In this episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping, Laurence Edwards of Black Mountain Honey investigates an abandoned apiary that has been untouched for about four years. After receiving a call from the landowner who wants the hives removed, Laurence travels to the overgrown field and discovers four hives hidden among long grass. Without a bee suit, he first encounters a massive hornet, prompting concerns about a possible hornet or wasp infestation. He systematically opens each hive, finding a wasp nest in one, a large hornet nest in another, and no bees in any of the brood boxes. The video documents the condition of the frames and boxes, noting disease hazards and recommending that the comb be melted or torched before reuse. Laurence also discusses safety measures, the protective BB Wear suit, and the emotional reaction to the giant hornet. He leaves an entrance board in one hive to give the hornet a chance to rebuild and considers speaking with the farmer about taking over the site, highlighting the location’s potential for a new apiary despite the current pest problems.
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I got a phone call today about an abandoned apiary, an apiary that no one has touched in about 4 years. The owner said I can go along, take a look, and take all of the beehives. I'm on my way there now. Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping. So I got this call today completely out of the blue. He said, are you a beekeeper? I said yes. He asked where I was from, told him where I was from, and he said he's got a bit of a problem. He's got 4 to 5 hives. He doesn't even know how many are there. He wants to repurpose the land. He wants to get something else in there, and he doesn't want to get stung by these bees. So he's asked me to go along, have a look, see if there's anything even in the beehives, take them away if I possibly can. Right, so I made it here okay through some long grass, but we found it in the end. Believe it or not, the beehives are right behind me there. I know you can't really see them because they're so overgrown. I went in to do a little check without my bee suit on and a huge hornet just flew off over the horizon. So I do not know what I'm going to find in there. Are we going to find bees? I don't know. Are we going to find a hornet's nest? I don't know. But I'm quite excited by it. So I'm going to get in there now. I'll show you the state of the colonies. I'll get inside, see what's inside them. So the farmer had kindly put in a bit of a segregation here. Don't know if you can see it, but this is all falling apart. This goes to show just how old it was and how long since these bees have been tended to. So just climbing over now, and there we go, here's our first beehive. So I came to this hive first here, and, uh, I just thought, well, I'll lift it off and see what they're doing. They're not going to go crazy at me. And I literally nearly wet myself because the biggest hornet I've ever seen. Not sure what kind of hornet it was, but it flew off over the distance. The fact that it was so big, don't think it was an Asian hornet, but, uh, it really scared me quite a bit. So we're going to go through the hives. We've got this first hive here, second hive here. See how overgrown all of this is? Third hive there, and then fourth hive there. So we've got 4 hives in the middle of a field. You can see beautiful, beautiful area for these bees. Like, it's just perfect, completely out of the way. Might speak to the farmer and see if I can just have this apiary because this is perfect. But yeah, so here we go. I'm gonna look inside this first one here, see if we can find any bees. Right, so first colony there, we have a wasp's nest, and that's a little bit annoying. But yeah, we have one single wasp's nest. And there we go, we have an absolutely ginormous hornet looking around me there. Can you see the Look at the size of that hornet. So I am not gonna lie, you can probably sense it from my voice, but I'm petrified here. Don't deal with hornets that much. I know there's nothing really to be worried about, but it's just not something that we always deal with. Um, but I thought that might be a hornet's nest. So there you go, first thing we found is a hornet's nest and an absolutely ginormous hornet. Look at the size of that thing. So there we go, big hornet. I'm gonna see if I can get that hornet to calm down a little bit, or at least sit down so I can get a good video of it. But there you go, that is a pretty large hornet, and I've just disturbed the nest it was building in this beehive. So there we go. Right, I'm going to stack this one back up together and I'm going to go on to the next hive. But yeah, that really scared me. I don't deal with hornets a lot, always scared they're going to be Asian hornets. I do feel quite safe in my BB Wear suit though. I know, I know they're not going to be able to sting me through it. But yeah, the adrenaline is really going here. That could have been a really big hornet's nest. Maybe not this time of the year, later on in the year it would have been a bit bigger. But if you look down, that is Pretty monster-sized hornet. So next hive doesn't look too promising. This is the top super, bit of wax moth going on in the corner, but these look pretty much salvageable. Obviously we need to treat this as a complete hazard in terms of disease, so all of this will need melting down. The frames look good, boxes look good, torch them all, we can use them again. But this is the top box of the second hive. And then down in the brood box, nothing at all. So 2 out of 2 so far, and we found a wasp's nest and a hornet's nest and no bees. And yeah, this isn't looking very good, is it? Third one, nothing in the top box either. Maybe another little hornet's nest in there. I'm not going to disturb this one because that scared the life out of me. And nope, nothing down here, nothing in the brood box, completely empty. So unfortunately, this video is getting a little bit worse by the second, but No bees to report just yet. So I've just taken the frame that's got the hornet's nest in. Don't know whether this is going to work or not, but I might as well give them a little bit of a chance. I'm going to take an entrance board. I'll leave an entrance board there. And there you go, we've got one hornet's nest. So hopefully she'll come back and tend to her young. I feel really bad about removing a hornet's nest like that. I know that they can be a little bit of a pest, but I find removing a wasp's nest I've not got too much of an issue with. But, um, but a hornet's nest, uh, yeah, I don't know, I'm gonna stick that one back up like that. So give them a chance, see how they get on.
