In this promotional video, Laurence Edwards of Black Mountain Honey showcases a limited batch of approximately 70 Langstroth nucleus colonies (nucs) prepared for the 2024 season and specifically designed for use with Flow Hives. He explains that the nucs are overwintered in Payne’s poly nucs, highlighting the bees’ strong health, robust brood patterns, ample stores, and calm, non‑aggressive genetics. Detailed frame inspections reveal balanced colony strength, low varroa loads thanks to a combined Apivar (amitraz) treatment in autumn and Apibioxal during broodless winter periods, and each nuc includes a marked 2023 mated queen. Edwards stresses the importance of choosing Langstroth nucs over National nucs for Flow Hive compatibility and warns against treatment‑free beekeeping. The video concludes with a call to action: interested buyers should place deposits via blackmountainhoney.co.uk, as the stock is selling quickly (over 50% already sold) and is expected to be sold out by January.
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2024 is the year that you're going to get your bees and you're going to put them into a Flow Hive. Moooo! These cows here definitely agree with that. In this video, I'm going to show you the Langstroth colonies that we have for sale that are in a super limited quantity and have already sold over 50% for 2024. Not everyone sells them in the UK. We've got about 70 Langstroth nucs going into winter. They're looking really, really good. Let's jump straight in and I'll show you why they're such a perfect nuc to go in your Flow Hive. So we overwinter our Langstroth nucs in Payne's poly because they're a very good poly nuc, but also the bees really do like overwintering in poly. Well, that's what we found from our experience anyway. And you can see from this colony here, they are absolutely ramful at this point in the year. Super, super healthy looking bees. I'm gonna pull some frames out now and show you the spread across these 3 Langstroth colonies. So getting bees ready for winter, it's not an exact art, and they do go into winter at different strengths. You don't want them too strong, you don't want them trying to swarm late on in the year. These ones here where they're filling the box may be verging on a little bit too strong. This one here though, I would say, is about average for this point in the year, covering all of those frames, bees down every single seam. And these ones, they are starting to move over now into the feeder. So I'll open up a couple of these. Let's start with this one here because it is absolutely jam-packed. Yeah. So what's really important to us at Black Mountain Honey is that the bees are not aggressive bees. And I know I've done tons of videos where you see them buzzing up, and sometimes you shouldn't really be going into your bees, and this probably is one of those times. Late on in the year, the bees do not like you going in and messing around with them. But we've worked so hard over the years to get nice calm genetics for people who want to buy nucs to put them in their garden. Angry bees are no fun for anyone. Not fun for you, not fun for your neighbours. All of our colonies that we send out are super, super calm, as you'll see when I start taking out these frames now. So just getting the feeder out of the way. I know, I know, I love the Payne's Langstroth feeder. Just checking to see if the queen's on there. Can't see the queen, so I'll just pop that off to one side. And there we go, a lovely side frame. And for me, this is pretty much perfect in terms of the development where I want my bees. I've still got maybe 5 or 10% of foundation on this frame here, so the bees haven't reached the walls just yet. That's really important because you can get late season swarming. But if I show you in this corner over here, you can see we've still got a little bit of foundation. The bees have still got a tiny bit of work to do, but really nice to see that they are covering all of those frames. The next frame that you can see here, second frame in, Wonderful brood pattern, really nice heavy frame, good amount of stores on there as well, little bit of pollen on there, brood in all stages on this side. I can see eggs, I can see larvae. This is what we want to see from our bees going into winter. So next frame along, really important this one, Apivar treatments have got about 3 weeks left to go. That is an amitraz-based treatment that makes sure that all of the winter bees that are being created are very, very healthy because the varroa load on this colony is low. All of our colonies come to you ready treated. We treat with Apivar in the autumn and we treat with Apibioxal when there's a broodless period in the winter to make sure that you don't have to treat before the end of the first season. I do not recommend that you buy into treatment-free beekeeping. Get your bees treated and you'll get the best possible start on your beekeeping adventure. Next frame, we've got another really healthy mix of brood in all stages. Good amount of stores in here as well, although these bees need a last little feed just to top them up. So there's our queen, marked red. All of our nucs come with a marked queen. She's a 2023 mated queen, which means we're going to get the strongest possible start to the season. These nucs really do take off very, very quickly in the spring. So you can see the queen wandering around there. We've got some bees bringing in pollen. Healthy amount of brood going in there. This really is a perfect looking colony going into the winter. And these frames here, because they're Langstroth frames, they fit perfectly into a Flow Hive. Don't make the mistake of buying a National Nuc. If you're getting a Flow Hive, you need to get yourself a Langstroth Nuc. These ones here will be perfect, and they will create a huge amount of honey that will fill your Flow supers up again and again and again. And then our final frame there, probably the most important frame here, which shows a really decent amount of protein in the form of ivy pollen going into this nuc, which gives you a very prolific start to the season because the bees have got their protein ready to go, which means that they can build up super fast in the spring. So there we go, our Langstroth nucleus colonies, perfect for the Flow Hive, will sell out by January almost 100%. If you're interested in getting them, get your deposits down today at blackmountainhoney.co.uk.
