How To Trap Propolis - A Simple Guide To Collecting High Quality Propolis From Your Hive

Today I'm going to show you how to trap propolis using an aptly named propolis trap. Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping. Early on in the year, I reviewed and did a little bit of a demonstration on some propolis traps that I got from Thorns. I promised you later in the year I would show you them in action, and that's what I'm doing in this video. I'm going to take the propolis traps. I'll link you up to the video here to show you a little bit more about them. But all I'm going to do in this video is I'm going to put some onto a colony at the highest point in the colony, and I'm going to see if we can trap some propolis. So the setting of the trap is the easiest thing in the world to do. Unfold it, pin it down. So you need to put it as high up in the colony as possible, underneath the crown board, underneath the roof. But you need to make sure that the box below is full to the brim with bees. Then leave it for however long you want to leave it. I recommend probably around 2 to 3 weeks. In that time, if you want to go in every now and again and just move it around 90 degrees, because the bees will only trap propolis in between the frames. So in order to maximize your yield, go in there 2 or 3 times, turn it around 90 degrees, and then you'll get a really decent amount of propolis at the end. Right, so I did that 3 weeks ago, so I'm following this video back up now, and you will see all of it all the way through in this video. So now we're going to go back into that colony and we're going to see if we've caught or trapped any propolis. And then what we're going to do is we're going to harvest that propolis, we're going to take it home, fold it up into a little Jiffy pack, put that into the freezer, and then once it's fully frozen, you can just break all the propolis off and you've got nice clean propolis. What's great about these propolis traps is exactly that. You end up with really nice clean propolis, as opposed to when you're just chiseling it off the frames. You do get a lot of propolis doing it that way, but you do need to do some form of rendering to make it pure. This way you're just getting pure propolis straight off the bat. So let's get into the colony now. I'll get my suit on and I'll see how much propolis I've trapped in the last 3 weeks. Right, so this is the colony where I've put the propolis trap. It's sitting there underneath the feeder. In fact, you can see it just popping out of the frames there. I'll give you a quick close-up of that. Let's get inside and see how much propolis we've managed to trap in 3 weeks. And there we go, look at the amount of propolis they've managed to trap there. I'm quite amazed at how much they've put in there. I came back about 2 weeks ago and I turned it round and they'd done well, they'd put a bit in, but nowhere near as much as they've done in the last week. And if you can see down there, What they're trying to do is they're trying to block up the mesh structure. They really don't like that mesh structure. You can see the bees down in this corner here, they're working away at it. The bees are going out, they're collecting anything sticky, which tends to be tree resin, pine resins, things like that, and they're bringing it back and they're trapping it in this propolis trap. So I'm amazed, how well has that worked? I really didn't expect it to be quite so effective. And you can imagine that if you did this across all of your colonies, you would have a huge amount of propolis, and it really is a very valuable commodity, propolis. You can use it for loads of different things, propolis tinctures, loads of different stuff, including lip balms and hand creams. It really is quite impressive stuff. You have a look at that though, that is beautiful orange propolis. And if you think about it as well, it's not like a pollen trap where you're taking all the pollen away from the colony and, and you're reducing it, or you're annoying the colony, or taking anything away from it. This is just sitting at the top underneath the crown board, so bees don't really care if you take all this propolis away. It has no impact on the colony whatsoever, and you end up with this glorious propolis here. So how about that? I'm really impressed with that. I didn't think it was going to be quite as good as that. We are in conifer woodland here, so the bees do have access to lots and lots of really nice pine resins, and the weather has been incredible the last week as well. And I'd say probably 50 or 60% of that propolis there has been trapped in the last week. So a good tip that if you're going to trap it, go for the big strong flows when it's really nice and warm, and then obviously it's easy for the bees to go and collect stuff to turn into propolis as well. So in terms of harvesting it, it's pretty much as easy as putting it back on. All you're going to do is you're just going to peel it off like this, and it's so well stuck down, like super glue. It is so well stuck down. Trying not to damage it, trying to get as much off as I possibly can. The bees are coming out, they're saying, what are you doing with all of our lovely propolis that we've harvested? But they don't mind, there's still going to be plenty of propolis in that colony for them. Pull that last bit off now. Shake off the bees and there we go, we've harvested the propolis. And it doesn't seem like there's a huge amount there, I know, once you probably work it out, but we're going to get a good old-sized ball of that, a good marble-sized propolis, and it's just no work whatsoever. That's the big thing for me. If you were to put one of these onto every single hive that you own, for me that's kind of into, into treble figures, and then just pop it in the freezer and rub it off, which I'll show you at the end of this video, you'll end up with loads of propolis each year. Like, it's a really good amount that you're going to get. So I'm going to take that home, I'm going to fold it up, I'm going to make sure nothing sticks to it because at the moment I've got lovely pure propolis. I don't want to go and put it down anywhere and let anything stick to it. I'm going to take that home with me, pop it in like a sealed plastic bag, and I'm going to go and put that in my freezer because that is how we're going to actually harvest it from this trap. At the moment, it's no good to anyone. Can't really do much with it while it's stuck in the plastic. I'm gonna take it home, put it in the freezer, make it brittle, get it completely frozen, leave it in for 48 hours, and then I'll show you how to get the propolis from the trap into whatever you're gonna use it for. So there we go, got it in the jiffy bag. We'll pop that in the freezer for a couple of days, and then we'll take it back out and see what the harvest is like. What are you doing? So that's it for the video. I hope you enjoyed that one. I promised you I would get those propolis traps into my colonies to show you just how easy it is to trap propolis. If you enjoyed that video, feel free to support the channel by hitting the thanks button, But as always, please do hit the subscribe button, hit the bell so you're notified of every video, and I'll see you next time. Bye.