Let's Talk Bees with Laurence Edwards - Episode 68

Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Let's Talk Bees. Now, it's not good lighting in here, it's not good audio in here, and I am on my 4th device. Literally every single thing that I try and set up— FX3, the A7S III, my phone, my iPhone— nothing wants to work at all. So I'm on my tablet, and the test failed. Aaron says the test failed. Someone needs to give me the thumbs up and say that they can hear me though, even on my old dilapidated tablet. And fingers crossed you can hear me. So let's talk bees. We are back. We're gonna jump straight into it Saturday morning. Gonna try and do every other week, but this is the new slot, um, every other week in the season, that is. And then we'll drop back down to once per month, hopefully in the offseason. But you know, life does get in the way occasionally. So back to normal. I'll give you a little update on what's going on, um, we'll probably talk about Aaron's pizzas at some point as well, um, but same old. If you want any questions answered, stick them in the comments and I will do my very best to answer them. Okay, here we go, let's talk bees. I can't believe quite how long it's been. Look at the hair, proper, proper bed hair. But what's been going on with Black Mountain Honey? Well, finishing 14-Day Beekeeper has been, been good fun. Um, sorting stuff out at the forest has been good fun. I guess I'm just like everyone else, itching to get back into the season and have some fun with the bees. I did go in, you'll see the video that I posted yesterday I went back into the bees and kind of had a little look. I recommend that you do that. I very specifically did that to prove a point that you shouldn't be going in, but more to prove the point that there was almost certainly going to be no brood in there. So I think it's good to kind of— for me to go in and to prove that and show that that actually is a good theory. But if you're too late, if you're watching that video and thinking, you said it was kind of back end of December was the prime spot, obviously the channel members, anyone who's a channel member got a heads up with that one, but I would say It still applies now in that I don't think there'll be a huge amount of brood going on, so even doing any sort of sublimation or drizzle now might not be quite as high efficacy as previously doing it than when you've got a natural brood rate. But if you've just got a couple of fist-sized bits of brood in there, then at 5-day intervals you will take out the majority of that. Okay, so first question for 2026 is from 0096312, very, very nice username. He says, or she says, what is the best way to make an early season split from 2 hives, and how soon can I do it, please? So it will be dependent on when your bees get to crossover day. Crossover day is a really important thing, not many people understand it, I certainly didn't understand it. It's when you, during the winter, the bees, well the colony will produce tons of winter bees to get them through the winter period, and then all of those winter bees very quickly die off in the spring, and when they die off and they leave behind enough brood, and all of that brood has emerged, and the colony become self-sufficient again in terms of numbers of bees to keep the brood warm. That's crossover day, and a lot of people get caught out on this and try and do things too quickly. So you might go in, so it's relevant to your question there, you might go in say early April and open it up and see, yeah, nice big strong colony of bees covering 8 frames or something like that, and you think, well, that's good, you can go in and do a split, and you probably could do a split on that one, but if the majority of the bees that are there the winter bees, and then you make an early season split like that, and then you get really cold weather and the bees have to cluster back down again, and maybe they lose some brood because it gets cold, there's not enough bees to keep it warm, all of a sudden it spirals well out of control and the colonies can die. So once you've got through to crossover day, and I see crossover day, you see it, it's continued good weather, it's lots of activity at the entrance, it's a real bubbling over of bees, and you think, okay, these are I can see how many young new nurse bees are here, so I'm confident that we've reached crossover day. So once you've reached crossover day, you can be very aggressive with splits, and you can do one-frame splits. So like one frame of brood, hopefully with some stores on it as well, a couple of frames of foundation, take them off to a brand new apiary. Very important that you've got to take them off to a brand new apiary and then feed them straight away. Do that in early to mid— I'd say probably mid to late April to be safe, but obviously dependent on the weather, but anyway through until the back end of May. And if you want to be safe, I'd give them 1 frame of brood, 1 frame of stores, so 2-frame split with enough bees. And then always at that time of the year, however many frames you take, try and get twice the amount of bees-ish, something like that. So if you're taking 2 frames, 1 frame of brood, 1 frame of stores, I'd go for 4 frames of bees in there if possible, knowing that some kind of will drift back if you're keeping them in the same apiary as well. So you can go, you can go very, very aggressive, and it is it is good fun making those splits. That's— I make a lot of my splits at that point in the year, and with the arrival of the yellow-legged hornet, I think we'll probably be compressing it even further. Thanks for the 10 over 10 queen video. Thank you, Jay. I remember as soon as I posted that one, I thought, oh, Jay will like that one, and I'm glad you enjoyed it. There'll be many more. There's another cool video coming out, even— I'd probably— maybe not better than that one, but an equal version of that one down at Richard's. So we've gone through the whole process down at Richard's using a completely different method. So the method that Richard uses is similar one to Bob Binney, um, with a slight, slight modification. So keep an eye on that one, that one's coming up in the next few weeks. What's the best way to try soft-set honey? So far I just produce runny honey. So I've, I've done like 180s and 360s and I just don't know where I'm going with soft-set honey, but I know where I got to now, which is the dice method is by far and away the most predictable and the most convenient. But I use kind of like an adaptation of that method. I just realized it was a much easier way of doing it. So there's a couple of different ways you can make soft-set honey. One is you just take all-sea grape honey, canola honey, and as it starts to naturally crystallize, you churn it and grind the crystals down. I don't think it works that well. I've done videos on that. I kind of settled on that for a number of years, really thinking it's there or thereabouts, but it's not perfect. And then I wanted to make one that was really, really perfect. And what was strange is that I had some naturally setting honey in a couple of buckets, and it had just naturally set. smoother than I could ever imagine. Really, really nice and smooth. So I thought, I'm gonna have— I'm gonna give the dice method another go. So the dice method is you take normal runny honey and you heat it up to— people argue about the temperature here, but you heat it up to a temperature where you are sure that you are resetting the crystal structure, obviously doing everything you can to kind of keep the natural benefits of the honey intact by not overheating it. it's up to like 42, 43, something like that, which is quite hot. You're probably going to degrade the honey a bit, but to get good soft set, that's what you need. And then the Dice method says you add 10% seed into that, so you're not whipping it in, you're just really gently dispersing a very smooth soft set seed. So 10% of the honey that you already know is perfect, and then just interspersing that into runny honey that has been decrystallised. So that's the method, and that method does work, but it's quite slow. So the adaptation that I use on that now, which is Like the easiest thing in the world. Everyone's going to do this. Brilliant. Get yourself a creamer machine. So you've probably got a creamer machine, and you start off normal dice method. Take 90% of the honey in there. Don't fill it up, fill it up, say, halfway. Heat the honey up, get it to decrystallize, add in your 10% diced seed, churn it back up again. But then what I do, once that 50% full capacity in the honey creamer is set into nice creamy honey, that's my starting point. So I say, right, that's it, we're on day zero now. I then fill the creamer up with decrystallized honey, and I put it on again. So I'm up to 100% smooth, beautiful, soft-set dice method honey now. And then, then when I want to bottle it, because it's the same machine, I warm it back up to about 33, 34. The idea here is to not degrade it and to not decrystallize at all. And then I decant half of it out directly into the jars and leave half there. It gets me back to where I need to for the start. All I do then is close the lid. And it's a stainless steel kind of sealed lid. So I said to the food inspector, is that okay? She said, that's loads better than putting it back into a bucket because you're, you're eliminating any of the risk of contamination. Like your HACCP, your hazard analysis and critical control point plan, should, should mention that, like you've eliminated potential contamination going in by keeping it in there. So now it's only contamination that can go in as opposed to anything coming out. I was like, okay, that's brilliant. I'm going to share that then. I was worried, but no, it's a really, really good method. So anyone doing soft-set honey, you never need to clear out your creamer again. You just leave it in there and it's the best method there. Oh, Simon says happy birthday. Thank you very much. You don't understand, I've been up since about 2. I've been sorting out— so this new room here, I've got like a— I can't— no, maybe I can give you a sneak peek. So I've been playing, but it's not ready yet. And then I tried to sort out the cameras and the streams and get everything going. You can see very harsh lighting in here. But it's now 10, so I've been up for 8 hours already. Anyone else is just kind of crawling out of bed, but I do go to bed very early now. But thank you, appreciate it. Good morning, do you overwinter bees in wooden Langstroth nucs? I do, not through kind of choice, but I do have some 5-frame overwintering Langstroth nucs, and they're okay. I do find though that bees love poplar to overwinter, they just like a good overwintered Polybox, definitely. Ashley Aspley's— I can't even talk, how do you say it? Aspley's Apiary, there you go, it's a proper tongue twister that. He says, welcome back, Laurence. Stanley B says hello, good to see you, Stanley. Stat Iggs Happening— I'm going to stop reading people's names because I can't get them— he says, or she says, great channel, thanks for creating the content. Have you ever considered popularising bees with kids or people who never, or are afraid of bees? No, that's a good shot. I've had a number of people say that, you know, in terms of, is there an educational spin on it? I would say that I would love to do that. And you look at what Cameron Mendelssohn is doing at the moment, he is so good at that. And that's not blowing smoke up his ass. He genuinely is. The Next Gen program out there that he's building is incredible. And we've got nothing like that over here. But I do, I shy away from it a little bit in the UK because real educational content like that, Probably comes with a whole host of liability and risk assessments, and and it just it becomes it becomes quite a challenge to to make it work. But it's it's definitely on my radar. It's definitely something that I've been thought about, been thinking about in terms of how to get the next generation in. I forgot, but I can add these up here. So 59 Trek says you need to talk about dimming the sun. They're using aerosols. Okay, that seems very much like spam. Maybe. Who went for that one up? Oh right, Artem. I know he's not going to spam me. He says, hey Lawrence, bit of a personal one. Have you considered starting a separate YouTube channel on a different subject other than bees? We all love your shorts, but beekeeping is a niche to not get a lot of views. Now that is an interesting one. I said to my wife this morning about potentially starting up another channel, and every time she says no, absolutely what you're talking about. No, I would love to do it. What is interesting is I'm kind of— for other people, I see the beginning of their journey and I don't look at it and kind of think, oh, like, I'm glad I'm not there. But I kind of look at it and think, oh, glad I'm not there. I did this presentation in America recently talking about like how we use social media and the growth and stuff we've experienced. And it's only through looking back at it and looking back at how many many years that I was willing just to accept nothing, no growth, no fail— sorry, no growth, just constant failure over and over and over again. I'm not sure that I could do that now. And it's interesting because the beekeeping niche, to not get a lot of views is really interesting because you're right, the beekeeping niche is not there to get a lot of views. But if you compare the views that Black Mountain Honey is getting in terms of the Shorts at the moment, we are, we're like really high up there. So we're competing with people outside of that niche. So I think it is doable. It's just You've just got to kind of like completely sacrifice your life to go ahead and do it, and just every living hour outside of work you focus on that one there. But good luck. If I was going to do it, it would be a food one. I've always thought I'd like to do it like a food one, just going and traveling around and seeing what's going on. But I'm quite lucky I get to do that with bees, like going to America, that was good fun. But yeah, I would like to do it, but I don't think I will. Happy birthday. Thank you, Ryan. Right, let's have a look through a few more. I'm not going to do all of them, so these are— I've got to finish at 11, but I'm just checking through some of the ones there. There seems to be a number of non-beekeeping-related ones. Any good spots for information on how to get started in keeping bees, recommending any books? So the Haynes Bee Manual is often recommended, and I've taken back The Golden Rules of Beekeeping by Cayman and Blake, and I'm going to give that a good read as well. Oh, a few people saying happy birthday. Thank you very much. John says Infinity Friends, when do we, when do we get more info? So I'll caveat all of these things at the moment, and you'll notice there's a real change of strategy and tact when it comes to the shorts, which is I'm not getting something and saying, oh, I've got this, I'm just getting all excited about it like I do because I'm a child. And then someone coming back saying 2 years later, oh, you recommended them, they were rubbish. So I'm a bit annoyed. So I do not know if the Infinity frames are going to be any good, but having like played around with them, they are pretty solid, which is good fun. And he said that he can't smash them with a sledgehammer, hence me trying to like smash them up a bit. I liked that they did a drone brood version because that's quite handy, just having one frame that you can put in for drone brood for a number of different reasons. And then I do want to get to a point where I can use some of these plastic frames to press out the heather honey, and the bees just don't like Remsen Feeders ones, so I'm desperate. There's so many better things about the Infinity frames though. So you see the holes, the little holes going through to allow the bees to go between frames, which is really good. But then the bigger one is on the majority of other frames, you'll see the molding has this little web-like structure. And I guess it's to kind of keep the cost down. But it just, it gives, it's a nightmare for cleaning. There's so many little holes for little things to go and creep in and wax moth and small hive beetle if you've got them in America or wherever. So the Infinity Frame doesn't have that. So I kind of like to give things a go. I said I wasn't going to do plastic frames again, but it does look considerably better than what is available on the market. So I thought I'd give it a go. A few nice comments coming in there. Thank you very much. Birthday to me. And people saying that they like the videos. It's interesting. I've got this one here, love and support from Nepal. Thank you very much. But I do, I look, you can't blame me. I do, I look at the analytics and have a look at kind of where the views are coming in from. And it's just everywhere. It's all over the world, which is fantastic and really nice. But you get some interesting surges in population. So last— no, not last month. So in November we had, I don't know, because on views, 50 million views we got on Instagram in November. Yes, brilliant. Smashed Instagram. Very happy with that. And then I looked into where the views came from and 70% of that 50 million came from India. It's like, what? Why is it coming from India? And then, um, within that, within India, like the vast majority, or like a big proportion I should say, came from, uh, it was a city in India and I can't, I can't think what it is now. Bangalore. So it was Bangalore. And I did a little bit of research, it's really, really strange. And it was the, it was the ASMR video. And apparently they like, they like kind of like foodie ASMR videos out there. So it just, it it tickled a particular nerve of the algorithm, but it showed me that people are kind of viewing from all over the world, which I find, yeah, amazing. Hello, Sebastian. I always know Sebastian, and you'll see it from his picture there, is that he just like collects world records for growing fruit just for fun, just like stickers. So I think he's got— what's he got in the background? He definitely did a cucumber, which I was very impressed about. That looks like some sort of gourd or something. Go on, Sebastian, tell us your list of world records. Um, fruit, because it's very, very interesting. That would be a cool— that would be a cool channel. That would be an awesome channel, like just how to grow like pumpkins that are bigger than your car. Um, another question says, do you recommend the InstaVap as the best vaporizer? Big investment, so want to be 100% on it. Thanks again. Look, so I, I love stuff like this when I can really easily just recommend something and say, yeah, brilliant, get it, get it. Don't put any rubbish in it, just put nice clean Veroxyl Or if you're allowed to use clean oxalic acid, then you can use that too. But you won't be in the UK. I'll have a sip of my coffee. But it is very, very good and it's effective, gives you a good, a good tool against varroa. And the turbo one is just nice. It's quick. It feels— when I had— when I saw some of the other upgrades, I was kind of like, that's just, that's just tinkering for the sake of tinkering or cutting bits out or making it lighter. It's reverse engineering, isn't it? Or value engineering, I should say, where you're just stealing the value for the business as opposed to giving it to the customer. But the turbo really does, like when you plunge down, it's like, whoa, that's got loads more power. And loads more power makes it a lot easier because I just, instead of sticking the nozzle right in the entrance, I just kind of come back 10mm and then just fire it in and it all goes in because you've got that propulsion going in, which is very, very handy. But yeah. Someone said it's not spam, so okay, sorry, it's not spam. Yeah, sorry, it it may not be spam, but I just I've not put it advertising to other people. Got oh Arctic Beekeeper hello, good to see, good to meet you. I've got someone oh I mean I'm calling me on WhatsApp close it on down. But hello yeah, good to meet you. This is crazy. So when we met at Copenhagen, that's just because I've always known you as the Arctic Beekeeper who comes and comments and we have conversation and he says about. He can be up there, and then we met face to face. It was brilliant. I, I've done that a lot recently, going and meeting people who I've only communicated with online, and always they're brilliant, lovely people. So I'm very, very, very lucky. Uh, right, Wow, that shade of green jumper is lightly triggering me, but nonetheless the chan is great. Love your work. Keep— you keep this. Do you not like a green jumper? I love a green jumper. I've realized that green is probably my happy color. What about the Atlanta? Is that triggering you as well? I went away to America and I bought an Atlanta jumper because I forgot to get the Louisville one. So I don't know why I bought a jumper just from the airport I transited through, but it was pretty cool. How about this year? So I am a little bit of an obsessive about certain things. And when I came back from America, there was something I could not get out of my head for about, like, properly for about 3 days. Oh, no. Obsessing over it and trying to learn how to replicate it. And then it's gone like a little bit easier now, and I'm not too bad. But every now and again it just goes bang, straight back in my head, and I'm thinking, oh, right, he said, let's sort that one out. And what it was is that on the last night, me and Zane, who came out there to film everything, said, let's go and get some food because we were hungry. And he said, where do you fancy going? I said, I really don't know. Let's just go somewhere easy, somewhere close. So we found the closest, easiest place, which was a few miles away. So we got an Uber there and it was Craft House Pizza. And we turned up and we were like, it's pretty cool. I love it in America. Everywhere you go in America, they've got about 17 tellies on and they've just got like basketball, American football, whatever over there. And I love watching American sports. It's great. So I was just sitting there watching it all and then ordering some wings and ordering some pizza and then it came. And it was just the nicest pizza I've ever had, ever. And there we go, Aaron, we said we're going to talk about pizza. It's nicer than— like, for me, I enjoyed it more than whatever the normal Neapolitan style is. It was nice. It was a big, thick, like crusty, spongy pizza with loads of nice things on it and amazing chicken wings. And I can't stop thinking about it. So anyone who's from America, is Craft House Pizza a thing? Is it like a wider thing than that? And how do I get more? That is— I'll leave it on that one there. Happy birthday. Thank you very much. Oh, any hints and tricks and pointers on making truffled honey? So when you say truffled honey, I'm guessing you mean like just bits of real truffle in there. Truffle is— oh, I love truffle. Helen got some truffled cheese, um, and that was really nice. We had that the other day. And then when I went down to the boat inn— I appreciate I'm not telling you the answer to your question yet, and I'll go to it at the end. But when I went down to the boat, which is Liam— forget his surname— Liam from Great British Menu's restaurant down a couple of hours away from me, he, he got a whole brie, like a big whole brie, cut it across like that straight through, and then layered it with like loads of little bits of thin black truffle, and then put it back together again, and then stuck it in the fridge for a few weeks. And then you cut it as like a little wedge and you just get sliver, sliver. My mum corrects me on that one, a sliver of black truffle, and it's absolutely amazing. So I've seen people do it with honey where just— you need good truffle, don't use fake. I can't stand fake truffle taste or the oil, so it has to be real bits of truffle. But all I would say is just get some offcuts or some cheap bits, slice it nice and thin, and just sprinkle it in. I think it'll be fine, and it will certainly taste amazing. Oh, got more people wishing happy birthday. Oh, right. Sebastian says, what is your opinion about fake honey in the UK? Wow. So if anybody saw, uh, I started calling him Honey Freud Herval, um, but Bernard Herval's, um, interview— he's such a cool guy. I, I really enjoyed going to Apimondia and doing these things and talking to different people. It was very, very fun. But he, in that interview there, I, I cut about 6 minutes About six minutes of it out, and if you notice, there's not a huge amount of me talking in it. And the reason that there's not a lot of me talking is because I cut it all out because, and this sounds really bad. I I think if I left it in, I'd probably be getting sued. So I have to be really careful, Sebastian, with what I say in terms of fake honey and stuff like that. But there's no there's no denying it. There is tons of fake honey coming into the UK. There's no denying that wherever they're producing fake honey, they are targeting the UK as an easy place to get it in. There's no doubt in anyone's mind, is there, that the vast majority of the honey on the shelves is not— you can see I'm being careful with my words— is not produced by local beekeepers who are going to assure that it's real, one way or another. And I'd say that's probably all I want to say about it. I'm thinking behind the scenes and trying to work with people to understand what is the best way to prevent that, but Here is what I would say is there's a correlation over the past 10 years with a real increase in the amount of fake honey coming into the UK. There's no denying that. Some of the companies that have been— it's been suggested that they may have kind of involved themselves in these activities. And again, you can see scratching myself, I'm nervous, not saying anything. But the rise of those companies there has coincided with the rise of amateur beekeeping in the UK. So you look at how many nucs are being sold, and you look at how quick companies are selling out of nucs, you look how quick we sold out of overwintered nucs middle of October, 6 months before they were ready, and that wasn't because we didn't produce a lot, we did produce a lot. So I think people are saying that the people who would be able to afford or want to spend £10 or £15 on a jar of honey, They're saying, I'm just going to go one step better. I'm going to, I'm going to cut out the middleman. I'm going to keep these. And, you know, there's that internet, that website, isn't there, that correlates all of these 2 completely uncorrelatable things, the causation versus whatever it is, correlation. But I do think that they're kind of linked, those 2 there. So I don't get too worried about the fake honey one because I think anybody who's going in And buying a fake, a jar of fake honey for £1 or €1 is not the people that any of us here are ever going to sell our honey to because it's just a completely different market. And I think if you think of it like that, it's not as bad as it is. It does really frustrate me that you can, that the companies are making millions of pounds through fraud and deception, but the companies that are making millions of pounds through fraud and deception have very big legal teams. and are able to use those millions of pounds to protect themselves, I'm sure they will do that. So I'm not one for a battle where there's not a battle that's needed, and it's not me to fight that fight, unfortunately, as much as I kind of see it happening. Right, there we go. Hopefully that didn't get me in too much trouble. Happy birthday, Lawrence. Thank you very much. My question from South Australia— I must be late for you— she says, how much pollen is too much? And how can it be harvested if they have too many stores? I have a full frame of it in an 8-frame brood box, and I'm worried the queen's running out of space. So a full frame of it in an 8-frame brood box is definitely not enough. I wouldn't worry too much about that. I would say you're probably going to be taking out a frame of brood before you would take out a frame of pollen, and then you're probably going to be taking out a frame of stores before you take out a frame of pollen. But it is luckily very, very easy to balance pollen frames. You can give it to another hive. It's incredibly useful when it comes to queen rearing, but also the easiest way of preserving it is you just take it out, in the freezer. It's a brilliant one to do because when you need a frame of pollen for something like queen rearing, they're very, very difficult to find. So having a few like I've got now, like a few really good pollen frames in the freezer, they go in, they're rock solid, nothing damages them as long as you don't smash them around, and then you just defrost it normally and put it straight back in the hive. So you can use them like that, but I wouldn't worry too much about it. It's very, very rare. I've never had an issue where the bees have used too much of it. Or sorry, the bees have stored too much of it. The only thing I would say is in an 8-frame brood box, if it's a single 8-frame brood, I suspect it's probably Langstroth as well, is that it's just borderline on the amount of space that you really do need to not trigger swarming. So it might be a good idea, I would just, if you're worried about space and you've got space in the freezer, then yeah, I would go ahead and remove the frame of pollen, shake all of the bees off, put it in the freezer, give the bees a nice frame of foundation, slide everything out, put the Premier Foundation in the middle, easiest place to get it drawn out nicely, and then that will give your bees a little bit of space and help suppress that swarming instinct for a little bit longer. I see I can't read it, I was going to start reading that as like Teresa Carpenter, but then I've realised that it's The Sober Carper, is that right? The Sober Carper, there we go. Happy birthday, I've just purchased your 14-day beekeeper course and I'm really enjoying it. I'm starting the year both with my bees and my flower farm. Any Are there any flowers in particular that you recommend? Oh, so you, you got me a flower farm. Wow, that's, that's pretty cool. I'm, I'm interested in, in seeing your flower farm. So it's, it's funny because at the forest at the moment, a lot, a huge amount of rewilding going on, but I don't— I really, what I should be doing with rewilding is just like allowing nature to take it back over, but I want to give like in the meantime a little bit of, a little bit of stuff for all of the pollinators that are there. So I am— I'm at the— I'm in the process of going through and getting different plants and planting things. What I found though is, but for me personally, multi-purpose plants are quite handy. So a good example— it's funny because Adam's next up on the comments here, so I'll get to you next, Adam, but I'm talking about you now. So Adam Goodall sent me some rolled up lavender bundles to use as smoker fuel, and I've gone ahead and planted loads of lavender because I thought, well, that's actually a really good idea. Plant loads of lavender I love the smell of lavender, it looks nice, it's quite drought tolerant as well. It's going into a bit where it's a bit sandy, it's going to drain quite quickly, but then also I can harvest it, cut it right back, and use it for fuel as a smoker. So there's tons of different types of lavender that you could use. And then the other one is, it's nice planting these little plants and stuff, but really in the grand scheme of things it doesn't make a massive, massive difference to the bees that are there. But planting a tree does. So I would say planting really good trees that, you know, in 10, 20, 30 years are going to have an impact to the next generation, I think that's the nicest thing to do. And I try and do that wherever I can now, wherever I get an opportunity to plant a tree somewhere. I just think, okay, let's plant— pardon me— let's plant a tree because it's not only good for kind of us maybe towards the back end of our lives, but the next generation get the benefit from it as well. What this is really interesting, and I I say this is really interesting. I found this really interesting, which was when I was flying over America. I can't believe like it. I'm not sure if it's where I was. So I'm not saying that the whole of America was like this, but we were flying up. Imagine the the eastern eastern seaboard. It's called, and but like a little bit in, and it was just like a huge forest. Like everywhere's a forest in America, and then you just have houses that are kind of built in the forests. Now I never got that impression when I was down on the ground. but just flying over, I was thinking, there's so many trees in America. And in the UK, we don't— you don't really get that. The only time that you get houses in the middle of a forest is like Center Parcs or something like that. But it was nice. I bet there's lots of nice wildlife there. But in the UK, I just think we need more trees. So I'd plant some good trees. Willow's good, because of early season pollen. Lime would be brilliant, if you can get somewhere that kind of makes it yield. Sycamore. Like, these are not fancy trees. You can go and find these trees, and just dig them out, and go and put them somewhere else. once they grow up, yeah, they are very, very good for the bees. So, Adam, I'm just gonna have a sip of coffee. Um, the Neco system. So on the, on the Thorn sale, I bought— I was going to have a little look around, buy loads of things. I bought the Genta system and I bought the Neco system, and I will do full videos on both of those systems and do, I don't know, we'll do like a little spin on it or something, do, do something different from normal. But it will be— I'll show you the full process and get the queens in there, get them laying. It should be good. Andrew says, all right, mate, from the Nectar Seeker, hello, happy birthday from Andrew and Luke. Thank you very much, I've been very much enjoying watching all of your content, it's great. Josh says, welcome back and happy birthday, Laurence. Thank you, Josh. Looking forward to my second year of beekeeping this year. My 2 nucs from yourself produced £200 of honey last year and both left. Yes! Oh, I love hearing stuff like that. Fiverr's in the post. It's weird, I'm trying to move the thing with my mouse because I've got my computer set up here and it's not— I'm on the tablet, so it's not working at all. But that is very good. And this is when people say about the cost of nucs, this is why the cost of nucs goes sky high, because 2 nucs— so we're selling £350, so that's £700 just to get the nucs there. And okay, you need to buy the beehives and stuff as well, but you fast forward the next year and you think, well, you've got £200 of honey, and you can easily sell honey for £10 a pound. Like, it is easy to sell honey for £10 a pound. You can sell it for a lot more if you put your effort into it. So there's £2,000 worth of honey there, and it cost you £700. So you're kind of £1,300 up, minus any capital expenditure on beehives and stuff. But you've still got the bees, you've still got 2 colonies, which if you wanted, you could split out into like 10 nucs this year and cash in for £3,500. So You can see why the price of nucs just goes up and up and up, because it's quite easy to justify to anybody buying them that something like that could manage them well. Watch the 40-Day Beekeeper Course, get loads of honey, and get loads of bees that you can go and sell. And okay, selling lots of nucs is potentially difficult. It's not always scalable, I think, as some people have found. But every single person that I've spoken to this year has said, I've not produced enough nucs. the demand is through the roof and it doesn't seem to be stopping at all. So it is— I, I would recommend just to everyone, if you've got— so if you've got 2 colonies, if you've got 10 colonies, just take maybe— put 10 colonies, 20%, 20 or 30% of the colonies end of the year or early on in the year, make yourself some additional nucs and just take them through. So if you've got 10 colonies, maybe overwinter with 13, 14, 15 in nucs, thinking that if you don't if they don't all get through and you don't want them, you can sell them, and you'll be surprised how easy they are to sell. And it's a good way of turning your hobby into something that pays for itself. With the yellow-legged hornets now found in Wrexham, are you going to be placing traps around as a precaution? If so, what will you use? So 100%, I'll be setting up traps everywhere, not only just at the apiaries, I'll be setting them up at my home as well. I'm a little bit with the whole having a hornet's nest that close that's that mature. I'm not sure why no one's— I'm not sure why it's not been picked up. Seems to be a lot of attention down south with Asian hornets, and then they've kind of missed one, which is very frustrating. So we will see. And the thing that I'm hoping for is I'm hoping for a false start spring, and for the bees, the last thing you want is a false start spring, but for But to kill as many Asian Hornets as possible, this, I think this is the only way that will keep the number down to a point where they're trackable, like in 2026, which is we get beautiful weather in February. I remember one year we had this, it was like 25, 26 degrees in February for a good few days, and then kind of went down to like 20, 21, and it was just, it was really, really nice. And then you get that, so all the Hornet Queens are going to come out, they're probably going to go out, start foraging, start building their little nests, and then bang, we had -15, and it wiped out a lot of colonies of bees because they were not ready for the intense cold. So I'm hoping we get something like that again, because that killed a lot of wasps that year as well. It was probably the best year I've ever experienced for wasps, but a lot of colonies died as well. If we get that, it might wipe a good proportion of them out, then it's a case of finding the rest of them. But It's one of those ones, yeah, where at least now there's going to be some attention around here. It's not going to be a case of them saying, well, Asian hornets aren't up north, they're not in Wales, we're just going to focus on the south coast because that's where they are. It's like, well, there's clearly a problem everywhere. So I think now we'll get a little bit more focus on it. I still see a lot of catastrophizing on YouTube, and maybe I've done that in the past, but I don't see the Asian hornet as like catastrophic to beekeeping. It would definitely change the way that we keep bees, and it will compress the season right down. But when you look at when they become a problem for people, it's that back end of the season. So if you've got little piddly 2-frame splits in August, or failed queens, or drone-laying queens, or colonies that can't protect themselves, then they're just going to get wiped out by the Asian Hornet, guaranteed. Whereas at the moment, you could maybe just wag it. So all it means is that you just can't go into that point in the season without anything other than completely strong colonies of bees, and then there'll almost certainly come a point where you take the honey off. So like at the moment where I take my honey off in the middle of August and put my Apivar strips in and start feeding, and then the bees really have got everything that they need to survive in there. The only thing that— there's 2 things that need to come out for, they need to come out for water and they need to come out for pollen. Pollen, so some sort of protein, but everything else is available to them in the hive. So the only adaptation that I see if Asian Hornets completely take over is at that point in the year, instead of it being the 15th of August, it's probably going to be much earlier, maybe early July, and then instead of giving them Apivar syrup, I'm just going to have to add in a way of giving them water and add in a way of giving them pollen as well, and it's like they're on lockdown the way through until winter. So that's annoying, you'd lose a good chunk of your honey crop, but look, the early season's the same, like making up nucs is the same, queen rearing will probably be the same for the early part of the season, and then it's just depending on where you are in the country, depending on how advanced those nests are in the season for you, kind of, it's going to determine the impact it's going to have on your season. I'm hoping up in North Wales, it's going to be like a nuisance. I don't want to say a minor nuisance because it won't be, it's going to have a significant impact, but I don't think it's going to wipe out beekeeping in the way that some people are saying. All right, here we go. After having the presentation at Apimondia in September, I'm invited to have a talk at the CBKA in the end of March. Are you going there? I'm not sure what the CBKA is, I'm guessing it's some sort of beekeeping association. Is it Cambridge? Not sure. But no, I'm not, I won't be going to that one unless it's something else, stick on the comments down below. Wayne says, tips on using mini mating nucs please. So I've done a video, the video that, yeah, the video that Jay said earlier on about the 10 over 10 queen rearing method, I go through and give really good details in terms of putting them in there. You'll get more information by watching that video. But the trick is you need to trick them into staying, and the only way that I found out to do that is to lock them in. Kind of tricking them into staying, it's more like forcing them into staying. You need to do it for about 24 to 48 hours, and you can take them down into a nice cold temperature, so ideally like 3, 4, 5 degrees, I think up to about 8, 4 to 8 degrees is right depending on how many bees you're putting in there. When I went to Malta, they did it, 8 degrees was their number, 8 degrees C. What's that? I have to think of the American or the Fahrenheit equivalent now. Probably going to be— someone will correct me. I'm going to have a guess. I'm not even going to guess because I'll look silly. I want to say like 40°C. No, 40°F. There we go. But check that. 8°C is the right temperature. And then you make them up, you put cells in, you close them up, and then you put them into this stasis for 24 to 48 hours. And then when you take them out, you take them out either like first thing in the morning, 4 o'clock, just as the sun's coming up, or you take them out just as the sun's going down, open the entrances with the hope that they're not going to fly straight away. And then as soon as the queen's in there and she's laying brood, they're easy. It's just keeping them, getting them going onto that first bit there. Surprisingly, what I found the best thing for using in mini mating nucs is wax-coated plastic foundation. I find it just so much easier. The bees, when they're clustered up like that, there's such a high proportion of bees to frame area, they have no problem drawing it out whatsoever. it means I can scrape it back at the end of each year or the beginning of each year and just start again, which is good because it kind of— you almost don't want drawn comb too much in there at the beginning. You want the bees to cluster in and draw it out. It seems to make them stick a little bit better, but once there's brood in there, there's no problem at all. But it's good fun. I like messing around with mini mating nucs. That'll be the next one there. Get some cooking on the Big Joe with the honey from the Nectar Seeker. Oh, that would be good. The thing is, I do have to be careful now with what I put on the channel and what I put my effort into, because I've done some videos where you put so much effort into it. And even like that Just Alex video, it's still kind of relevant to beekeeping, but I've had a lot of people saying, I didn't sign up for that, signed up for beekeeping and you're just like talking and making pizza. So I do have to think about it. My rule is always just as long as it's about bees, we're good. JSCFB says, happy birthday, great to see you back on track, uh, with the channel members videos like you said you would. Much appreciated. Yes, so apologies for the channel member ones. Hopefully people will have seen that I wasn't, I wasn't just bullshitting. I was getting through the 14-Day Beekeeper stuff, which is now done. So there's 7, 7 or 8 more videos left to come, but they're edited, they're done. I just gotta push the final button. They've all, they've actually all had, uh, first review as well, so they're not that far away. But what that means now is we've got a huge amount of videos coming through on the channel, and then as we get into the beekeeping season, there'll be a lot more channel member videos as well. So very, very good time to join up as a channel member. But also, if you've not done 14-Day Beekeeper, I will have to say a little bit about it because the feedback that we're getting from people is astonishing in terms of the value for money, in terms of the amount of videos that are there, in terms of the way that people are using it as a reference tool. They're learning about stuff that they didn't even know they had to be learning about, and I can't wait until people start to put in practice some of the— just the information throughout the season and see what people's results are like. But yeah, if you've not checked it out already, definitely go and check it out, 14daybeekeeper.com. Happy birthday, Laurence! 4-0 is a big one. I got Space Jam movie on my 40th, but you've got honeybees. Okay, Space Jam, pretty good, I'll be happy with that, sit down and watch a film. Are the plastic drone frames only for Langstroth, or can I get one for the national beehive? Unfortunately, they are only Langstroth. It's just we're the awkward ones in the UK having silly national frames, we should just get the Langstroth version. Oh, John says, Hivekeeper Extractor, is that only Langstroth as well, or do they plan a national version? So it is at the moment only Langstroth, but I think it'd be a very easy adaptation, I think, for them to do a national version of that. You could probably butcher the Langstroth one if needs be, but we will see. They're definitely releasing it in the UK, so that should be good fun. Morning all, happy birthday! Are you doing anything for your birthday? So tidy up, try and wire some stuff up. I'm quite excited about that, and then obviously Spent some time with them as well. My mum's coming round, be good fun. I'm going to call you Gigi, and I'm not sure if it's a man or a woman, so Gigi says, hey, I have a question. I have a beehive on my terrace and I cannot see any worker brood, and there's drone pupae scattered all over the frames. What should I do? Oh, doesn't sound good. So it sounds— it is hard to give advice just on that. Drone pupae scattered all over the frames does suggest that there is an issue. either with lots of varroa, because it's going to be the drone pupa that they target, that's where you're going to see the impact, but also could be drone-laying queen, so you've just got lots of drones anyway. So any varroa is in there, sorry, is all over the place. But what should you do? Depending on where you are, like, I'm not sure where you are, if that was in the UK, I would say there is literally nothing you can do at this point in the year, you just got to monitor it Make sure they've got enough food and wash your fingers. If you're anywhere else where you're in the active season already, I would go in. I'd have a look. I'd do a test to see how many varroa there, and if there is a real varroa kind of issue going on, you need to tackle that. Tackling the varroa should fix that issue there, but it just depends where you are season. PJ Morgan says, "Happy birthday, Lawrence. What was the best bits of Happy Monday for you? The fake honey video you made was amazing and enlightening. UK supermarket." I'm not going to say anything. I agree. But, uh, best bits of Happy Mondia? Oh, I really enjoyed Happy Mondia. So this is completely irrelevant to everyone here. The best bit for me of Happy Mondia is my sister lives in Copenhagen, so I got to spend an evening with my sister and we went out to, believe it or not, a Texas barbecue joint called War Pigs, which I think I said on there, which is like fine barbecue food. I just got to spend some time with my nephew and my niece as well. So that was, that was my highlight of Appomondia. I'll give you my lowlight. Lowlight was turning up at the airport, and I've said this story on there, but it's, it's like chaos. I was literally about to put my foot on the steps to get on the plane, and they kicked us off saying that, yeah, Copenhagen was under attack by Russia. And you think, even if that is the case, which it kind of was, You don't need to say that when people are just about to fly. So I'm a terrible flyer. I'm really scared of flying. So I was very, very scared and then went back, went back into the airport and tried to get some sleep and then got told I couldn't go there and then got marched back out through security again, kind of back out, which was strange. And then slept in the back of my truck for about 4 or 5 hours and was very, very cold and then started my journey again. So it was a long, it was a long journey. That was definitely the lowlight. So beekeeping stuff there. What would I say beekeeping-wise? Meeting Simon and doing the honey extractor thing was cool. I really like that. I definitely want one. It's little things. The hot dogs were good. The lady making me coffees as well. I enjoyed that. But I think for me, the biggest thing about Happy Monday and the same in America is just going and meeting all the different people. I had such good fun sitting down and interviewing. If it wasn't interviewing, just chatting to people about Bees and what's going on and education and stuff. And there's a few, there's a few more of those videos still to come. I think I've probably got like three or four. No, probably got five or six between Apimondia and Nabi like that, where it's just just like sitting down having a bit of a chat. But I I enjoyed that build building the connections, talking to people, and and collaborating and building opportunities very much very much part of that. Wombat says you don't have strict standards or laws in regards to calling fake honey honey. You'd think it would be that simple, wouldn't you? Yeah, you can't call it— what's that? No, it's not honey. Yeah, no, that's it, you can't, you're not allowed to do that. But yeah, money talks. Um, and on that note, Richard has put a £1.99 Super Chat in. Thank you, Richard, it's very kind. Thank you, tied in nicely. Have you got any nucs available for March? So no, so we sold out, um, we sold out of the overwintered ones in October. And we are— I know I'm saying this, but we are very, very close to selling out for the summer ones as well. And that'd be us done for 2026. No problem. John says, I'm getting more and more people buying from me who begin the conversation with, there's so much fake honey about. I think an answer is getting info out as we'll never get it legislated out. So this is— I like this, John. I like this as an answer because one of the things that really frustrates me Is if I see people saying, I've got a problem, it's that over there, and they don't do anything. And I appreciate the irony because there is a problem and I'm not doing anything about it either. But spin it round. And what Jon's done there is that it is true, like, the consumer is completely aware of fake honey. So then that's an opportunity for companies to prove that their honey is real. And you can do that through videos, you can do that through social media, you can do that just through talking to people, you can do that by turning up So, as I said before, the person buying the £1 jar of honey is never going to buy beekeeper honey, never going to buy like real proper honey because they wouldn't justify the cost. They're used to paying €1, and really for them what's important is they just— is the cost. The cost is important. It's not the different forage or the different textures or any of that stuff. They just want something sweet to put on their toast or something sweet to put in however however they're using it, maybe they're stirring it into like their tea or something, and you're not ever going to be able to convert them. So the people who want to buy real honey are out there, so if anything, you could say it's easier to sell honey nowadays if you target the right consumer. And Gareth says exactly that, you won't change someone that buys cheap honey, you won't. So it's damaging and it's frustrating, and the The people who— the big companies that are selling fake honey to people who think it's honey, I think that's wrong and it doesn't sit right with me and I don't like it. But for us as beekeepers, I don't think it has a massive impact either way. Oh, Normal May Honey, how's it going? She says, hey Lawrence, just jumped on randomly and saw your live and it's your birthday, so big happy birthday. Very much. Anyone's not following Normal May Honey, brilliant channel over in America, and I certainly follow that one. Foff Oak says, hi, happy birthday, Lawrence, following you from the Middle East. Hello! Oh, I like your horse, that is a very cool horse. And Sebastian says happy birthday as well. Thank you, Sebastian. Cub Rider says, great to see you back, means things are starting again. I, I use you very much as my barometer to see whether, like, the public hates me or doesn't hate me. Um, and I'm glad, I think, I think I'm winning you over again, so I'm glad to see you here. But I do, I appreciate your very Straight, straight comments. They are good. Foff Alk says, "Can I ask you if we put our hives in the sunshine directly in the summer to take off varroa?" So no, it's said this on my presentation. It's difficult with varroa. So varroa doesn't kill bees quickly. They transmit viruses to the bees, and it's just that slow killing of the colonies through. Like lots and lots of different viruses is what brings them down. So it means that it fosters this ability to say that anything kills varroa, or anything that you do is working. So I see tons of examples about this— rhubarb leaves, banana skins, um, anything, pixie dust, snake oil. Oh, I've put that onto my colony, so I didn't do a treatment this year, I just did I did a banana skin treatment to make sure that the bees got through the winter and weren't impacted by varroa. Put banana skins on, wait 7 months, come back and the bees are alive. And they say, nailed it, banana skins is obviously the way forward. Not realizing that banana skins did nothing. It's just that to die from varroa takes years. It can take a couple of years, 3 years, can take 4 years. But something like this, putting them in the sun, it's not going to do— it's not going to do anything. There's proven methods to kill varroa, and we mention a lot of these in 14-Day Beekeeper, even saying there's so many treatments on the market that just— they're not that good. But because they don't kill your bees and because the bees are naturally able to survive against the viruses for a number of years, people think, okay, well, I'm going to use that because it's on the shelf and it says it's going to kill varroa, but they're rubbish. So putting it in the sun, I wouldn't say that. best way of doing it is to use a proper treatment. Oxalic acid works everywhere in the world and will be available as well in some legal form. What advice would you give to Australian beekeepers as we deal with a new varroa infestation alongside dealing with small hive beetle? Many colonies are dying, a lot of beekeepers are hanging up their gloves. One sec. So it's really horrible to see that, but the only thing that I would say is look at the UK, look at all around the world, because everyone else has to— not has to deal with that in a way of, come on, stiff upper lip, you have to deal with it, but in a way that we've kind of dealt with it and have procedures in places now. Sorry, we have procedures in place now where Varroa really is a minor nuisance. The only impact that Varroa has on me as a beekeeper has 2 impacts. One, I have to cut my honey season a little bit short. Because we focus on bee health as opposed to trying to get the maximum amount of money out of the bees. And then the other one is I have to pay for the treatment, and that's it. So it's not— it's— there will be a big short-term impact in America where you will have like the old-timers who've got thousands of colonies and they're thinking, well, I'm not paying $10 or $20 per hive for treatment. Like, I'll just get out. I'll just get out now and sell everything up. They were probably going to do it anyway, and they're probably waiting for something like this. Small hive beetle as well. Small hive beetle I think has been around there for a while, but again, it's— if you manage your colony strong, small hive beetle just isn't an issue. The bees can cope with it. It's when the same— it's similar to wax moth, it's when you've got a colony that's kind of like on 6 frames in a 12-frame box and a bit weak, and then the pests come in and they just take over. So I think good husbandry, good management for small hive beetle and for varroa. Isn't the end of the world. We will see with with tropolylaps, but I kind of see tropolylaps in a similar fashion in that it's it's going to move whether whether you put in place bands or not. Like it's it's going to move around. The funniest thing in the world was was at Aphimondia. So we were at Aphimondia, and all of a sudden it came over the tannoy. True story this year came over the tannoy. Can the person who has been selling or buying live queen bees, please stop doing it, or some other words like that, and anybody who's bought them, can you place them into the freezer because we believe that they've come from an area that's close to where the Tropilaela mite was. Now that probably didn't make the news because it wouldn't have come across that well, would it, but that's complete black market illegal queen activity, smuggling, yeah, and That's happening now when it's completely legal to move a lot of queens around. So banning it doesn't fix it. Banning it just sends it underground. Gives you—you lose whatever little control that you've got. The people calling for banning have an agenda, and it's quite clear to see what their agenda is. So don't don't let anybody tell you banning is going to stop it. Banning muddy the water, muddies the waters, and makes things much much more. difficult. But in terms of the impact, again, I just, I think as a community we need to get together on things like this, that the beekeeping community needs to unite against varroa, small hive beetle, Tropilaelaps, Asian hornet, and come together and come up with workable solutions to all of it, as opposed to saying that guy, he's the problem over there, or that organization is the problem, and that's so, so if we just close that organization down, everything becomes okay, and it doesn't. We need to work a little bit better as a collective, I think. But I look at both of those things there, I don't see it as catastrophic, I see it as survival of the fittest, both for the beekeepers and for the bees, and I see it personally as a real opportunity for a number of different things to happen in Australia as a result of that. So yeah, sure, you'll pick up on some of the positivity on it as well. When you were talking to Alex, you said you use Reaper chili powder. Can you say your ratio, or is that top secret? Um, Reaper— I don't use Reaper chili powder. No, I must have mis-said that. I use Scotch bonnet chili powder. Yeah, right. Um, and if you email me, I'll send you my ratio. Yeah, just for you. Torvald says, best wishes for your birthday and your family. Your Buckfast Queen is doing well up in Scotland, enjoying all of your advice information. Thank you very much. Good to hear the Queen's doing well. Um, I got 5 minutes left, and not that many more comments, so I'm going to try and get through them all, be quick. Cambridge, yes, are you still using the 8-way hide hive? Okay, so no, Cambridge Beekeeping Association, I've not had anything to do with them, so won't be going to that, but if I had an invite, I would love to go. And no, the 8-way hide hive, a tree fell on it and I gave it to someone else to mend, and they mended it and it's all using good now, which is good. Right, I'm going to jump down. Beekeeper from Yemen, hello. Channel member says, hi Lawrence, great to see you back, happy New Year. Do you think that putting another brood box on in February will delay swarming, and would you put it on top or underneath the original? So I did a video exactly on that one there, which is if you're worried about your bees swarming early on in the year, underbrood, single brood box underneath, can be frames of foundation, can be frames of drawn comb, do it on a nice warm day, just lift everything up, new box on the floor and then the original brood box on top. So to avoid any confusion, all of your bees should still be up at the top in contact with the poly insulation and in contact with the fondant or the feeder that's up there as well. And then if the bees need to in that time, they can expand downwards, and they will expand downwards. But yeah, really, really good technique. Hi, just started beekeeping journey, tuning in for the first time. Hello, Michael. Any questions, just give us a shout. I'm not gonna say this name. He says, I don't understand what about what you're talking about, but I'm a beekeeper from Yemen. So hello. Sorry, it must be difficult to keep up. Maybe someone needs to produce solid plastic frames for the mini nucs. Might see if my son can print me off on his 3D printer. That could be cool. That could be nice. Yeah, need to make sure that they work when they're inverted as well. But if you need anything from me, that'd be good. David says, we'd love to do 14-Day Beekeeper but right now cannot afford it. So we might have something for you. What we— I am working very hard in the background to diversify our offering, so keep an eye on that one. Ryan says, I'm about 75% through the 14-Day Beekeeper course and I can't tell you how beneficial it's been so far. I'm looking forward to my first year with 2 of your colonies coming. That was it there. You've done well to get through. It's a lot of videos, but I'm I'm hearing a lot of the same, which is really, really useful. Even just little things like the ones that I think people will come back to, the ones like the pests, like looking at wasps or looking at small hive beetle or looking at varroa or looking at Tropilaelaps and thinking, okay, well, maybe I'm not sure, but maybe I'll go back and look at the European foulbrood one, or I'll look at the different diseases. And having that ability to learn about something and then to go into your own hives and say, I'm not sure what I'm seeing here, go back to the content and compare and be like, oh wow, I've got EFB, shoot, shoot. That's powerful. That's like, for you as a beekeeper, you're going to get so, so much out of that because it's not just working out when stuff's not going right, it's working out how to get the very best out of your bees. So I'm really, really excited to see how people go. So keep it going, Ryan, and keep us informed about your progress. David says happy birthday, thank you very much, David. This person here says, can oxalic acid sublimation harm brood? Please, thanks again, Luke. So it— I've not seen any impact of it harming brood, but then my— the way that I do it is I try and do it when— you could argue that I wouldn't see the impact of it because I do it when I don't pull the frames out anyway. So as far as I'm aware, no, but always when I'm treating, I try and do it when there's no brood. So just treating the varroa mites, and then it shouldn't have an impact on it anyway. Hi Lawrence, great vids, you do learn so much in my first year beekeeping, keep it up, great seeing you at the Impello opening day. Thank you very much, good seeing you there too, be back around before we know it. If people didn't buy cheap honey, they wouldn't sell it, but there is a market for it. Exactly. Real honey isn't cheap and cheap honey isn't real. It's very true, I think a few people have cottoned on to that though, a few of the More, um, a few of the people selling fake honey and they just said, right, it's £50 a jar, here you go. And then you say real honey isn't cheap, cheap honey isn't real, but that one that's £50 a jar, that's probably fake too. So it muddies the water a little bit again, but it is, it is good. I do like that saying there and it's, it's good for educating people, but a lot of those people just, I can't, I can't afford it then, I can't afford real honey, which is, which is a bit sad. CarbRider says, do you think the more you go back to basics, the easier beekeeping is? Oh, that's a good question. So not necessarily going back to basics, I don't think it is easier because I think there's a place for advanced things. So for me, like, I couldn't keep bees the way I keep bees without doing the Demaray. So if the Demaray is classed as like an advanced manipulation, then I'd say no. But simplicity, efficiency, like all of those things, once you cut out the 7 different types of smoker and all of the different crown boards and manipulate, and you just, you've got stacks of this stuff and you think, I don't need any of that. So I'd say the more you strip out the non-essentials, the more efficient you become, because everything kind of works together. And I've been saying that for years and constantly buying other stuff as well. But it's amazing. We have friends who buy cheap honey from supermarkets. As soon as they tasted ours, that was it. We sell out to them. We sell out to them every year. So that's a good point, there will be a proportion of that, people who are just completely uneducated who do have the disposable income and are willing to do that. I'd say it's a smaller proportion compared to the ones who just want the cheap jar. Are you ever going back to your old job or is it just beekeeping now? So there has been a long delay with Let's Talk Bees, hopefully the long delay with Let's Talk Bees will not Will not continue. Say no more. Got very. God, you can tell. You can tell the. Oh, bye. Next question. Dwayne Dibley says. Dwayne Dibley says, "I checked my hive yesterday and seems to still have plenty of bees inside, but I did notice several dead bees around the entrance. Is this just because they don't do much housekeeping this time of year?" Good question, this one. And before I answer this question, there was something that came up. I was watching on social media the other day. Who was it? It was someone who said something to me, which was they'd gone— sorry, someone had done a post saying they'd gone to do like a DJing workshop, something like that. And when they got to the DJing workshop, the first things that they were telling them were really quite advanced things. And the guy tried to follow along and he didn't wanna look silly. So they were saying like, insert the stylus here and then you're taking it off and clean. And he was thinking, What's a stylus? I literally don't know what's going on here. And then, so he did the whole day and he said he didn't, he enjoyed it, he didn't get the most out of it because it was maybe pitched at the wrong thing. But he said a lot of people are like that. Little tiny things, yeah, that you just expect people to know. And I said this in my presentation in America where I see that in the UK. I see social media companies on social media humiliating customers for asking questions that they think they should know. You should know that, you're a beekeeper, you should know that. The one in particular was a customer, sorry, a social media company who will remain nameless, mocking someone for emailing them and asking how to open the entrance on the nuc that they'd sold them. Just easy, just open it, let them fly. You don't need me to answer that. My response would be, It's there, and you lift it up and make sure you get a bit of tape on it so the bees can fly out. Like, this is really important because a lot of those bees would have died. But I try and take that a step further than that now and kind of go back and say, well, let's treat everyone like that, and let's try and put all of those steps in place. And if people don't know how to open a nucleus colony, then that's a failing on me for not educating them in advance before sending them a nuc. That's the way I see it. So I just want to put that one there because it's relevant on this one, this question here, which is, you notice several dead bees around the entrance. So every— so you've got 10,000 bees in your colony now. When you get to middle of April, say when you get to crossover day, once all of those winter bees are dead, all of those bees are dead. 10,000 bees are going to die roughly between now and April, so you're probably going to see them. You're going to see them like on the frames, you're going to see them on the bottom of the boards, you're going to see them at the front of the entrance. The bees will do really well to try and clear all of those out. You'll get the undertaker bees going and taking them away, but seeing dead bees is just not an issue at all. And it's one of those things which is like, hopefully sharing that information with you now, which is no, I wouldn't worry at all about dead bees. But that's the level of information that a lot of people do need, which is all of the bees that are in your beehive now are going to die. They're going to be dead by April. If it's good weather, the bees will probably clear it all out and you won't see many of them. If it's bad weather, you're going to see a lot of dead bees, and if you're on grass, you're probably not going to see it because the bees get blended in. If you're on concrete, it's going to look like really, really bad. You want to get a brush out to kind of brush them away, but don't worry about it because it's perfectly normal. So there we go, that's kind of where I'm going now, just trying to fill in all of the gaps and make sure that everyone gets every single little bit of information. Good morning, Lawrence, from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Good morning to you too. Nick says, thank you for all you do for us beekeepers. Thank you too for dialling in, watching me. I think your ratings went up when you started looking like Jesus. Happy birthday! That's completely intentional, that one, yeah. I'm not sure he had such greasy hair. Oh, here we go. Are you living off beekeeping Black Mountain honey? It seems like it takes a lot of time running a YouTube channel, being a busy beekeeper, and having a full-time job. Does, does indeed. Pontiff Beekeeper says, I remember you asking this question 1 or 2 years ago, then your answer was no. Um, so it's as— yeah, good, like no comment at the moment, let's put it that way. Ask me in a few weeks. Uh, Peter says, Abello sell a Zayden smoker, is that the same as the Dayden? Same company. So no, it's not. Um, but the smokers are very, very similar in terms of quality. Gareth says, yeah, I lost my main bee in December, I did a split, I was hoping someone may have canceled their nucs for March. I had to ask. I'm very sorry about that. Our cancellation list is— I've stopped putting people on cancellation lists now because I know that they've got no chance. Dried nettles added to the smoker fuel is the latest one I read that someone swore was good. Thing is, this is what's bad with it, is that we don't test it. So it might be good, but you can't just keep on just chucking anything in. Like, I just— I'm gonna sit by one beehive next year not do any inspections and just eat ice cream, and I reckon that will get the varroa. And if they survive, that's it, we could just all sit by our hives and eat ice creams. Have you considered trying to breed a varroa-resistant breed? Lately there are heaps claiming to be treatment-free now after breeding strong genetics. Surely they can't all be lying, right? So we sell a lot of VSH queens, we work with some of the best in Europe in terms of doing this, but the problem is with bees is that the mating is so diluted that even if I sold you a perfect queen and said this, the offspring from this queen here, like, bro, I won't even go near them. That's it. Just hate them, whatever. Or they're just incredibly good at cleaning them out before they get to that point. Then that's fine. And that would work until they swarm. And then the genetics are so quickly watered down by natural matings that unless everyone's doing it, you'll you're not going to have any of those benefits within a very short space of time. So that's the challenge really, and I think if you're going down that route where you don't want to treat, then there's good genetics there, and it's proven. You can see that these bees will tolerate the mites to a certain level, and then when they get to a certain level that they don't like, they're just going to remove them and just put all their efforts into removing them and keeping them at a level that they don't require any treatment. But the problem is that if you're doing that to save money, then you're probably going to have to keep on replacing the queens to keep that level going. I don't want to— like, there's a lot of people out there doing this on various different levels. I would just say that the difference for me is this difference between the surviving and the thriving. I think that there's things that you can do, and the bees might get to a point where they can just about survive with varroa, But if they can only just about survive, then I would argue that they're probably not the bees that you want as a backyard beekeeping colony, because I think people would just get quite bored of them quite quickly if they're not producing honey. But that's only my personal opinion. Some people might say, well, I don't want any honey, I just want some colonies that are going to survive in the back garden without any issues indefinitely, and then maybe I think there is— I think with the breeding, if you're in a nice isolated area and you've got a good selection in terms of a starting gene pool, you could do that selection and you're happy to reduce other things down in search of treatment-free bees, then it is possible, yeah, always that's possible. Thank you, you're amazing as always, very kind. We are only allowed Bavaro and OA fogging. Is it actually OA fogging that you use or sublimation? Only because, not to catch you out on the terminology, but I'm pretty sure the fogging has been proven to be completely ineffective, as in it does not work. So the fogging is when they mix it with like, I think it's like a glycerin or something, and then it's heated in a way that you get this evaporation or fogging. And that doesn't work. It has like no impact on varroa. And then the sublimation is very effective. sublimation, as in turning it from solid to gas instantly, is very, very good. All I would say is it does take time for these things to come through. So that Niroa— Niroa, can't say it properly— in the US, brilliant treatment, or at least it looks like a very promising treatment. I don't want to say a brilliant treatment because I've never tried it, but it's pushing the boundaries and it's new technology and it's rendering the mites infertile. My only concern with these things is that they kind of push through legislation quite quickly. Like, what is the end result on the honey there? Is there any— I'm sure they're looking at all of that stuff, but I don't want to say, yeah, it's brilliant without kind of seeing the studies for myself. But it takes time to get the legislation through, and then hopefully in Australia, you'll start to see the different products coming through. The fact that there's proven products that work, FormicPro, anything formic-based is very, very good at killing varroa, has impacts on brood, has impacts on queens as well, but there's ways around that. You've got oxalic acid, which is, I would say, number one, and then I don't know, I'm not familiar with Bavarol, but it's probably a similar— well, it's probably a brand name for something that we use anyway. But I'm surprised, so it might be Amitraz. So Amitraz is a very well-known chemical miticide for treating varroa. So I'm sure that that will be available at some point. Now, I don't think it's as simple in Australia as going in and just giving them Apivar and saying, yeah, all is good. There's going to be the same that happened in the UK. There's going to be some significant losses first and significant adaptations maybe taking place. But then I think within like 5 to 10 years, it will have really calmed right down. I don't want to say just in time for Tropilaelaps, because let's assume that Tropilaelaps never gets there. and then they have— we have good methods for controlling it. But yeah, I don't want to be the negative one. Will we see you at Telford? So at the moment, no, I'm not planning on going to Telford this year. That might change, I will let you know, but at the moment it's unfortunately not. Hi, happy birthday! So enjoying 14 Day Beekeeper, learning so much, and everything is starting to make sense and click. Music to my ears. And HiveQ is so helpful, I'm flooding it with questions, and you've got some really knowledgeable Beekeepers on there. Brilliant. That's like, thank you so much for such a nice comment. All I will say to you, I will just say this, it's going to get better. It really is. I love that people are enjoying it at the moment, but what we've got planned for you really will elevate that to the next level. Specifically with HiveQ, we've got some really nice plans for HiveQ, and it needs to grow a little bit to move on to the next stage, and it's growing very, very nicely. So keep an eye on it and it will be very, very good. Great advice, thanks. It's making me a better beekeeper. I definitely am a better beekeeper by watching your videos as well, so keep going. When do you start and stop selling queens? So first queens will go out hopefully first week of April, might be the second week of April, and then we go through until the end of August. We'll definitely be finishing end of August this year. Sorry, me again. What would cause a really strong colony to abscond in the UK during September, October, please? No queen cells or brood, just empty hive full of stores, have been treated for varroa. So I always— late season absconding like that is pretty much always varroa-related. So if you say they've been treated for varroa, what was the treatment? When did you do the treatment? Because I would suggest it's almost— it would almost certainly be varroa. If they swarmed or superseded at that point in the year, they're not going to go, like they'll leave a decent amount of bees there, and you probably— the colony might fail because the cell that they left behind might not get mated, but it's rare for them to completely abscond like that. So I'd say it's probably going to be varroa. If it's not varroa, it could be they're getting pestered by something, be like badgers or something, but if you're not seeing the damage in the hive, you could probably rule that one out as well. Have a look, have a look at your treatment, have a look at the timing of the treatment. I would, if I had to guess, I would say Varroa. Tully Moan Root says, hi Lawrence, new to beekeeping, starting a local course in February, thanks for your videos, very, very helpful. My pleasure very much. I've got a lot of people starting courses, it's so exciting, and I get the challenge, people say, oh well, you're doing 14-Day Beekeeper now, like you don't think there's value in local courses. And I say, I've not said that. Like, absolutely, like, do both. And if you're going to do both, do the 14-Day Beekeeper first, and you'll go to your course, like, knowing the stuff. It's so much— I don't know about you, but for me, I kind of thought, well, I don't want to sit somewhere for 3 hours on a Saturday morning learning about the whatever, like learning about how to put Apivar strips in. I could do that in bed, like sit in a nice warm bed and just, like, drink hot chocolate and watch it on the tablet. That's That's loads better. And then if I forget, it doesn't matter because I don't need to create any notes or anything. And then later on in the season, I still get all the info as well. But what 14-day beekeeping cannot do, they never do this, is give you real experience of touching bees and feeling bees and pulling frames out and experiencing that spell and experiencing the fear, because it is, it is a little bit scary when it comes to bees. So absolutely go and and do your local courses. Like, that's— I think there's a place for both of those different styles of learning, and I'd love to see them connected together at some point in the future, but I don't hold out a huge amount of hope. Lost 7 of my 7 hives this mild winter in Somerset. Probable cause: tiny clusters in all hives, nicotinoids affecting navigation home, and in EU but Brexit allows bees on the ground in autumn. Oh, so that's really, really sad. to hear, Andrew. I will give you a nice comment first, which is your fish. It's a really cool fish that you caught there. But 7 out of 7, oh, it's horrible when it's like that because it's quite clearly something when it's 7 out of 7 and you kind of know, you know what you're doing. Then it has to be something like that and chemical poisoning. Oh, it's very, very sad. I hope I hope you manage to get back on track. I don't know what to suggest there because it is a difficult one and I'm surprised that we've like U-turned on that. And I do, I have to sit on the fence when it comes to most things. But yeah, it is a real frustration to see that and I hope you get back on track. How you doing, Lutz? Good luck and power for Project 2026 indeed. I'm very excited about that. The Bee Rookie says, 14-Day Beekeeper should be a staple for beekeeping. It's like having an encyclopedia to be able to refer to at any point. My certificate is proudly displayed in the office. I love that. That was so good. I also, for anyone who's not following The Bee Rookie, get over there because I love seeing people with YouTube channels, especially customers, people who are buying nucs and buying queens or just keeping bees and doing stuff like that. I always have a little nosy, so Shout out for that one. I heard you speak at NABI and I'm going to use the Demaray to keep my large colonies from swarming early to avoid drone laying queens. Thank you. Oh, hello from North Wales as opposed to hello from America, but thanks for coming and supporting me. It was, it was a bit crazy because I, I always said, yeah, like my worst fear— I hate this, it's happened, it's happened a couple of times before, but You go into a big room, and you know, like you're nervous. Like you go into a big room and there's like three people there, or just it's it's ten percent full, and then you've got to be like, "Oh, hello! Oh, come in." It's not enough people here. It's really embarrassing. That's just me being honest. And and then for me, like a full room, like love a full room. Like that's that's just it's no it's not easy because I'm still you probably would have seen still nervous, but. I don't feel like embarrassed with it as well. And it was a full room at Narby, it was very full. They had to get them to like compress the seats in. There was— it was full, and then the seats, the people were sitting on the floor as well. So thank you if you, if you sat on the floor at Narby, thank you to you. I really, really did appreciate it. It calmed my nerves somewhat. Uh, Charlotte says, hello from Shropshire, we're along the 14-day beekeeper course. We started with one of your summer nucs, made 2 splits and used your queens and had a lit one. I need all of the hives are super strong. I need to do more with these brilliant stories. So thank you for sharing that one, Charlotte. But I need to do more with them. So I was thinking, here's an idea that I'm genuinely thinking about doing, which is just, I'm not going to say like sending Zane, but sending Zane to video some people and just kind of let's get some other stories on there as well. I think that would be quite cool. He lives kind of like Congleton Way. So if anyone's near Congleton, like, oh my God, I live, I live near Congleton, or somewhere around that way. I don't think he's right there. I've deliberately not told you where he lives, but I know that he's relatively close to Congleton. But maybe we could do that. Maybe we could send someone out, or send Zainab to do some other videos and stuff. And I'm, I'm always up for going, going to different apiaries and seeing stuff. But that would be very, very cool. Charlotte also says thank you for all your videos. We could have not, we could have not done it without them. That's very kind of you, Charlotte. Thank you. Uh, Wildways Farm, we've got Harry back. He says, hey Lawrence, looking forward to the new season. Have a good sale of nucs this year. I've been run off my feet. Have 20 new Abello hives coming in a week. Very good. So this is it, Harry's, Harry's taken advantage of the nucs. Yeah, it is, it is very busy. Uh, Cub Rider says, I made the mistake of selling my honey cheap to start with, £5 for 12 ounces, and now it's difficult to increase because people think I'm being greedy. Big problem. It's great advice, and the advice I give to all people, which is Let's start like other way around. This, this is perfect. Yeah, if you can do this in your beekeeping, it's great because it works out your price for you, and it's just a little bit of trial and error, which is you're likely going to get all of your honey produced by September, something like that. You want to price your honey so you sell out in August. Okay. And that works anywhere. If you can price your honey so it sells out in August, you've nailed it. And obviously you're not going to get it that perfect, but The worst case scenario is selling out in November. Like, what? You don't want to sell out in November because then you've got the whole year of no money and you do what Kev Ryder did and you think, oh, it's annoying, could have sold it for like twice the price. And then when you say, oh yeah, it's twice the price now, people say, that's really greedy. You just say, no, I mispriced it at the beginning, you can't hold it against me. So I feel your pain a little bit there. Oh, I'm not that far through my coffee here. I always do this. And I appreciate I'm 24 minutes over the allotted time, so I am going to have to go considering it's my birthday and my girls are waiting to give me my presents. So I'm gonna fly through— yeah, there's a lot more, so I'm gonna fly through, I'm gonna do a 5-minute fly-through, here we go. Hi Laurence, I rescued a small colony of bees last autumn and we got them into a polynuc, but I only had shallow frames with stores for them. How do I get them off the shallow and into the national deeps? Really easy, take a brood box, deep brood box, and place it underneath the shallow, like now, or any point in the next 4 to 6 weeks. The bees will build up, but they won't, they'll build down, and then all you need to do is find the queen, make sure she's in the bottom box, and put a queen excluder in between the two. All the brood will emerge from the shallow, and then you're set up, good to go. Can you use queen 3-frame cages to stop swarming or reduce it? So there is nothing that you can do whilst the queen is still in the hive to stop the bees from swarming unless you separate it away from the brood with a Demaray split. They will still swarm, they'll still produce swarm cells, and if the queen cannot get out, if she's trapped, if she's got clipped wing, then they'll just swarm to the first virgin. So it delays it from 7-day inspections to 10-day inspections. I wish I knew everything. Do you know what? I, I'm not— I definitely do not know everything, but it would be boring if you did know everything. I, I really enjoy the process of learning new things. Um, for example, I chatted to someone the other day and he said to me, uh, do you know, do you know, you, you know, you say the word phoretic mites— supposed to be— I was supposed to be doing a 3-minute blast. He said, do you know you use the word phoretic mites? And I say, yeah, like mites that are on the back. He said, it's not actually what phoretic means. And then he, he showed me That phoretic means something else. And I was like, that's good knowledge. I like that. Like, why would I not like the challenge there? That's me learning. But then we realized that there's actually no— there was no word to describe the mites other than phoretic, and that it might confuse things like that. So he didn't finish it off completely for me, but I took it. I thought, hmm, okay, I like that. So I'm always open for a challenge, and I enjoy the process of learning. Definitely. If I ever say anything or do anything wrong, call me out on it. Should I keep my hives up at the heather all year round, or should I keep them down in the back garden? I have 2 options and not sure which to do as I'm new to beekeeping. If you're new to beekeeping, do not keep them up at the heather. I'll simplify that one for you. It makes it difficult. I've got an apiary where I keep them up at the heather all year round because it's right on the outskirts of it, and it does very, very well. If you're slap bang in the middle of the heather, there's nothing. You'll almost certainly kill the bees at some point, they will starve unless you're on it with the feeding, so I wouldn't risk it. Time to go and enjoy your 40th, once it's gone it's gone. Indeed, get there. Higher underfloor entrances or converted underfloor, does one work better than the other? I like my standard underfloor entrances, so I would go with that. Have you had the pleasure of using the prototype bee smoker that's about? Oh, I'm not sure which one, but I'm interested. Just fogging, right? That's really interesting. Check to see the fogger that you've got is actually working. That's— I'm blown away by that. She says it's correct. Okay, cool. Have you had any experience with Hive Alive added to syrup? I bought a pallet of sugar plus a 2-liter drum of Hive Alive for spring syrup. Best advice for mixing? I used to do it in individual drums. So I really like Hive Alive. I use it on every single colony that we sell. I use it as my final feed of the year. I do not use it in spring. I would not recommend using it in spring, Harry, because you'll end up with Hyvalive in your supers, or your customers will end up with Hyvalive in their supers. So definitely wouldn't do it. So Hyvalive will stop it because it's got thymol in there. You can, you know, Hyvalive will stop it. I'm getting very, very sitting on the fence with everything here. So any advice for mixing a fairly big batch and then decant into drums when I need syrup? So no. 1:1 sugar syrup goes off really, really easily. Um, I would just work out a way that's a quick, easy way of making up smaller batches. Good advice, that is, because you'll end up with— you'll end up with hive alive in your syrup, or you'll end up with, um, fermenting syrup. One of the two. What do you get with 14 Day Beekeeper? Is it a yearly subscription or one-off payment, and do you get the new videos, etc.? So with 14 Day Beekeeper, it is a payment, you get lifetime access, and there is 282 videos in there. There will be 300, but there's 282 videos in there. So it's less than 50p a video. There's more, slightly more than that. It's about 53p per video. And they're just— you've seen, you've seen the demonstration one. They're all like that. They're filmed, they're exclusive, they're not available anywhere else. Thank you for allowing me to say that. The Honey Herd, he says, um, hi Lawrence, just want to say a huge thank you for all of your work you do educating and supporting new beekeepers. Your content and advice have been a massive help to me through my first season. Well, I think it is Paul, isn't it, Paul? And if it's not Paul, I do get names wrong occasionally, but I watched a couple of your videos. Your channel has completely taken off, so anybody who's not subscribed to Paul at The Honey Herd, pretty sure it's Paul, go and have a look. I watched your video the other day about like coming in and starting out, and like the editing and videography and everything is so, so cool. I I was very, very impressed, so thank you for my nice words, but yeah, I'll give it back to you because what you're doing is very cool. David says he's got to go, but thank you very much, David. Thank you so much for answering all of my questions, I really appreciate it, and I've learned a lot from you today. Have a great birthday. Regards, Luke. Hey, thank you very much, Luke, have a good day. Favourite feeder? Polyashville feeder. Hello from Colorado, Flower Street Farm Bees. Hello to you too. The Bee Rookie, thumbs up, good man, keep it going. Charlotte says, we would love to have you, we have WBC hives. Oh well, drop me an email, blackmountainhoney@gmail.com, and hopefully we can make that work. Troy Tyrell, he's after Artem's cool name, says, hi Lawrence, have you seen the hive IQ beehives from Australia? Polystyrene is good or better than Lysan? So I saw them, Sophia, Sophia's Bees, is super cool. My favourite thing that she does, yeah, and Norma Mae's going to see this one, she gets herself in front of a fan and goes, and it really made me laugh. I don't know why, but yeah, she is cool. She is the daughter of the owner. I've not seen them, I've not played with them, but I do like my Polystari hives. I'm a bit on the fence between nucs and honey. I sell a lot of nucs, but I have to decide whether to do honey or to do nucs. I never get more than 100 jars of honey because of the number of splits, etc. We all, we all have to make these decisions, don't we, Harry? Um, I don't think you can do both of them well. You've got to stick to one. Uh, Happy birthday! Thank you very much. Uh, Harry says, I wish I enjoyed learning enough for my A-levels. Oh well, I probably didn't enjoy— you did. This is the thing, Harry, you'll look back at your A-levels, I did enjoy that back then. You put yourself under too much stress at the time. But when you— yeah, not, not to say that when you, when you grow up and experience kind of like the stress of real look back on childhood fondly, but I think most people do feel like that, so enjoy it, enjoy it while you're kind of in the moment. Have a good birthday. Thanks, Andy. Thank you to The Bald Beekeeper. Best wishes for your birthday, it's always heartwarming when you share your special days. Thank you very much. Thanks a lot for the info, I think I'll also do 14-Day Beekeeper along with the local course. Happy birthday. Don't feel pressured, I'd hate to ever pressure anyone into doing a course. The beauty with 14-Day Beekeeper though is that if you don't like it in the first week, I just give you a full refund, so there's no risk whatsoever to anyone there. Alan says he'll send me an email. Thank you very much, Alan. Lynette says happy birthday. Hi, Lynette. Same from Gambit. I'm powering through, if anyone's wondering. Hello from Texas, your videos are awesome. Do you rear your own queens, and if so, have you ever primed your queen cups before grafting? So yes, we rear a lot of our own queens. We also, of course, them as well. It's funny, the priming the queen cups before grafting, Richard is a huge fan of this. Yeah, so Richard does not like to prime his cups, but Richard says, I don't need to prime my cups because I prime the larvae. And I say, oh, what's that? So what Richard does, and I do do this as well now, is that he feeds the colonies a very specific mix when he's taking the frame of eggs out. So he feeds the breeder queen colony, so when he's taking out the frames of eggs and then they're breaking out into larvae, royal jelly. So once you graft them, they're kind of like pre-primed. Oh, that wasn't fair, I started talking for like 30 seconds there and loads more— I appreciate the comments. Happy birthday, thanks for the chat. I'm going to be ordering my first nucleus of bees soon. What is the best time of the year to get my first nuc? So get your order in quick, wherever you're ordering from, you're going to run out of time. Try and get them April and May time, I would say. Thanks for the chat. I think I'll mix the syrup do it better in smaller batches. Definitely do that. Happy birthday, your nucs are doing well, and thanks for all the videos, they helped us in our first year. Thank you, Danielle. I like golf, I like golf too. Happy birthday, Lawrence, hope you have a great day, hope to catch up soon. Happy birthday, nice to see these chats starting. Slight delay to my beekeeping year as my son is in HECU Bristol, but I look forward to the new season. Is that— I'm not sure, where's— is that like an acronym for something? I'm not sure, but I'm sure it's all good. Uh, John says goodbye, and then the final comment goes to Tully Moe Moot, says having the videos there at the tap of a finger with a lifetime subscription is invaluable. So Let's Talk Bees is back. I will be back in 2 weeks' time and we will do another version of this. Probably won't go on for an hour and a half. I've done an hour and a half here. I've really enjoyed it. I, I feel so bad for having let it go so long without doing it. I really think it's a very important thing for me to do. to come and talk directly to people here. Never shy away from it, never kind of like hide away, but hopefully we can keep this one going. So I wish you all a very, very good weekend, keep talking about the bees, keep preparing for the season, and I will see you all next time. Thank you.