In this YouTube video, Laurence Edwards conducts an apiary inspection focusing on a nuc that houses a pure German Buckfast queen. He explains that ten days earlier he deliberately removed most of the brood frames to stunt the colony’s growth, hoping to preserve the pure queen. The queen responded by dramatically increasing her egg‑laying rate, refilling the nuc to the point where the frames are densely packed with brood. Edwards showcases what he believes to be the most perfect frame of brood he has ever seen—characterized by minimal gaps, brood extending to the edges, and consistent quality across multiple frames. He notes the colony’s vigor, describing it as a “brood monster,” and outlines his next management step: taking a split and removing many bees because the colony has become too vigorous to control. Finally, he invites viewers to submit their own superior brood frames for the Beekeeping Awards, emphasizing authenticity (no Photoshop) and encouraging community participation. The video serves both as a demonstration of high‑quality brood development under a Buckfast queen and as a call for peer comparison.
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I was doing an inspection in this apiary yesterday and I came across what I consider to be the very best frame of brood I have ever seen in my life. I'm going to get my bee suit on, I'm going to go and show you this colony. Hopefully it's still there, hopefully no bees have emerged, but I do not think you can get any closer to perfect than this frame of brood. Let's go and have a look, see if you agree. Right, so we're back with the Lutz Pure German Buckfast Queen. What I did with this nuc here is that I removed a lot of the frames of brood, Gave them to other colonies within the apiary because I wanted to really stunt the growth of this nuc, just to try and keep it small to prolong the life of the pure queen that's in here. She has taken that as a sign that she needs to turbocharge her egg laying, and it's about 10 days since I removed that brood and knocked this down to about 3 or 4 frames of bees. Let's get inside, see what she's made of that manipulation, and I'm going to show you the best frame of brood I have ever seen. So as you can see, no bees flying up, not like some of the apiaries where they're absolutely blitzing me as soon as I get into the apiary. There's a few angry bees over there, there's a couple of colonies over there that don't have queens, but this one here is just the calmest colony. It really is very nice. And it's full. I knocked these back about 10 days ago and they filled this nuc box back up, so I'm gonna have to do the same thing again. But this is what the nuc's looking like after 10 days. I've taken out all of those frames of brood. The growth is just exceptional on this pure Buckfast queen. Early on in the season, I had her on a triple brood on a nuc like this. And there were 16 frames of brood, and I'm just continually knocking her back and she is just continually filling that box out again. So they're full and they're too full for my liking, so I'm gonna have to knock them over again. What I'm gonna do today is I'm actually gonna take a split and take a lot of the bees away with me as well, because she's just too quick and I can't keep up with her. Let's get in though, have a look at those frames, and I'll show you what I believe to be the most perfect frame of brood I've ever seen. Maybe you're looking at this one and you're thinking, I've seen better frames of brood than that. Then I'll go over to this one here and I'll say, well, we're getting a little bit better. And then I would say out of the 3 frames here, this one is my favorite. I don't think I've ever seen a better frame of brood than that. I know there's a few empty gaps in there, but just the way that she goes all the way up to the edges like that, but also the fact that she's laid all of these up within about 10 days and laid every single one of them up. You look how tightly that brood is packed in there. Like, if I zoom in a little bit There you go, no gaps whatsoever. And I know there's a few odd holes here and there, but that really is probably the best frame of brood I've ever seen. Now, you know, we've got the Beekeeping Awards. If you think you've got better than that, then you can show me. No photoshopping allowed, obviously. But what I'm so impressed about with this colony is not only have you got one frame of brood like that, the other side of that frame looks just as good. And then you've got Consistency across all of these frames. It's not like a one-off, it's not like one really good frame. All of these frames are just superb. This queen is an absolute brood monster. So what do you think of that? This is definitely the best frame of brood I've seen all season. If I find another one, I'll be sure to share it with you on YouTube. If you want to take a closer look at this queen, the pure queen that I got, check out this video here, which gives you a full look at the queen and inside this colony.
