Inspecting an Abandoned Beehive Left Untouched for Ten Years

This is a proper, proper abandoned beehive. Interesting, that frame has just completely broken away. But look at that for a frame, completely wild. Just impossible to inspect. Again, that's another sign of a virus that is carried by the Varroa. Very, very unhealthy bees here. There's no way that I'm taking these home. There's just way, way too much risk involved here. This beehive was abandoned over ten years ago. It's full of bees, but it's also full of disease and varroa mites. We need to clean these bees up if they've got any chance of surviving. In this video, I'm going to package this colony up, take it to a quarantine apiary, shook swarm it onto new kit, new foundation, new frames, new everything. Give these bees the absolute best chance of surviving what is a severe mite infestation. So if you didn't see the previous video, let me give you a really quick recap. The owner of this land gave me a call and said, "I've got some abandoned beehives on my colony. Can you come and?" take them away. I came in, I inspected them, there were lots of bees inside, terrible varroa infestation, couldn't identify any brood. I said I can't take them because there's a risk of disease, but I'll get someone else to come and take them for you. Nobody wanted them, and I just couldn't leave these bees here with a clear conscience and leave them to die. So I'm back here again today. Let's jump quickly inside, make sure that the bees are there, get them secured for transit, and then we'll take them to a fresh new quarantined apiary. So first things first, let's take the roof off. Then we've got an abandoned super, nothing in it, just lots of old manky frames. And then we've got a beautiful propolis-covered queen excluder. And if you don't know what propolis is, propolis is a tree resin or sap that the bees go out and collect, and they use it to stick things together in the beehive. So as you can see, bees are still there covering 2 or 3 frames from the top. You can see we've still got all of that crazy comb, wild comb that the bees build to brace everything together, and then clustered up there we've got some feral stock, very, very dark bees, but they are riddled with mites. So the bees are currently set up in a super, a shallow box, and a brood box. Again, if you're wondering what the difference is between these 2 boxes, brood boxes are generally a little bit deeper where the bees keep their brood, where the queen lays her eggs, And then this top box here, normally a shallow box of super, is used by the bees for storing honey. You need a queen excluder in the middle, and that stops the queen going up and laying eggs up there. The queen excluder is not in place in this hive, so this is going to be completely full of brood everywhere. So we've got bees inside. I'm just going to put everything back together really, really quickly, trying not to disturb those bees, and then we will get them on their way. So what I've got here is one of these old mangled roofs. I'm just gonna use that to trap all of the bees in, make sure they can't get out in the truck. So first thing I'm gonna do, pop down a ratchet strap, take an upturned roof, and then I'm just lifting up the entire colony and placing that inside the roof. They are now fully sealed and they cannot get out. So then we're gonna ratchet that up really, really nice and tight. I like the upturned roof method 'cause it means that you can go wild with the ratchet strap, get it super, super tight. And then before we get the bees in the car, let's take a look at the detritus on the board there. Lots and lots of wax. Looks like there's been a mouse in there as well doing some damage. That, believe it or not, there is tons and tons of propolis there. Big massive slabs of propolis that the bees have clearly been using to try and kind of seal up all of the bits in that hive. And I think we've done pretty well there. I've left like 4 or 5 bees. That's it. Sometimes it's very, very difficult to get all of those bees. Got a few extra supers as well. I'll take those home, clean everything up, refurbish it. And then what I'm going to do with that bottom board there as well, I'm going to set that on fire here just to remove any of that disease risk. No, it's really close. Beautiful sight. Oh, sorry, that's my fault. No, no, I don't think I would have been back in time. So definitely don't want to bring this board into my apiary, lots of disease risk here, but I certainly don't want to leave it here either because that will be foraged out by bees as soon as the weather picks up, and you never know what's going to be in So we're going to burn this now. Right, we'll leave that there for 5 minutes while I clean up. Gloves are going to come off as well and go in that fire, but we are burning all of that. So we're going to burn that as well. Keep the queen excluder. That floor can be reused. Super can be reused. That super's good, and that floor, even though it's got loads of stuff on it, is also going to go on the fire because that is completely warped and very, very rotten. Really important whenever you're doing any of these abandoned apiaries or cutouts or anything, you've got to think of the state of the hive or state of the apiary once you've left it. Don't leave anything out, no wild comb, no old bits of bee boxes, just make sure you tidy up everything away. It's cool. It might just go up, there might still be a bit underneath it. Sorry, I'm just— there we go, that's worked well. Well, I'm out of breath after that. Lugged all of the hives up here, dropped the camera over, burnt all of the equipment that was a disease risk. And off we go now to the brand new apiary where we try and nurse these bees and get them a little bit better. You can see the setup I've got here though. I've got the roof on the top, 2 shallows, a brood box, and then another roof upturned underneath, and then a ratchet up holding it all together super, super secure. So all I'm going to do, just take off that ratchet strap, pick up the colony as it is, badly damage my back in the process. I underestimated how far a reach that was. And then the final thing I'm going to do is just ratchet strap it all together to keep it nice and secure. Do not go anywhere. In 2 months' time, I'm going to come back to this colony. Ah, Ah! I am having a brilliant, brilliant day today. I've dropped 2 sets of filming equipment, my FX3, my Sony A7S III, and I got to within maybe 3 seconds of finishing it and the battery died and I do not have a replacement. But luckily I've still got my Action 5 DJI Osmo camera. So do not go anywhere. This video is far, far from over. I'm going to leave these bees here now for a few weeks, let them build up naturally in the spring. Then we're going to do that shook swarm manipulation. Then we're going to get the bees nice and healthy, building up strong. Hopefully we get a honey harvest from them. Hopefully they don't swarm. And at the end of the year, I'm going to do something very, very special with this colony of bees. But obviously wait until the end of the video to see what that is. Right, so we're back at the abandoned hive. A job that I need to do before I put a lot of effort into saving this colony is to make sure that there is a viable colony inside. I'm going to jump inside today. I'm going to find the queen, go through all of the frames, mark the queen. If we find the queen, we'll treat them with apibioxal, which is a form of oxalic acid which helps kill the mites that are on the bees and ensures that the bees are healthy. Let's jump inside and see if we can find that queen. So hopefully you can see on that camera there, the bees are out flying. Just had a few of them coming and checking me out. That's a really good sign. Reorientated to this spot here. Right. So taking off the roof, taking off that super there as well. That is surplus to requirements at the moment. Just checking out all of that propolis again. I love that propolis. It is super, super cool. You see it on there? Crazy amounts of propolis. I love it. Right, let's see if we can find that queen. So got super frame of honey. We don't need to worry about these bees with their stores. Plenty of stores available to them. So I'm just looking through this colony, every single frame. Much warmer day today, end of February. Nice warm day for me to go in and check to see if this colony actually has a queen. So we've got a few frames like that still with nothing on them. Queen could be on these frames though, you never know. I'd be super happy if we find that queen today. We couldn't find her last time. I suspect she's probably downstairs in the bottom brood box, but we are definitely going to find her today, I promise you that. So can't see anything in this top box. So what I'm going to do is I'm just going to lever up that top box again. I do have a hive tool in the car this time if I need it, and I've just placed that over there onto the queen excluder. So if the queen was in that box, she now cannot get away. And now I'm looking in here. So it's a wonderfully strong colony of bees. Really, really nice, big, strong colony. That's the brood box. That's the shallow, nice, strong colony of bees. So let's get inside this box now, see if we can find that queen. Well, there's no queen on that frame, but what we do have on that frame is lots and lots of sealed capped worker brood. So there is definitely a decent queen in here. Really good news. So you can see we've got some crazy frames there. Look at that. Wow. Also just got my first sting through the gloves. Ow. Right, so what we've got here is a bit of comb that's like folded over, and it means that the queen has potentially got a really good place to hide underneath. So I'm just gonna lift that up and we're gonna remove that and see if we can find the queen underneath. Doesn't look like she's under that one. And again, it's caught with wire, so just have to like remove it from the wire somehow. And there we go. We've got a little piece of comb there full of bees, but still no queen. So I'm just gonna shake the bees back in there like that. They'll all go back in. And I'm just doing whatever I can at the moment to make it a little bit easier, make it more manageable, not kill the queen, try and find that queen. And I have found her. And she was exactly where I said she would be. Hopefully you can see her on that frame there. Give you a little closeup. She is just there. She's not that fast. About me, she's quite orange, so she will be like a local mongrel. Definitely not an AMM colony with that orange banding on there. I'm going to hold that frame up now. Just give you another angle. See if you can spot the queen. She is on that frame, and I always do this, and then I always lose the queen. So let's get her marked. Is she gone? Right there she is. For those who didn't see her, she is just there. Get some light on that in the middle of the frame there. So we're going to mark her now. So we're going to mark her pink because we do not know the age of her. And pink is a very, very nice color to be able to see what is actually going on. As always, do not flood your queen with paint. So get rid of all of the flooding first. And then marking a queen is as simple as this. Get the queen running, get her into some space, hold her down, mark her pink, let her walk all over the wire. Brilliant. But I've smudged it. That's very, very annoying. She just walked under that wire and smudged herself. What a trooper! You can see her now. We've got one marked queen. It's going to be much, much easier to find in future. So there we go. You can see my queen on there now. Super easy to see now because she is marked pink. So then all I'm going to do today is I'm just going to put everything back together randomly. I'm not cleaning up all these frames today. No point cleaning them up because I'm going to shake all of these bees off onto fresh frames. The queen is over here. Nice and safe. Definitely can't crush her there. What's going on with these frames? Right, I'm going to take that frame out, give them a bit of space. I'm aware the spacing is a mess. The reason that the colony is like this is because the spacing is a mess. There is nothing I can do to fix it now. So all I'm going to do is just try and not crush the bees. I can get away without crushing them. We'll say that's a win. There we go. We'll leave this colony here in a double brood configuration. So we'll get that super back on. Again, try not to kill anything in the meantime. Spacing is just woeful. So there we go. We're all set back up again. National deep, shallow on top. And now I'm going to do a slight upgrade on this colony. So this is what I'm going to use for an upgrade. Really simple. It's just a multipurpose crown board and I'm going to put that on top. And then inside here I'm going to put some insulation and then that will keep the bees really nice and warm. But before we do that, this box here has got a special trick, which is it's an awesome eke. for doing oxalic acid sublimation. So, you turn it around like that and then we are going to fire some oxalic acid sublimate into this hole here, perfectly designed hole for it. So, for this I'm going to use the Instant Vap, available from many places around the world, brilliant piece of kit. Let's get that working, turning up now, shooting for 230°C, just got to wait for that there to get to 230°C and we can continue. So, I built these multi-purpose crown boards like for this exact reason really, You can use it as an entrance, but you can also use it to sublimate going in. So what we're going to do, get that firing out the oxalic acid, and then that will treat this colony. Now, in the UK, the only treatment that you're allowed to use is apibioxal. I buy loads of apibioxal and I just decant it into a tub like that, put the lid on, and then I can use it whenever I need it. And I've not got to worry about opening the packets. All oxalic acid products are really, really good for bees who have got mites. It kills all of the phoretic mites. That means mites that are living on the bees. And knocks them down very, very effectively. It doesn't work for varroa mites that are capped under the brood, and that is why we're going to shook swarm this colony later on in the season to give them some real relief from varroa. In the meantime though, this will tide them over and this will really help them combat the viruses that varroa do transmit from bee to bee. So you get this little dosing unit. All you do, push it in like that, and then it comes out. You can see like a dose. So push it in and then it pushes You can see, got it in there now, just pushing it out. Really, really simple. So still waiting for that to heat up. We need it to get to 230, then it's good to go. All right, so we're all set. You place the plunger in like that, you give it a hit, and then you fire it into the colony like that. And you can see, you'll see all that smoke coming out the other side, the vapor, oxalic acid vapor. I'm doing it downwind. If it comes anywhere near me, I'm moving away because it is not nice to breathe this stuff in. And that's it. It's as simple as that. So I'm stacking everything back together again because this is potentially disease-ridden boxes. All of that is going to get cleaned at some point. But today has been really, really successful. The bees are still there. They're rearing brood. We found the queen. We marked the queen. We treated with oxalic acid, apibioxyl. And these bees are going to be set up really, really well now for a shook swarm in the spring. And hopefully we'll get a lovely colony at the end of it. So it's been 3 weeks since I left this colony here. We treated them with oxalic acid. I'm getting ready to do a shook swarm. But before we do I want to go inside, see if the bees can actually cope with a shook swarm, because the last thing I want to do is set these bees back. Let's get inside, see how those bees are getting on. So still got that empty box there. Look at those combs, they're beautiful, aren't they? So these are just empty combs that I found in the empty super, just having a look at them because I think they're pretty cool. So queen excluder comes off, just showing you what's in the top. We've got a bit of old comb there that's protected, and then we've got the entrance hole there that if I pop Oh, the bees have sealed that up really good. If I pop that off though, you will see we've got bees underneath. Let's get that comb out of the way. There we go. We've got some bees underneath. So let me put that lid back on. Let's remove this box here. So still got bees, lots and lots of bees in there. That's really, really good to see. Very happy about that. We've still got all of the old gnarly frames as well that do need a considerable amount of work. But we are going to burn all of those frames once we've transferred these bees into their new home. But first thing I want to do, I want to get inside, take a look at some of those frames. See what the queen's like, see what that laying pattern is like, and see if this colony here is worth doing a shook swarm on. I'm confident that it is, but I have to do the check first. So brood in all stages on that frame there. You can see we've still got very, very wild combs in here. I've not cleaned out that yet. Check out that for a frame, double frame. Well, we don't need to go any further than that because look at that brood pattern there. That tells me everything that I need to know about that queen. She is very, very well mated. And she can survive a shook swarm, no problem whatsoever. We've got some new wild comb here as well. Check out that wild comb there. Wow. Don't want to drop the queen. But as we said, we've got crazy spacing in here. That is very, very cool to see. Lots of young bees on there as well, which is really nice. You need lots of young bees before you can do your shook swarm. So we've also found the queen, which for me is very, very, very important when you're doing a shook swarm on a multi-box system. If I just took these bees now and shook them all in, I would waste so much brood. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to isolate the queen in the bottom box, put the queen excluder in, let all of the top box brood emerge, and then I will do my shook swarm. It means that you're not wasting a lot of that brood. All of the brood emerges as nice young healthy bees. That is what you need for the shook swarm to be successful. So just going to quickly set everything up here because I've got a couple of rogue frames here that I've got Stuff drawn down in the middle. So I know the queen's not on there, so I can just place that there to rest it. Then I'm going to take this box off. That frame's not got a lug, so that one needs to come out as well. But what I'm going to do is just take that box off there, take my queen excluder, get that ready, find the frame with the queen on, pick up the queen by her wings. She gets popped in. So she is in there now. Safest way to pick up a queen. I know this is a mess for anyone thinking that. Queen excluder on top, and then I'm building it back up again. This is the preparation that I'm doing to get them ready for a shook swarm. All the frames can go back in now. And if you think of this frame, for example, that frame there full to the brim with capped worker brood, all of that is going to emerge and the queen cannot relay because she is now trapped in the bottom box. So this is the setup I've got. Brood box there, queen excluder in the middle, shallow box at the top that's full of brood. The queen can now lay down here, but she cannot get upstairs to lay. Which means all of that brood will emerge. And okay, she's going to lay down here and we're going to have to terminate some of that brood. But that is what a shook swarm is. It's a method to give the bees a clean, fresh start, new equipment, and hopefully to purge any disease that exists within this hive. So there we go. Colony's all set up for a shook swarm. I'll be back here in 2 weeks to shake every single bee in that colony into a brand new beehive, new frames, new everything. And then we'll see that shook swarm process all the way throughout until this colony is back up on its feet. I'm very excited. Hit the subscribe button. We've got tons more videos like this to come. I love it. 3 separate videos all join up together here. In today's video, I am going to show you how to shook swarm this colony. That is a separate video. I'm also showing you the whole process from this video here. This was the abandoned hive. We're not sure of the disease status. We're in the quarantine apiary. We need to do that shook swarm. So you'll see the full video there. If you're watching the shook swarm version of this, definitely hit the subscribe button 'cause you are going to want to see what happens to this colony in the long run. And then also I am doing my multiplex queen rearing video. And I need to stock this hive full of bees. So this one needs a shook swarm, this one needs some bees. We'll put them all together and we'll do a really cool video. So before we get started, what is a shook swarm? Sounds really fancy. A shook swarm is as follows: in this beehive here, we have lots of bees. We have a queen, we have eggs, we have larvae, we have pupae, we have capped brood, we have everything that you need to start up a colony of bees, a full-sized colony. But what we don't know about that colony there is the disease Status. I've done a brood inspection, it looks okay, but that doesn't mean that there's no disease there. And also, every single frame in the entire hive is as black as they come. If there is going to be disease, it's going to be in this hive. So we need to ensure that that disease cannot be carried through, and the way to do that is to do a pre-empty shook swarm. So all that means is I'm going to remove the roof, I'm going to remove the boxes, everything that you see here is going to go. Frames, brood, eggs, roof, Shallows, brood box floor, everything. Everything is going to go. The only thing that's going to remain is the queen and the bees. Simple as that. They need a new home. They need a brand new clean home. You can do this into a nuc, you can do this into a full-size hive. Has to be brand new equipment and it has to be brand new frames with foundation. You can use secondhand equipment, but make sure it is sterile. You really do need to do that. Scrape it, scorch it, bleach it, do whatever you want. My advice to you is use new when you're doing a shook swarm. Really important process during the shook swarm is you shake all of the bees in, which I'll show you later on, and then you leave it for 3 days without feeding. Do not feed them straight away. Completely defeats the point of a preemptive shook swarm. Inside a bee, they have like a honey stomach, and they keep a reserve of honey in that honey stomach. If you do a shook swarm and then you feed them immediately, what they do is they say, thank you very much, we'll use your sugar syrup to draw out all the wax, and we will empty our honey stomachs as stores back into the frames. So you're basically feeding them And you kind of think, that's not what I wanted you to do. I wanted you to empty your honey stomachs to create the new wax, to ensure that if there is any bacteria in their stomach, EFB, European foulbrood bacteria, in their stomach, it's going to be purged. It's a proven method, works very, very well. Do not feed in the first 3 days. I love it when this happens. 3 videos all coming together at once. Let's jump straight in and do a shook swarm. So shook swarm, super simple. Take the beehive that you want to do the shook swarm on. And place it off out of the way. Take your new hive that you want the bees to go into. Take out your divider boards. Wow, that would've been a bit of a shocker, wouldn't it? Getting that wrong. For the multiplex video, you'll see what I'm doing here. I've put the foundation in the frames. On the final version of these, you can clamp the wax in. These are the prototypes and they are a little bit of a frustration to get the wax in. Such big bits of wax, lot of weight hanging on that glue. So the new box is all set up there. Just assume that that's kind of full of foundation in there, but you can see, Brand new box. And then the most important thing there is that the entrance is going to be in exactly the same place as the entrance was before. You'll see a few bees checking it out at the moment. As soon as I start shaking those bees in, they're going to want to get in there and find out what is going on. So entrance is open. And just as I walk away there, you can see all of the bees trying to get back in there now. Really, really important. Do the shook swarm in the exact same location where that colony is, and then everything will work well. So then the next part of the job, super, super simple really. It's very disruptive and the bees don't like it. But this is a necessary evil, something that does have to be done. So that first super is empty. Multipurpose crown board, just got a little bit of comb in there. And then what we said previously is we trapped the queen downstairs. So I know the queen is down below this queen excluder. And we did that in order to ensure that all of these bees, all of that brood can emerge. And you'll see there now there's no capped brood 'cause all of the brood has emerged into young bees. Much better way of doing a shook swarm if you cage the queen off. for a little bit. So then you just take your frame, frame by frame, and shake it into the new box here. There we go, frame by frame. You'll see you've got a tiny little bit of brood left in there. The reason that I'm doing that with some brood left in there is that it is 22 degrees here today, and then it goes down to 13 degrees in 2 days' time. So I can't risk the cold weather. I've just got to get in here and make This is the best thing for the bees. So frame by frame, and the idea here is you want to get as many bees as possible into this new hive. So we get that queen excluder off, shake those bees in as well. So the business end is down here, and the first thing we need to do is just come in here and find my queen, preferably without squishing her. So you can see what I mean by the state of those combs. They are absolutely atrocious. Really, really bad combs. And not just bad as in old, but bad as in shocking condition as well. That's really, really bad. So first thing I need to do though, I need to find my queen. Very, very important when you do a shook swarm that you find the queen and you place her into the nuc. So see the queen there, and hopefully on that one you can see the queen as well. So all I'm going to do And this makes it so much easier, is you just pick up the queen and you place her into the new nuc. And then she wants to stand on your hand, but you just brush her off. And there we go, the queen is in there. And what she wants to do is she wants to get out of the light. Don't let any bits of comb go in there either. So once the queen's in there, again, it becomes very, very easy. You're just shaking those bees in. I think there's no argument here that we did need to do A shook swarm here. Look at the state of those frames there. Unbelievable. So what do you do with all of this mess now that we've taken all the bees out? There's only one thing that you can do. You just got to go and take it off and burn it all at a very, very high heat. We will be doing that also in this video. I'll show you how to set it up and I'll show you how to finish it all off. So the box there has got all of the old comb in it. There's no bees in there. I've shaken every single one of those bees out, and we're going to take that off in a minute, and we are going to burn all of the insides, and then we'll scrape down the outsides and re-sterilize them, scorch them, and that beehive there can be used again. Everything inside it though is going to be burnt. Then if we take a look at what the nuc is looking like, you will see we have got a lot of bees. They've not worked out how to get into the entrance yet. They will work out how to get into the entrance. I'll go off, I'll burn all the stuff, And we'll come back here and take a look. You can see on the top there, lots of nectar that got shaken in. That's no issue. The bees will clean all of that up in no time whatsoever. I'm gonna give them their lid, give them some time to go inside, and then we will see how these bees get on. So you want a super, super hot fire, the hottest fire you can make. Get loads of pallets in there. I built this fire up now over about half an hour, chucking loads of pallets in there, and you can see it's really, really going. So frame by frame, just take them in. You're gonna see how quickly these burn. Obviously they're wax, so they're flammable. You need to get that heat up though in order to make sure that any honey in there is gonna be completely burnt off. Obviously try and shake off as many bees as you can. Shouldn't really be any bees on there. I think there are a couple of robbing bees. So all these frames going in, then that's an empty box, and that box there can be taken back and reused. Again, any wild comb that you've picked off, that can all go in. Basically any rubbish that you've got can go in there. Now, as we start to put the honey frames in with a bit of brood, you'll see why it needs to be a hot fire, because every single one that you chuck in now is going to cool that fire right down. So you need to start off in a very, very hot place. You want to burn the honey off until there's nothing left. And then at the end of the fire, you come back kind of like late at night and you stick about 6 to 8 inches of soil at least. Go more than that and just cover everything in, because there will still be remnants of honey that bees can come in here and rob. You see, we managed to get most Of them off there. Another box that can be reused. Now, I don't like this queen excluder, so all I'm going to do, I'm just going to chuck that in as it is. Saves me cleaning it. And then we just continue through. If you do get any bees like that, you can just shake them off. They'll beg their way into a nearby hive. So you'll see now that fire's come right Right down. I know it still looks like a roaring fire, and it is because I've got it very, very hot with lots of logs and lots of cardboard. But you'll see it slowed down in that corner now, and it'll just take a little bit of time to burn all of that in. If it doesn't burn it through, you need to set up another fire on top of that. It basically needs to be nothing left. You won't be able to see any frames or anything like that. And then we'll just fill it in 6 to 8 inches, maybe 12 inches of soil. Just dig it in, and then it is all safe and secure. So you can see why it's so important to do the shook swarm on a nice warm sunny day when the bees are flying. They're starting to move back in there now. The bees are fanning, they're saying come back in. I can see bees going in through the entrance, and then the more bees that go in, the more bees that fan and say come in. And then within maybe like an hour, you're not going to see any bees left here. About 45 minutes after I did it, and there's already about 50% of the bees gone. So they will make their way in, might take them the rest of the day. But I know when I come back here next time, all of those bees are going to be inside. Don't skip any corners when it comes to doing a shook swarm. Do it on a nice warm sunny day. Don't feed for 3 days. Make sure you burn absolutely everything, scorch down the box and sterilize it before using it again. And then after 3 days, we're going to come back here, see how the bees are getting on. We'll give them some syrup and then we'll get this multiplex hive ready for rearing some queens. I love it when a plan comes together. We finally reached the end of the video. We shook swarmed the colony into this multiplex hive. Let me show you how the bees have bounced back and started to thrive. So the bees have drawn out the majority of the frames in here, and you'll notice that these frames here have a little bit of a party trick. It's 2 frames stuck together, but it is designed like that for queen rearing. See, the bees have completely drawn out most of that foundation. They're storing honey, there's larvae, there's brood in all stages. This colony is completely back on track now. And if we compare the frames to what they were like previously, Look how much lighter the frames are now, and they will be lighter towards the edges with a bit of brood in the middle. Had a couple of rounds of brood in here now, but the bees no longer have that viral load of the dark comb. That's a really good frame there to show you. You can see in this corner here it's just foundation, and then the bees have started drawing it out where it looks a little bit lighter. And then as we move into the middle, that's where they're starting to rear all of that brood, capped brood, but also brood in other stages. So open larva, eggs and larva. These bees are well and truly back. So much nicer, lighter frames there, drawn out on the dandelion flow, so they're lovely golden frames. And then the final thing that I want to show you is the mated queen. See if you can spot her on here. So the same queen made it all the way through the process, even with that really poor marking where it dripped on her a little bit, but it doesn't seem to have caused her any issues at all. One local Welsh mongrel queen. You can see she's being looked after very well there, and she is busy creating all of this Brood here. So I hope you enjoyed that video. I really enjoyed that one. We rescued a colony, we shook swarmed it, we've got it back on track. But this might not be the end for you. If you want to know what's going on with this colony and you want to see it going forward, definitely hit the subscribe button because I'm doing a separate video on this colony showing the next steps of how I build this colony up and turn it into a queen rearing hive. You see where I've got 2 frames here? I'm going to pull them apart, reconfigure this beehive, and mate lots of queen bees. Super cool, not to be missed. 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