Laurence Edwards checks on a colony that failed a small-cell experiment earlier this year. The queen is confirmed laying, there are two frames of brood and ample stores, and varroa strips are in place for winter. He's using a crown board to compress the colony and keep it healthy through the cold months.
Earlier this year I had an absolute nightmare in this apiary. The colony that you can see down there is a colony that was on small cell foundation. I was doing some experiments to see whether I didn't need to treat the bees that were on the small cell foundation. Long story short, they swarmed. I thought I'd lost the queen. The experiment failed. I tried to build it back together again and I got myself into a little bit of a mess. And at the same time I was shook swarming the entire apiary and I thought, do I need to keep this experiment going and risk kind of keeping a dud colony when I'm shook swarming everything else? Or should I just shook swarm it and hopefully get the original queen that was in the other colony that we introduced back into this one and see if I can just kind of get them back to the point where I started, which was a decent queen in a colony getting through the winter with no treatment? Now I've had to put the treatments kind of on the back shelf for the time being, so they are being treated. But what I'm going to do in this video is just give you an update on that colony. If you remember, we had a yellow marked queen that was very kindly donated to me by John, who was on my live stream, and I did feel like I let him down a little bit, like I messed up his nuc. However, I think that that queen might still be in this colony. In this video, I'm going to show you and give you that snapshot of this colony. They are a little bit angry, they're a little bit feisty. There is an active robbing situation going on here, so I'll be really, really quick when I do go in. But I just want to finish off that series of videos to see if we can get it back to a point where the queen is actually there. And we've got a colony to take through to next year to do something with. So I spoke in a previous video about compressing colonies down. When I did the shook swarm on this one, I shook swarmed them into a single Langstroth nuc. I then subsequently added an extension box to try and get them to build up and build out. The genetics of these bees did not like that, so I've inserted the crown board back in because I want a nicely compressed colony in order that the varroa treatments are going to be effective, and also they can resist robbing and wasp attacks. This top box has got nothing in it. Okay, it's not true, it has actually got some frames in it, but you can see you got the crown board underneath there, so the bees do not have access up into this top box at the moment. Probably worth mentioning why I'm keeping it on there at the moment as well. The bees have had access to this, so you can see everything's been propolised down. They've not really drawn anything out, but what I don't want to do now is I don't want to move this box over to another colony. For me, it's a disease risk, so I'm leaving all of these nuc boxes on the boxes where they've been originally placed, and then all I'll do next year is I'll just move the crown board up one, move it up another one, and then let the bees have access to the same boxes that they had access to before. Shouldn't have any detrimental impact on the bees, it's good for your apiary hygiene as well. So you can see there we've got a nice nuc of bees with a removable Langstroth feeder, Love that design, makes these inspections so easy early and late in the year, actually at any time of the year, but specifically early or late on in the year means I'm not crushing any bees. Let's get inside, see how these bees are getting on. So as I said, I just love this design. It's such a good design, means I can just pop that feeder out, out she comes, shake any bees off that are on the back side of it, and I've immediately got an incredible amount of Space to work, also to put my GoPro. So you can see, like, I'm trying to get into this colony from there, and they really propolised it well together. Imagine if I didn't have the space of that Langstroth feeder there. I'd have a real issue at the moment, and I'd be at risk of squishing lots and lots of bees. So outside frame, really good, nice outside frame, lots of stores, not much pollen in there, but the bees have got plenty of time to get onto that pollen when the ivy comes out. Again, really, really well propolised, these frames. And I'm not totally worried, but I am a little bit concerned. There doesn't seem to be any brood in here at the moment. This queen is renowned for her abilities to not require varroa treatments, and I kind of surmise that she might be doing that through lengthy brood breaks. So it's not unusual for a colony to not have any brood at this point in the year, but it is always nice just to see some eggs, just to make sure that there is actually a queen in here. So there we go, that's good to see. We've got a little bit of brood on there now, and what's even better to see— see if you can see it on there— we've got the original queen that John gave me, a yellow-marked 2022 queen. I'm gonna do my very best, John, to get her through the winter, but she is there back where she started. Unfortunately, we're not on small cell anymore, but she's doing a really good job at building up this colony and getting them ready for winter. So nice frame to see there as well, lots of bees on it, tiny bit of capped brood on the side that I'm looking at, and then we've got lots and lots of eggs, obviously busy laying up those frames ready for those winter bees. This colony here is looking pretty much perfect going into winter. I just wish they were a little bit calmer. Who would have thought that my favourite thing in the world would be a removable frame feeder like the one in the Payne's Langstroth nucs? Payne's, come on, you've gotta bring this to the National Nucs. It is by far and away the best thing you have ever done. So there we go, the nuc's put back together again. We've got about 2 frames of brood, plenty frames of stores, a little bit of pollen, good weight in the colony, Varroa strips are in. These guys are all set for winter.
