK and you are struggling because of the heat, don't even come and talk to me before you've got one of these head fans. And I don't care if you don't use the Amazon Associates link. This isn't, this isn't an advert for me to earn 50p a click. This is me genuinely giving you some advice as to how to stay cool when you're doing your beekeeping. Obviously, drink plenty of fluids, get the fan on like this. The Ultra Suit allows you to wear shorts and a t-shirt, but it doesn't really remedy the fact that on a still warm day you are going to overheat. The fan though gives you that airflow over your face and it's just amazing. So I'm so, so happy with this fan. You can tell I get a little bit giddy And a little bit childish when it comes to new toys. I do love them. Really, really happy with this fan. Recommend it to anyone. Well, I've just finished inspecting 12 colonies and it is baking, baking hot. I've still got the fan on though, and I just can't get over how much of a difference that made. I would have normally had to be stopping kind of every 5 or 10 minutes, going and taking my hood down or drinking something through my hood. Just to keep myself cool. And this fan is just amazing. It's kept me so nice and cool throughout the whole of that inspection. And don't get me wrong, like, I've still been sweaty and stuff. And like, I take my hat off, you can see my hair, like, my hair is wet. But that's what makes the fan good. Um, you get a little bit of a sweat going, and then as soon as you get the fan onto the sweat, you get really nice cooling effect, brings the temperature right back down. So yeah, I won't wear the sunglasses to make me cool. I rarely wear my sunglasses anyway, but if you want to stay cool as a beekeeper, I would say that this is the best £15 that you're going to spend regardless of what suit you've got, regardless of where you are in the country. Get yourself a little neck fan like this and it really will transform your bee inspections. So as I've said in a few other videos now, we have a thanks button. So if you found that video useful and you want to donate to the channel, feel free to hit that thanks button. But 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.
