In this vlog, Laurence Edwards visits Carl Lockyer’s apiary to collect and assess several newly inseminated and virgin queens that he has sourced from various European breeding lines. Laurence explains his shift from aggressive local mongrel bees to calmer, higher‑yielding Buckfast and other selected genetics, emphasizing the importance of temperament for his beekeeping operation. He details the process of sending virgin queens to Carl for artificial insemination, the marking system (neon pink and yellow), and the current laying status of each queen, noting differences in drone‑to‑worker ratios and the need for additional nurse bees. Carl provides observations on each queen’s health, egg‑laying progress, and predicts future performance. Laurence outlines his plan to overwinter the queens in North Wales, produce F1 daughter queens next season for testing, and document the outcomes in future videos. The narrative underscores the experimental nature of the breeding program, the collaborative effort with Carl, and the anticipation of achieving superior queen lines.
Chapters
So at Black Mountain Honey, I used to have very, very aggressive bees. Local mongrel stock, which I was told was the best, and I'd be standing in my apiary and, you know, doing YouTube videos and getting stung in the face. It was pretty horrific. And then I made the leap into nicer genetics of bees. I like Buckfast bees, but any decent genetics of bees that have been selected for me for good honey production, but also more importantly for me, nice calm temperament bees. What I do now is I go away and every year I buy in new breeder queens from different people, and that's what leads me into this apiary today, which is Carl Lockyer's apiary, and I'm buying some queens off Carl today, some inseminated queens, artificially inseminated pure queens that I will use to do some tests, see if we can get some nice F1 queens from the daughters of these queens. But also I've managed to send off some of the virgins from some of the different lines that we've had from Denmark and Germany, sent Carl the virgins, and Carl has taken those virgins, he's gone away, he's inseminated them And I'm here today to collect those queens, take them back to my apiary, and then we'll run some F1 daughters from them next year and see how they go. Fingers crossed they're going to be good. And from what I can see from the genetics in Carl's apiary already, I think we're in for a real treat. In today's video, I'm going to show you a couple of the queens, the virgin queens that I sent up to Carl that have been inseminated. One is just starting to lay, the other one not quite started laying yet. We're still going to take it back today, but I just want to give you a snapshot of those queens just as they're getting started. And obviously I'm here taking a look around Carl's apiary as well.
This is another inseminated queen I've done for Lawrence. She's not laying yet, or she weren't laying yesterday. That's the queen here.
So these are on your little mini frames that you've made yourself in the mini quad boxes. Beautiful queen. Let's hold that up, Carl. Let's get a little close-up on that queen. So there we go, marked in my absolute favourite colour for a queen, which is neon pink. I know, I know, but it is really the easiest colour to find in a hive, in my opinion. My second best colour is neon yellow, but I really do love a neon pink queen. So she's not mated yet. How long ago was it when I sent you the virgins?
Oh God, I can't remember. I don't keep dates, I don't keep records. I should do, but I don't.
Probably, probably a couple of weeks ago since I sent you those, and then you waited for them to become mature.
I think she'll be laying in the next couple of days.
So she's got plenty of food in there. She's down to a single bee space entrance because wasps are a bit of a nightmare. You can see the queen coming out on that frame on the top there. So there you go, as you can see in that one there, no eggs just yet, but Carl reckons within a few days she'll start laying. Within a couple of weeks, hopefully that box will be pretty much laid up, and then once they start emerging after 3 weeks, she'll have lots and lots of attendants with her.
She's needing some more bees rather than drones. There's a lot of drones in here.
Yeah, a little bit drone heavy, that one. Carl's saying he might add a few more nurse bees in there as well just to get her going. So that's the one that's not laying. I've got high hopes for that one because I'm really excited about the drone line that it's been inseminated with. Let's take a look now at the one that is laying and I'll show you some eggs.
Yeah, this is another one I've done for Laurence and it started laying yesterday, so there should be eggs in here. So now see, there's more bees in here as well and that does help. No eggs on that one, but this is the centre frame where we should find some eggs. There's a queen.
So lovely looking queen. We're not trying to preserve any lines here. It's a little bit of a random mix, But we're excited to see the results of what we get, and then we will just do some testing on the F1 daughters. We're not going to start sending out F1 daughters.
There's eggs here in this corner.
Right, hopefully you can see some eggs in there. It's a little bit dark today, a little bit difficult to see in, but we can see there's eggs there now. So give it, give it maybe 8 or 9 days and all of that will be capped over. You can see this one here looking very healthy, plenty of bees, good-looking queen.
She's not runny, she's a nice, nice calm queen. This, this one, yeah, this one could be the best queen that you've ever had.
I'm just about to finish the video there and Carl has given me his word that this one here is going to be the best queen that I've ever had. I am so excited. Like, for me, this is like a little bit of a gamble, but I really am impressed with the genetics that I'm seeing in Carl's apiary today. You will see lots of both of these queens. I'm taking them back with me today, gonna overwinter them in North Wales, and we'll do plenty of videos of them in the future.
