I Am SO ANNOYED That I Made This Mistake

This colony of bees here is desperately light. It's an artificially inseminated Buckfast queen that I didn't have enough time to get up to weight. So I've come here today to try and feed them, to give them some fondant, just to make sure I get them through. And I lifted up the lid and I dropped it on the floor, and it had like maybe a third of the colony's bees in it. So I've put it back down on the floor to try and catch as many as I can. You can see they're starting to cluster up in there now, but I'm so annoyed with myself. I got an expensive artificially inseminated queen in here, and she might be be on the floor. So I'm gonna have to go into this colony now and go through it and just identify where the queen is. And if she's on the floor, like, I'm gonna have to find her on the floor. So this is why you do not go into your colonies in the winter. Stupid mistakes like that can cost you your colony, can cost you your queen, and can really, really ruin your day. So I'm being super, super careful when I'm taking these frames out, making sure that if the queen is in here, I'm not squishing her. You can see though they are really, really light. They've not finished drawing out those frames. And is it due to the fact that they're on frames and feeders, black plastic frames? I'm not sure, but they're light. You can see they've got a bit of stores up there, but there's not much stores in this colony at all. So obviously I'm just going through really, really carefully checking every single bit of that frame, making sure the queen is not on it before I put it down somewhere. I did not think I was going to be doing this today. What a nightmare. Right, so same with that frame there, can't see anything on that. And you can see on that side there, literally not even got like a third of the way down. This is why this colony is so, so light. Thank goodness for that. I'm so, so happy I found my queen. She's on this frame here. I was really worried she was going to be in the grass and she just scuttled off somewhere and then just got too cold to move. This is the reason you do not go into your colonies in the winter. So I'm going to quickly whip these back together again. I'll give you a close-up of the queen before I do that. But as you can see, there was a genuine need to come into this colony today. They've not got anywhere near enough stores to get them through, especially with like a prolific Buckfast queen like this, an artificially inseminated one. You need to give them a little bit more food to make sure they get through, and then they pay you back double throughout the course of the season. Enough talking. I'm going to get them back together again, and I'm going to get some fondant on these bees. Right, so we put the frames back together in exactly the same order. Got to be really careful not to crush that queen. Right, so the colony's put back together again. I can pick up the roof that was on the floor and tap the bees into this colony here now, and then I can get my fondant on and get these guys through the winter. Right, so feeding bees in these nucs couldn't be easier using the thick Maysmoor roof. I really do like a roof on my nucs that gives you the ability to have some space. I like my Payne's nucs and I like the Payne's Langstroth nucs, but the Maysmoor nucs with the deep roof And even better than that, the Abello nucs with a deep roof really do give you great flexibility for feeding in the winter. I don't like feeding in the frame feeder of the panes. So this method here is for if you have a deep roof. So first thing you're going to do is curse yourself for not putting the crown board on earlier and allowing the bees to draw all of that burr comb. But if they hadn't have done that, you just put the crown board on, cut a little hole in the middle of it, and then plop the fondant on. What I'm going to have to do quickly is just reduce that burr comb down, being really, really careful. Just so it sits nice and flush. You don't need to go wild at this point, you just need to make sure that the bees are not going to get squished by everything. Now you'll see some beekeepers doing this and they'll just chuck this wax out onto the floor. Terrible, terrible beekeeping practice that is. It's a valuable resource, but more importantly than that, that is a disease risk. Don't just be chucking that on the floor, stick it in a bucket and then you either chuck it away at home if you don't want it, or keep it for the end of the year and melt it all down. So once you've fixed all of your stupid errors, just take a crown board, either a crown board that comes with it or just cut a piece of plastic like this. And isn't it interesting to see the condensation building up on that colony already? Like, it is incredible the amount of heat and warmth and moisture that these bees generate. That was on for a second and you can already see condensation forming. Now I want to do a shout out at this point to Clifton Cameras. I just bought some lenses from them and this is the first time I'm trying the lenses out. And they gave me 10 out of 10 customer service, so I can really recommend Clifton Cameras. Great, great company to do business with. So this is what the video was going to be today, which is me putting on a crown board and feeding some fondant, and it kind of grew into quite a longer video, didn't it? So here we go. Piece of fondant. I've cut the hole in the fondant here to match the hole or the square in the crown board. All I'm going to do is just place one over the other. It is as simple as that. Now if your roof won't allow you to do this, you can either buy an eke for the nuc that you've got— all of the good manufacturers of nucs make ekes for you to be able to feed in this way— or you can just build something yourself out of like pallet wood or scrap wood. Will cost you literally pennies to enable you to do this kind of feeding, and then you don't actually need the deep roof to enable you to feed in this way. Make sure you check your colonies, continue to heft them, If at any point you think they're feeling light, you can't go wrong with this technique. You can't overfeed with this technique. It's a great insurance policy. I normally use simple, standard, straightforward baker's fondant, but I've still got loads of this Honeybee Pro left over, which is just as good. We need to make sure we get this colony through the year. I'll give you an update in the spring.