Live Stream Comments - Q and A

Right, I'm live. How's it going, everyone? I've decided to start doing a live stream, and I'll have to probably talk into the camera for this one. But instead of going through and responding to everyone's comments. I've decided to try and move things over a little bit and do a live stream to answer your comments. So I'm going to give that a go here. I appreciate I've not advertised this, I've not promoted it, so there is literally nobody here, but I'm going to give it a go. So I'm going to look over there, see what the comments are, I'm going to answer them on here. If you see a comment come up on your comments from me that says answered on the latest live stream, then you can log on, then you you can look at the screen and you'll be able to see that comment. So first one, first ever question that's going to be answered on my weekly live stream— that's right, it's going to be a weekly live stream— is from Blue Lab. So some of them are just comments, uh, and I'll just put a little bit of a summary in there. And the first one is Blue Lab saying, I've got Mazemore and BS Honeybees nucleuses, and I can honestly say I think they're both excellent. I'd go with the BS Honeybees one simply because of its ability to be the 2 3-frame nucs and the fondant plug. I couldn't agree more. I would definitely agree with that one, and you are the first answer on the live stream, so thanks for that. I'll go on to the next one then. So great name, says, today I got stung twice in the same hand, one in the pinky, it hurt like hell and got swollen real quick, and then in my index finger, hurt normally but I didn't get any swelling at all. I don't know, I think that's kind of weird. Okay, thanks very much. That's, uh, I've not really got to answer that one, but I read out your comment, so I will try and filter through them, I think, make sure they're actually questions. Next one, this is the one that prompted me to actually do this because I thought there's such good questions coming in from all of the, the viewers of the channel, and they deserve a little bit more than me just going in and answering them. I've seen that I've got some viewers as well, so hi Castle Hives, uh, I love your channel. And Andy from Brooklyn's Honeybees, I love your channel as well. Uh, you two are gonna have a little chat here in the comments, I can see. So yeah, uh, I will be doing a live stream now going forward. Oh, so yeah, so Simon Freebarn, Freeban, uh, he has just come up as well with a comment on here saying, always losing my hive tool around the apiary. How do you attach yours to your suit? Good question. I've got a video on that one. Uh, if you go on the channel and search hive tool. I think it's retractable hive tool. That is how I connect mine to my suit, and it is really, really good. I don't know how people do without a retractable hive tool. Needs to be a little bit careful with cleaning it, regular cleaning in between apiaries, soda solution. But yeah, you don't lose it, and it's always there when you need it, when you're, when you're holding things in your hands, and that's really good. So yeah, feel free to ask live questions as well. I still need to work out how to look at this camera though, because this is like— it is very, very difficult for me to do it. So there we go. I think that's about as good— or maybe not. That's about as good as I'm going to get it. I will play with the camera where it is. I know it's there and I can say hello, right? Josh D, how effective is this against mites when compared to a ProVap or a wand-type vaporizer? So that's a question in relation to the GasVap. And I will answer it on, and I'll say it's been answered on this stream. But what I would say is it's equally as effective. There's no difference in terms of the efficacy or its effectiveness, but I'd say it's not anywhere near as reliable as the ProVap or the Sublimox. In terms of the wand-type vaporizers, there again, the efficacy and the effectiveness is similar, but they're just a real faff to work with. They take so long, and you can only do it from the bottom, whereas the Sublimox, the ProVap, And the gas tap, you can go from the top. So I like to go in from the top. So that's the next question that's been answered. I will prioritize people's questions on the stream because you're here, you're live, so I do it. Gintas Kaddish, you have to excuse me if I get your names wrong. It's people from all over the world, and I struggle to say like Ben Smith. Do you recommend to clip your queens? A very interesting one. 100%, I cannot believe I went so long without clipping my queens. It gives you such a huge advantage in terms of spacing out the management of your swarm inspections, and then as long as you get there within kind of 8, 9, 10 days, if you do lose a swarm, they're pretty much recoverable 99% of the time because they're just clustered up under the OMF. So I 100% Love clipping queens. Will clip all of my queens apart from the ones that I sell because appreciate not everyone wants to sell them. Sorry, not everyone wants to clip them. Seeing Andy's doing well, all his hives that are alive. Right, that's just people saying hello to each other. Right, let's go through some of these other comments. Do is right talking about painting of hives. Do you do this with the Abello too? I've seen in previous videos that most of most of the Abello hives you've shown are pre-painted. Right, so you get a like and a heart and it's answered. So, so yeah, this video was driven by me speaking to Damien at Abello. The ones that I've got that are painted— like, Damien does give me free hives, um, not, not all the time, just like a few to stick in the videos and stuff, and if there's like an overstock of one or two. All of the ones that I've bought myself from Abello, I always get them not painted and I paint them up in the old camo style. I find it works a lot better a lot more durable. I like the look of them a lot more as well. I'm not too keen on the garish colours. Like, I like them, and I do have some Apis. You'll see, like, the Abello Apis that we've got, you've got some colours in there, but my personal preference is something a little bit more muted than some of the colours they have. So yeah, answered that one. Right, best method for changing old brood frames so they're empty before you remove them? Um, I just, just cycle them out. I said this in previous videos, as long as you're not using any, uh, mite treatments that are going to taint them, I'm all new frames going forward. I'm going to stamp the date on the top of them. Um, so that's what Murray McGregor does, that, and that is really good habit to get into. And then I'll cycle them out every 3 years. If I'm not using Apivar, I'll push them out to the side. If they're not being used for Apivar, they're then you can just use, use the honey and extract the honey out of them. If they have been used for Apivar, then you just need to melt them down, reclaim the wax, chuck the honey away. But in terms of getting the actual honey out, if you cycle them out, start them off in the middle, move them out towards the edges, and then when you get towards end of the season, so August, September, if you have the ones that you want to recycle out towards the edges, chances are they won't have any brood in them. You can just take them out If the wax is good, you can use the honey. If the wax is tainted, you don't use the honey. And then you can put— and then you slide everything out and you put your new frames of foundation in the middle, split the brood, and within a few days they will have completely drawn that out. I have done a separate video on that and it is a very effective technique. Oh, I'm going to struggle. I struggle to keep up with these questions, aren't I? I'm surprised. I thought I'd just sneak in, do a little live stream, no one's going to notice. And yeah, right, here we go. Right, best method for change? Oh, we've done that one. Right, Lawrence, do you have any issues with birds putting holes in your polyhives? So no, no issues at all, but we're lucky where we are. I know other people do have issues with woodpeckers. What we do have an issue with, I've just been out there today, is badgers. Badgers rip them to shreds, they really do go through them, a bit of a nightmare. But no, I don't have a problem, but I know people do. And it's definitely susceptible to woodpecker attack. Beekeeping Gardening, did you use plastic foundation? What is your opinion on this? So I've had a couple of hives that have got plastic foundation in. I've not really run it enough to talk about it. I do like the idea of plastic foundation if it's going to last for 30-odd years. I just think I need to get it to a point where I can get it through a kind of cleaning cycle. Get it through a cleaning cycle and it doesn't bend and warp, then I'm interested. I'm really interested in these new frames and feeders ones because they're so simple and molded out of a single piece of plastic. They reckon they're recyclable as well. I'd like to see them put some sort of exchange thing on there that they can recycle them with. Um, I do like the idea of that, but I've not got a huge amount of experience in it. I'm just having a sip of tea. What months do you treat your hives? So we go for August, we use kind of like an Apivar, or we're going to use Thymovar this year. I've decided already I'm gonna, I'm gonna break it up, break up the Apivar and go with Thymovar. But again, that'll be August, and then we do a December apibioxal treatment one time. So it's twice a year, 2 different treatments. Have you started the checkerboarding or know when you're going to? Check out tonight's video. That is all I will say. Uh, uh, hello, hello Wilson. Howdy, how you doing? Nice membership badge there. Uh, are the native dark bees AMM a lot less docile? I just— I, I— it's a loaded question that, Joe, trying to get me in trouble. Uh, no, definitely not. I really don't think that you can get mega angry by Buckfast bees and you can get super gentle dark AMM bees. You can get horrible chalk brood on AMM, you get horrible chalk brood on Buckfast. I just don't think you can categorize by the color of the bee. There's a really well-renowned, very well-renowned, is that how you say it, a guy on the No Nonsense Beekeeping Facebook page, Jonathan Getty. So he's snuck in, no one's noticed, and he breeds loads of AMM. And just go and look at some of his colonies. They're fantastic, very gentle, very good productive AMM bees. So you'll never, you'll never hear me slagging off a certain type of bee. It's all about how good the breeder is and how they keep that line going. Castle Hives saying only use plastic foundation. So yeah, I would check out Castle Hives' channel, really good channel. He's got a lot more experience on that than me, so go and check that one. I've got a dog. Jasper, sorry, dog. He's gonna have to get kicked out in a minute. Right. Hi Lawrence, what is your opinion on 1:1 sugar water in a birdbath near the hives at this time of year? Because my bees are flying but not around finding food. Just definitely not. That's not something that I would do. All you're going to do there is just attract unwanted attention and it's going to become a real issue in terms of disease. Just gonna let my dog out. So yeah, not something for me. What I would suggest instead, if they're light on food, go with some baker's fondant, cheap baker's fondant, stick it on top of the hives. On top of the frames, direct contact with the frames, and then the bees will find them. I'll show you in a few more videos' time, there's some updates in terms of how the bees have taken down that big 12.5 kilograms of fondant that I've put on there. Some of them have cleared it out. So if people tell you you don't need to put fondant on your hives, or that the bees won't take down the fondant because there's too much there, or that it's a heat sink— not naming any names— Um, then not that they don't know what they're talking about, but people, people do things differently and they certainly do take it down. You just need to make sure that you're not overfeeding them. Uh, Joe, do you speak to many other beekeeping YouTubers? I'm thinking of Gwynedd Griffith and Norfolk Honey. Any collabs coming? So I'm part of a Welsh honey cluster with Griff, um, so I do speak to him occasionally. Uh, we, we chat on social media a little bit as well. And we do have a collaboration coming up at some point. We just need to work out how to do it. I said that I think we should just do like a little Zoom chat and just talk about what we're doing. Um, I think that would be good. Norfolk Honey? No, I, I, I have no conversation or anything with him. He doesn't seem too interested in YouTube anymore, doing his Patreon thing, um, making lots of money by the sounds of it. How early in the season could you start splitting hives? Uh, so as soon as they're big enough to split on there, when they're on like 10 frames and they're filling the brood box, you can easily split that out into 2, maybe 3 nucs. You need to add mated queens into that though. Um, you don't want to start splitting them and letting them just do walkaway splits and letting them try and kind of rear queens when there's no drones around. So if you're using mated queens, which will only be imported at that time of the year, as soon as they've filled the brood box, you can split them out. You will lose pretty much all of your honey though, I'd say. But that's fine, that's what we did for ages. If you're waiting for, uh, the queens, uh, the drones to come in, you're talking kind of back end of May, I would say, is a reasonable time to do that. My dog's now barking outside. Uh, Joe, Joe, you've got some questions in here. Joe, Joe is on the questions, right? I've just bought a load of Invert B. Is this 2:1? Could I still use this in place of 1:1 when making splits and at the start of the end of the season? So So yeah, so it's not— they don't break invert down into 2:1. I think the actual specific gravity of it is a little bit over 2:1 depending on the brand. I know the Modern Beekeeping one is the highest one you can get, so I think it's like 2.1 or 2.2, but it doesn't make a difference. And yeah, you can use it, it's no problem. I wouldn't even bother watering it down, just kind of get in there and they will use it. And at that time of the year, they won't store it, they'll just burn through it quicker than you can add it. I'm gonna get my dog in. Right, so for anybody who's not met Jasper before, this, this is my pocket dog Jasper. He likes to think he's a small little greyhound, but he's not. Absolutely ginormous. Yeah, he's a nightmare. If you're in the house, he wants to go out. If he's out the house, he wants to come in. Um, so he will keep us entertained for the rest of, uh, this live stream. I've got through about 3 questions so far, so this is going well. Uh, hi Adam, how you doing? Uh, any plans for a podcast? Nope, definitely not doing podcasts because I I'm just gonna do YouTube instead. Um, I've not got enough time to plan for podcasts, sorry about that. Uh, I've just started helping someone look after a dozen abandoned hives. That is cool. Uh, most have brood or 3 or 4 full supers, but the queen excluders have been left on. Would you remove on a warm day? Yeah, I'd remove on a cold day. You need to get those queen excluders out as soon as possible and hope that you've not got a dead queen on the floor. Seriously, tomorrow, do it tomorrow. It doesn't matter if it's 2, 3 degrees, the bees will cope with that better than they will cope without a queen. I've got to catch my breath now after lifting this 30-kilo dog. I'll have a sip. Preferred feeder? Yeah, the Abello feeder. The Abello polyashworth feeder is my favorite. The Suyenti one is fine if you're on top bee space. The Suyenti one works perfectly as it is on the 12-frame Abello hive. So if you've got a 12-frame Abello and you want a polyashworth feeder, that's a really good one to get. But I'll, I'll do another one. I, I, I'm pretty sure I've done that one on the polyashworth feeder, though not— you search the website, uh, the channel. You should see someone feed us. Dean saying hi, excited to see your reviews and comparison of Flow Hive and Copy. What got you into beekeeping? What made you decide to go into commercial beekeeping? So hi Dean, and thank you for your continued support on me getting everything wrong in terms of my Flow Hive comments. So much appreciated. I'm excited to see it as well. I really am. And it's amazing the controversy it's caused, isn't it? Talking about fake ones, like people are so passionate about. Flow hives, fake flow hives. What kind of worms that was? So what got you into beekeeping? Just kind of fluke. Had a swarm land in the garden, and I like, I like honey. I like food. You can tell I like food. So I thought it'd be quite fun. And what made you decide to go into commercial beekeeping? I just, it just happened. It just kind of transitioned. If you ask my wife, she says it's because I'm just complete obsessive about everything that I do. And that's what's got me into so much trouble. I mean, that's what's got me into commercial beekeeping. All right, Castle Hives, thought on Hive Alive? Is it being, uh, is being used all over the States? I'm going to try it out this year. So I've limited experience on it. I've got enough to do 1,400 liters. I think they sent me a big, uh, like 2-liter bucket of it. Um, so I'll be, I'll be mixing some of that up this year. All of my colonies will get a blast of it. The thing, like, it's thymolated syrup. Ultimately, that's what's the good stuff in it, plus loads of seaweed extract that makes your hive jazzy. But it's— I think it's the thymol that's good. And you can't just go and use thymol crystals and put that in your syrup without the VMD being all over you. So that's not something we do, and that's genuinely not something we do. But thymolated syrup is good for the bees. It will knock back mild cases and mild infections of Nosema. and it does help boost them. So I don't know about the seaweed extract. I know formulated syrup is a good thing. The US is so kind of further ahead than the UK in terms of what's allowed to go into your hives and not. Like, you look at the oxalic acid argument over here, you just can't use it. You can use Apibioxal, and you can vape it once a year because that's what the VMDs say. So that's all you're allowed to do, and you can't do it with the supers on. in the US, you can just blast your hives as many times as you want with plain old oxalic acid with the supers on. So you have got it so easy. You have a real good mechanism and tool there to fight the varroa mite. And as usual, the UK is a little bit hamstrung. Jesper the dog wants to be part of the show. Yeah, he's just— he's chilling out now. So I'm sorry, I realize I'm a little bit behind the comments. Perfect time to walk in, doggo. Hello, Jasper. Pre-order Hive Alive patties yet? I know that's at Castle Hives. I've got—I just put some on today. Some of them—they are good, but they're mega expensive. Lawrence, did you ever feed bees for the winter by fondant only? No syrup yet. So I've got a video that I'm—I will film that next week. I went and checked the hives last week, and they've gone through the whole 12.5 kilo block, and I've had to stick another six kilos on. It works really well. The bees love fondant, and you don't need to feed syrup. And some people don't want to have to mess around with syrup. It just makes things kind of like so much easier. I just realized I'm going to stop the screen. I like— you can have it, you can have me on full screen for a little bit because I'm not getting through those comments. I might have to do that and think about that a different way. Uh, additional entertainment. Yeah, Jasper. Large large cat flap. He's he's a barker. This is the problem. I'd let him just roam, but he just goes out and barks. He is a pain. How much the proper bee? I don't get that one. Ginses, how much proper beekeeper sure would cost? Have to write that one again. Sorry, I don't get that one. Do you think the mild winter may increase the parasite counts this year? Have you found you have gone through more or less fondant as it has been mild? I'd say yeah, a little bit more stores. We've gone through a little bit more stores, a little bit more fondant. Um, I think the varroa mite count is going to be up, but that's just anecdotal. I've not done any tests on that. Um, but I can't see how they wouldn't be. I don't think the brood breaks are going to be anywhere near as big as they have been in previous years. And looking at the clusters, but they're massive, absolute box fillers already, and it's what First week of Feb, so gonna be very fun indeed. Joe, have you found that the Buckfast Queen's daughter get grumpy? I've not had them myself, so don't know if it's true or not. That's something that's said a lot, and it's said by people who don't like Buckfast. Amm daughters can get grumpy. Buckfast daughters can get grumpy. Buckfast daughters can be nice. Amm daughters can be nice. It's not as straightforward as, oh, Buckfast F2 are always grumpy. I've had loads of Buckfast F2 that are not grumpy, and I've had some Buckfast F2 that are grumpy. So cop out of an answer, but it's, uh, it's not that straightforward. Hey, what do you think as well? This is my new Sony, um, camera as well that I've got on here. So is it like a nice clean clear picture? Um, I've been having so much fun this week with this camera, and then when I realized that you could actually do your live streams on it as well I was very, very happy. So hopefully you're getting a nice clear picture. Also, I'm doing, I'm doing a live stream again tomorrow, so I'm not going to stay here for like 4 hours like last time answering questions. I will stay pretty much all night tomorrow doing questions though. Um, we've got the Apiarist here tomorrow, so I'll do some more promos on that tonight. But he is amazing, the Apiarist. I don't know if people in the US might not know him as much, but if you search for anything beekeeping related, he's got a post on it. thousands of posts, and he's been in beekeeping all his life, and he's a scientist as well doing research into bee varroa and different viruses. So he properly knows his stuff, and they're going to interview him tomorrow, so that'd be fun. We'll do more of that going forward. So if you have ideas for anybody for me to interview, I'm kind of close to getting Mike Palmer to agree to it as well, so he's probably going to be next. And then we'll see how it goes. I think I think it's quite fun. I quite enjoy interviewing people. It's just like being at work doing Zoom calls. So we'll see how it goes. Right, let's answer some more questions then. Andy saying he's got his flow stop making the national size flow. Yeah, I'm annoyed at that. They need to put them need to put them back on, don't they? A few hellos. I love how there's people all over the world. So like Northern Ireland, Vancouver. Amazing. Uh, Wilson saying, I've seen a few of your feeder videos, Suyenti and the Pains, but didn't see anything specifically about the Ashforth. We'll have another look though. Thanks for answering. All right, that's because— so, so the confusion there is that they're both Ashforth feeders. So Ashforth is like a style of feeder. So Suyenti is an Ashforth feeder, the Pains and the Mazemore are Miller feeders, and then the Abella is an Ashforth feeder. So that's the, that's the confusion. Um, we're talking about the same thing. Hello. Uh, Rodney's hitting the thumbs up. Hello. Uh, Hello from East Central Ohio. I think we say howdy, but mate, you might hit the unsubscribe button. Sorry if I've offended you. Um, uh, March. Adam's saying, talking about box filler colonies, I'm gonna have to demerit by the first week of March. Yeah, I reckon There's seriously swarm hunting's coming in in a few months this year. It's going to be some crazy swarms in April depending on the weather, and it can all—it's all up for grabs still. Like it could get so bad, absolutely shocking if we get like a real beast from the east coming big cold snap. There's gonna be a lot of people in trouble, so let's just hope it stays warm. Rodney saying looks great. Yeah, thanks very much. Joe said Joe. Yeah, it was is a. Yeah, it was five grand with the lens, and then I put it in. I put it in my laptop. I got I got quite decent laptop, so I thought and put it in, and no, it's not having it. 120 frames per second, 4K, and it's I don't think it's the same since I put it back in. So I've had to spend another five grand on the new computer. So I'm investing them. I'm investing some money in this YouTube channel, and you will see it over the next few videos. I think the quality is pretty good. I'm very happy with it. Hello from Texas, sir. I was— I've had a very interesting day today. I've got a guy helping me do the beekeeping now, a guy called Richard who lives quite local to me, and he's just retired. And he contacted me saying, do you want some help? Like, just can I come along and volunteer some time just to kind of like learn and keep me busy in retirement? So I said yes, definitely. So he came along first day today, and I was saying to him, if, if I didn't have like a partner and children, what I would definitely be doing is just going around the world, like just offering my services to like commercial bee farms to go like as a gopher or whatever Murray calls them, just like someone to labor and provide labor and then to document it all on YouTube. And then I think, I think they'd be up for that. They'd get like some good promotion because they get like some cool videos and show them how it's done and everything. And I think it would be a cool channel, wouldn't it? So you could go for like the almonds in California, you go for New Zealand for the manuka, um, just go all around the world, go to Africa, see how they do it out there and just document it all. Uh, but I'm— I can't do that. So it will be a dream. Uh, right, I'm just gonna filter through. Lots of snow, that's good. No snow here. Um, and Andy from Brooklyn's Honeybee, you, you love a bit of YouTube. You love your YouTube, don't you? You are on every channel or stream or message. Like, the support is very much appreciated. Um, but yeah, you're, you're everywhere. Uh, right. Celos Pomper, our boss is about to retire and he's going to sell his hives to us workers. Do you know how much cost it will be to maintain 1,000 hives a year? That's— that is a video in itself, that one. I would say I wouldn't worry about that because if you've got 1,000 hives, you're pretty much sorted. Because you think, take your splits, sell some nucs, sell some queens, sell some honey. It's going to be self-fulfilling anyway, isn't it? The bigger problem is going to be, are you going to be able to buy them off him, and how much is that going to cost you? I don't know where— I don't know where you are. You might have said it before, like, in the UK, 1,000 hives, you're probably talking— you definitely get a discount when you're on 1,000 hives, but you're talking between like £250 to £350 depending on, um, what they're in. It's really strange. Yeah, you might think, get get the same price as a nuc. Nucs cost more than like a full hive. The full hive market is dead. No one buys full hives. And when they go commercially, they tend to be a bit worn down, um, and they don't hold their value the same way as a nuc. And selling it to beginners as well, they— it's much better off for them to get a nuc because it's kind of like 6 frames, a lot easier to manage in few, few first few weeks, get to grips with what it's like as opposed to opening up big monster double brooders. Um, so yeah, that's what I'd be more worried about. Thank you. I'm gonna do more live streams. I should do more of them. The idea was to go through and answer some comments, and I've realized that's not going to work, is it? So I'll just, I'll just pop in every now and again, just do a little live stream and let people answer questions. Maybe what— maybe what I know what I'll do is I'll record a live stream With no one on it, and then I'll just like send it out and maybe sit in the background and post some comments. That's what I'll do. Richard, have you had any experience with Arnia products? I don't know. It rings a bell. Arnia. What's that mean? It rings a bell. If you could elaborate, I'll let you know. But I don't think so. And I'm catching up. Andy likes to show his face in the YouTube world. You do. You're doing a good job at that. Certainly are. There's like, I reckon there's like 4 of you. You can't all be in the same place at once. Oh, I'm down to the bottom of the comments. Amazing. Do you do any pollen trapping? Yes, I do a little bit. And it's funny, I was speaking to someone about that yesterday in terms of maybe you need to explore, uh, doing a little bit more pollen trapping than I do at the moment. So I'm gonna have a look a bit at that. I'm gonna have a look at that again this year. If you have double brooded over winter, when's it best to go back to single brood? I'd say when they're out of the bottom deep. So if you just kind of crack them open in the middle, if you're, if you're like full at the top and then they're still in the bottom, leave them. You might not actually be able to ever do it. You might have to just kind of sacrifice that some of the bees are going to get a bit chilled, but you effectively want to wait until all of the bees are in the top box, and whenever that is, you can just take the bottom box away. Um, what type of pollen traps do you use? So I've only got a couple of pollen traps. I'm going to buy some more. I've got the Abello ones and they're not designed for nationals, but you can just sit a national on them. But they're nice, they're, they're like, they work well, they're good capacity. And when I did it last time, I think I got about like 2 kilos of pollen in about 48 hours. So I'm going to trap more for my own use, but I think also Got Jasper Percy there. What way? Um, I'm going to use some— I'm going to trap more for my own use for queen rearing, and then I'm going to maybe look at cleaning some up to sell it. Uh, when would you start pollen patties? So, million-dollar question. I would counteract that with another question, is why do you want to feed pollen patties? I'll preempt your answer in that you want to make splits. So if you want to make splits, I would say you could start kind of middle of Feb, but just be warned That if you start feeding pollen, pollen patties, and they start gobbling it down and start turning it into brood, and you're in like the middle of March and you've got 10 frames of brood, and then you get a really bad cold spell, you'll set that colony back so much further than had you just left them alone. So you do need to appreciate there are risks that come with feeding pollen patties. I don't feed pollen patties anymore because I don't need to do that aggressive expansion to get them up to anything. I'm not building up for an all-seed rate flow. The main flow for us is the summer, and we, we get more problems from building them up strong on pollen patties, so we don't do it. I have a massive VD problem in a couple of my hives. I'm glad I read the rest of that and it wasn't just you've got a massive VD problem. Treated them in June with Max and a massive drop then, then did Apivar treatment after the supers report and still had in the thousands. That's not good. Wow, that's lots of words. That's amazing. Thousand bloody hell. Get— you need to fix that somehow. I would suggest repeated oxalic acid, or if you're in the UK, apibioxal treatments at 5-day intervals, and just keep on going until you get it down to single figures. That is a lot of varroa. That's not good. Uh, you could maybe use external pollen traps on your underfloor bottom boards. Yeah, that'd be a good idea. I'm gonna have a look around and see it, uh, but some of the— I, I just, I want simplicity for me, something that's going to work. So I might try out, I'll try out some different ones. Um, I'll buy a few different ones and test them out. I find with the pollen trapping, it's, it's like you don't need to— you can't do it all the time because it's quite damaging on the colony if you're constantly putting them on. But you can get a huge amount over like a couple of weeks. Just get it at the right time of the year because bees don't need like tons and tons of pollen in like June. Not going to get much in June after the gap, but like they don't need loads and loads of it. It's only early on in the year when they really need loads because they store load. So as long as the colony's got nice good pollen reserves, you can stick the traps on for a couple of weeks and then it should be fine as long as you monitor it. But I will have a look at— we'll do some pollen trapping this year. Uh, when you do a demerit, if I understand it correctly, its main purpose is to prevent the swarming urge. Is that not a split method? And it's not a split method, is that right? So it's a vertical split. So everything else, all of the other split methods are horizontal split. So you have one hive, you split it, turns it into 2 hives, whereas the Demarest is a vertical split. So the bees think it's a split, but you're sharing the workers in the middle between the supers, and that means that you're going to get a bumper honey harvest, but you don't have to split them in terms of numbers. So for us, it's perfect because I don't want, I don't want to go from 100 to 200 to 400 to 800 colonies. Because I can't manage that. I want to stay around 100 production colonies, and the Demaray works really well whilst maintaining good honey production as well. Where's the BS Honeybees polyhive gone? They've taken it off the market, um, only temporarily I think, but their manufacturer has gone bankrupt. So they paid all the money into the molds and then the manufacturer went bankrupt, and they're just— they've not got anyone to make it at the moment. I can't believe the price that Polly's going up though. It's absolutely bonkers how much it's going up. Oh, bright, uh, Brian, that can be— you have his boss. Is there someone else, Brian? I don't know, are we missing it? Is that Castle Hives? I think so. Okay, I thought you was— I thought you were saying my camera was good. I was about to get really happy. Uh, but don't you make a second queen? So you can make a second queen. So that's going to be— I'll do a follow-up video on this this year, which is— so, so there's so many different versions of the Demeray. So the way that I do it, I do a preemptive Demeray split, which is before they even get anywhere near swarming, I split them, take the top box to the top, leave the queen down at the bottom, and then what they do is they make emergency cells, and then I take down all of the emergency cells And then that stops them swarming. And then you can take the top box off once it's filled up with honey, if it's not been tainted with Apivar. But the other way of doing it, and the more common way that you do the Demaray, is you wait for them to build swarm cells so that you identify the swarm prep, and then you take those cells, knock them back down to one open cell, and you leave that one open cell in the top box. And and the queen downstairs in the bottom box with the foundation. And then if you're doing it that way and you knock them back, you stick an upper entrance in, then you'll get 2 queens working in the one hive. And then you can, you can requeen that way. A lot of commercial beekeepers requeen that way because it's a, it's a— you've got a bit of a comfort blanket in that if the mating at the top doesn't work, you just find the virgin killer and then you can just go back to your old original queen. And, and for Heather, you can run them on 2 queens as well. So it works really well. You can get some crazy, crazy yields doing it that way. That is on the list to do this year on a video. Oh yeah, so it was Brian's camera. Gutted. Oh, what camera is this? Depstech DS450, right? I'll be Googling that later. I like my cameras. Um, do you use double screen boards, snail growth boards? No, I don't. I just— it's just another thing to have Um, and we don't use them. They're good though. Um, if I just had a kind of couple of hives in my garden, I would, I would use boards like that and bleed them off and do all the different techniques that use boards because they are cool and they do work, but not when you're doing it en masse. And that's why I really do like the, um, the Abello hives, the ability to have a hole in them. So much so that I've drilled some holes in some of my other hives because I think having just a little entrance for a top box is so helpful. And I've seen someone making a little heat-sensitive plug that you can put your ProVap or your Sublimox in through the Abello fixings, which I think is a really nice little innovation. And they're going to send me one, and I'll do a video on that because it's cool. Do you think it's possible to buy an overwinter 6-frame nuc and go to winter and a full hive with a full hive of 12 frames of Abello and a 6-frame nuc? Oh yeah, definitely. Bloody hell. And the rest, like a 6-frame nuc Anyone who's bought one of my 6-frame nucs, you have a look at some of their videos. Rob Tallis is a good one. And like, kind of at the end of the year, they were on double brood and 7 supers. I'm not saying that everyone's going to get that, but come like June, they were on double brood. So you could have, you could have split that out and taken 4 nucs out of it and still got loads of honey and had a full, full colony and 4 nucs easily. You need to add mated queens in if you want to do that kind of aggressive expansion. But a 6-frame nuc from like a reputable breeder with a queen, a young queen from the year before— she has to be from the year before, preferably late season mated— will expand at a rate of knots. You'll be amazed. Um, yeah, so in terms of, yeah, every 5 days is the varroa cycle, so if you do it every 6 days by the time you get back, the varroa on their next cycle have gone back down into the cappings. So you need to do it every 5 days. And yeah, deformed wing virus is not nice and an obvious sign that the bees are not coping with varroa. I really need to get a better camera. I just budget videos with my phone. Yeah, but I think I like your videos. I don't think it makes a massive difference. It's all about the content. Um, I'm just a sucker for buying stuff. So, +1 for the demerit. Best method, in my opinion, for swarm suppression. No, I said suppression, not elimination. Yeah, I've started proper clickbaiting some of the videos, so I do apologize for guaranteeing that it's not going to get, uh, any swarms lost. But you know, got to do a little bit of clickbait. Um, and yeah, it's no guarantee. I demerited some last year and, uh, and they swarmed like the week after. And I wasn't hiding that. I just didn't have the video, the camera with me when I was checking. I would have put that on there. And if you look at— I think I did cover it on the video last year where I did the demerit and then went back to look at how the colony was getting on like 6 weeks after the demerit to show you all the honey. And they were trying to swarm. They put new swarm cells up. So yeah, it doesn't eliminate it at all. It just sets them back a few weeks. But you can do it again and again and again. That's what's really good. You can constantly cycle it back and you can just take that, take that top box off. And if you can use it for honey, use it for honey, and then you can just recycle it. So you can just keep on doing it all year round and it works really well. Oh, it's an endoscope. Cool. I, I have, I have seen the endoscope one that you do. Yeah, I was thinking, I was thinking of getting an endoscope. I think I'll just, I think I'll just send people to yours though to have a look because it is good, that video. you. Uh, John, will I be accepting visitors this year just to look around? Unfortunately not. Until we get a farm and somewhere a little bit secure, I have to keep everything secret. I know it's all over YouTube anyway, but, um, no, I need to keep them secret. Can do like live streams though, talk to people. Uh, have you ever tried propolis trapping over the whole season? I'm trying to find a way to generate additional income as have very low nectar flows as a result of bee overpopulation. That's interesting. Where's, where's that? I've not tried long-term propolis trapping, but there's no reason that it wouldn't work. And from what I've seen on the traps and what I gathered, in 2 to 3 weeks you could make a lot of propolis. So I'm definitely going to do that this year. I'm just going to— they're like £2, and you can— if you're going to buy like, I think it's like hardware cloth, um, like a nylon version, you can just make it yourself. It's dirt cheap. You need to get the hole sizes correct. So I'm gonna— I might do that on a video actually, um, but I will do a lot more propolis trapping this year because it's, it's in high demand. If you look at, um, royal jelly as well, there's a real market for royal jelly. You can get the little pumps and take it out. So if you're not going to get a huge amount of honey, you might as well feed them up with something and get some royal jelly out of them. Oh, thanks very much. I always like an extra subscriber. Um, I'm making a honey selling box where the back is a small hive with glass and customers could see them. Would you see any complication with having the entrance right at the top above head height? Send me some pictures. Take it. Take a video of that when you do it, and and I'll do a voiceover and stick it on YouTube. That sounds amazing. I'd. see so many complications though. Like, yeah, that is— you've got to do that. Send me an email on that one and we can talk about that. But definitely take some videos of you putting it together and having it in action. You're going to have a queue down the end of the street. I just hope that you're not inspecting it when people come to buy the honey. But that's cool. Uh, could you make a video about the nectar flow and how to manage to prepare for this in order to get the best results? Uh, yeah, I'll do one. I think I've kind of covered that on previous videos, but I will do one specifically talking about that. And it is, you need a few years under your belt in order to know in your locality when the flows are, just roughly when they are, to get your bees ready for them. Um, but we, we don't do a huge amount to get them ready for them now. We just say, right, these are the ones that we're going to target and try and make the bees not swarm before them. That's the difficult bit, but I will do that. Yeah. Oh, thanks very much, Tony from Mountcastle. Is that— hit the button, show some appreciation. Thank you. Right, I've got through all the bottom right, so I'm gonna— how many comments have I done here? 4. 4 comments in 45 minutes. So talk amongst yourselves for a bit, stop asking questions on the chat, and I'll answer some of the ones that are on here. Save me doing it later. Right, bucket top scions allow you to move the swarm easily. A lot of people have said that. Uh, I'm just going to share my screen back again. How do you do that? All right, there we go. Right, so you— yeah, you can move them a lot easier. I've baked swarms before in a matter of minutes, so I'm really reluctant to to put them in anything that's sealed up like that. And I would also say as well, like, I keep them in the apiary. It's not a bait hive. So wherever that Russian scion is, I've got boxes there, I've got nucs there, and if I catch a swarm, it's ultimately going to go into a box. So the way that I see it is, if I put it on a bucket lid and then put it up in a bucket, what am I going to do with it? I'm going to go and take it somewhere and then dump it into a nuc. So I might as well take the nuc to where it is because I'm in my apiary anyway. And then just do it all there, and then they're always in a ventilated box. Really, really easy to bake swarms, so it's not— not a fan of them. Uh, the next one down is Greek, so I'm going to translate that. I've got back to— I started getting back to people in their own language just doing Google Translate, so I could be massively offending people, so I won't get back to that one. Uh, Lawson's Creek Apiary saying, that is a nice camera. I've been looking at a Sony A7C A7C, but we'll probably settle for Sony V10. I looked at the the ZV-E10 and the ZV-E1, and I think they're really good. But what I wanted was the ability to shoot 4K in like over 30 frames per second. I think they're both limited to 30 frames per second, but it's like they're all fine, the cameras, aren't they? Martin Belcher say thanks once again. I'll just say thanks to that. Martin messaged me. I'm doing a video on it. He's part of a group called the UK Bee Removers Group, um, and they're all— it's like, I think it's a group of pest controllers who have all got a common goal of not killing bees when they go out. So trying to get up there and cut them out of chimneys and do certain things. I've got a meeting with the, the leader of the group, if that's what you call it, like an admin, and maybe going to follow, follow a couple of them around. So I'm I thought that would be quite interesting. I definitely have OCD with comments. I hate like leaving comments unanswered. Right, so here we go. Wilson's online, right? Quality looking very sharp. Not sure how it would do with your target audience, but would be good to have a look at some of the behind the scenes stuff. Would be interesting to see your kit, how you film throughout the day, editing, da da da. It's it's difficult to do. Like I've got now that I've got Richard helping me do stuff. Had him filming today. He filmed his first video, so I might do a little bit of that and just see, just see what the appetite is like for it. If, if you like that, stick a little comment up there and let me know. I think it's, it's difficult knowing what people want, and there's some videos that work well, some that definitely don't work well. I think behind the scenes might be a bit, um, I don't know, I don't know if everyone would like it, but I'll do, I'll do a little bit and I'll stick it up in the members section just for you. Andy on his comments, here we go. Fantastic video. We're lucky to be in a position to not have lost any at the moment, but still a while to go. Yeah, good luck. 6, I reckon you're going to get them all through. That's going to be my bet. But your— it's been answered on a live stream. Um, it was popular, this beasting video, and you can see like I changed my thumbnail, so I've dropped— I just, I just thought the whole, the whole thing I changed at the moment is like I don't know. I kept— I wanted to keep everything branded, wanted to keep everything the same. I wanted to keep it like, hi, I'm Lawrence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey, welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping. And just keep this whole— make it very formal and regimented and everyone knows what's going on. And then just like, you look, you speak to other YouTubers and you speak to like— you look at the, the video saying what you should and shouldn't do, and I just fall into all these really bad habits and traps. And that like, okay, some people like that little tagline at the beginning. A lot of people, new people, people that I'm trying to kind of attract to the channel, they'll probably turn off when I say that and just click it and just say, yeah, not interested. So I'm just trying to cut away from all that stuff. And I thought, when I'm doing all these changes as well, like, I stuck with that style of thumbnail and I was so reluctant to move away from it even knowing it wasn't perfect. And I started doing some other thumbnails. I look back at it and think, rubbish. That was a really rubbish thumbnail. And anyone who's known the channel from a long time, like, that wasn't the first iteration of thumbnail that I did. I got to about 200 videos and I went through all of my videos and changed the thumbnails over to this new style. So I'd invested so much time in that new style, but I just thought, you know what, I'm just going to go for it. I'm just going to change it all up. So this, this vid— this video here, uh, What They Don't Tell You About Bee Stings, is like my first stab at trying to do something a bit different, trying to make the title more clickable, not telling you what's in the title, putting a picture of me getting stung in the face on. It's clickable, isn't it? Um, hopefully it's like— if it verges too much on clickbait and I'm not fulfilling what's on the thumbnail, or you feel unfulfilled, then definitely let me know and I'll try and pull it back a little bit. But yeah, there's going to be more clickbaity thumbnails like this coming in, and that video did really well. and I think that will perform well on YouTube going forward because everybody who's kept bees has been stung, but also pretty much everyone in the world has either been stung or is kind of like scared of being stung. So it's, it's trying to tap a little bit into that audience. But anyway, back to this. Going on 3rd year of beekeeping, and the first year was terrible for me. One sting would blow me up like a balloon. One sting to the eye and I swelled so bad that both eyes swelled shut for 2 days, and I'm really not any better at taking them now. I just have to do my best not to get stung. Um, so I think that's just straightforward good luck. Uh, but yeah, it's crazy. The difference in reaction is very, very interesting. Well, I'll jump back to the comments on here because I'm going to miss all these comments otherwise. Uh, so they're saying, do you have issues with a below 12 frame lifting supers off due to the rebate and lip preventing you from twisting the supers round? So no, I've had a number of people ask me that exact same question. And no, not at all. They've got like a hive tool insert on them, so you just put your hive tool in, just wedge it down, just pops off. So you don't have to twist, you just put the hive tool in and just be quite aggressive with it. But I've not had an issue with that at all. The other issue people talk about there is the queen excluders, what queen excluders to use. And I would suggest the best queen excluder to use for that is a 460 by 460 National wire not framed queen excluder, and that's going to be your best bet. And the only thing that might happen with that is that when you take the first super off, it gets stuck to the underside of it. But that's not the end of the world, you can just lever it off. I wouldn't use the one— I'm not a fan of the one, the Abello one, that sits inside the rebate. I don't like that one because you lose the benefit from top bee space in the brood box. I like my brood frames to be non- touched. Uh, Chris saying, just got permission to use a site on Heather Moor. When do you move your bees there? A lot earlier than they tell you. So the traditional day is August the 12th. If you— if I went up on August the 12th last year, I would have missed it by about 2 weeks. I go up because, because we're on the fringes of it, we can go up a little bit earlier. And now we've got a static site there, but I'd always go around like 26th, 27th of July. and make sure they've got a little bit of feed in them just to see them through until it goes. But we find it's kind of like the last week of July, first week of August, you get a mega flow and then it dies down a bit, and then you get like a prolonged flow all the way up until the end of August. Um, yeah, okay, I'll do some— I'll do a little bit of pulling it together behind the scenes stuff. That's fine. Oh, Andy's off. Nice one. Cheers, Andy. Thanks for your support, mate. Speak to you soon. Which beekeepers have you been an inspiration for? Which speakers have been an inspiration for you in your beekeeping journey? Not many that you would know. I've covered this before. I do watch some on YouTube, but I think it's more kind of like older experienced bee farmers in this country that don't really have like a commercial, like an online presence. So I think Murray is a big one. It's interesting, you know, because I see like some of Murray's talks at the moment and people say, oh, Murray McGregor does the same management technique as you. And I have to stop them straight away and say, no, no, no, I do the same management technique as Murray McGregor. Like, I copy what he does. It's not— it's definitely, definitely not the other way around. Like, he is just an absolute— he's a legend, isn't he? But he's an encyclopedia of beekeeping knowledge. So I picked up so much stuff from Murray, like putting foundation in in September and getting it drawn out. Speak to people and they say that's madness. You speak to Murray and he shows you that it works. You try it, it definitely does work, and you end up with no or very, very little drone brood in it. Um, upturned polyashforth feeders, that's from Murray, that, that he, he swears by them, puts them in, but he doesn't always upturn them. So I think he goes down the route now of just a polyashforth feeder on everything and then whips out the entrance and fills it with hay or straw. That's something I got from Murray. So there's like literally all my entire beekeeping style is from Murray. He used to own— so Demrose Apiaries used to be the first iteration of Suiyenti polyhives. So he kind of like, I think he went halvesy on the mold. So I've got loads of his polyhives. Bloody rubbish, aren't they? Um, they're not rubbish. I give, I give the Suiyenti hives a, a really hard time. They're not rubbish. But they're definitely not the best. Um, so yeah, but I get a lot of stuff from Murray and I get a lot of stuff from other bee farmers as well. I think the Bee Farmers Association for me is great. You speak to people. I tell you what, I'll tell you what is— let's see if we can get a lot of people following in here. Do you know who my favorite person to get tips from on Twitter and the person to look at his Twitter feed because it is phenomenal? And I've asked him so many times to say, can I do a video? Can we do a live stream? Can I come Film you, and he's always said no. Don't. He gets really sheepish in front of camera. But it's Chris Manton. So Google go on Twitter, search for Chris Manton, and follow him. He is so generous with his opinion on things, and he's so generous with like taking videos and showing different things and trying things out, telling you what works, telling you what doesn't work. He gets into great spats with people online as well. So it is it is good fun to watch his. his Twitter wars, but he's a really good person to follow. So it's kind of people like that, people that you wouldn't really, really know about, maybe. I don't know. Um, so yeah, there's 2. Uh, Can't wait to get my nuc from you. The heather honey I got from you is amazing. Oh nice. I always get a bad headache from super honey. That, that's really interesting. Uh, I'm glad you liked it. And that was from not that far from you at all. So that is going to be your main harvest, Llandeglamore's honey. Uh, Castle Hive's meeting is pulling you away. Thanks for stopping by, and everyone definitely follow Castle Hive's channel. Great channel. I can't wait to see what he's got in plan for this year. I'm down to the bottom again. Great, right. Reference BS Honeybees. What about the sample you had? Not seen any videos about it. So I painted that hive the other day, so I, I, yeah, I'm going to do more videos on that one. Um, just have a play around with it. I appreciate you can't buy it anymore, so I was thinking of just like locking it up, collector's item. Uh, JKK, how do you combat mold growing in your feeders as you have them on all the time? So paint them when you get them, paint them inside, masonry paint or external grade gloss paint, and you shouldn't get too much mold in them. Um, and what is funny, because you get mold growing in them when you take them off for storage Because they're always on the hive, they're always relatively warm, and if you paint them properly, you get hardly any mold as long as you clean them out at the end of the year. I just get a cloth in, clean them out, and you don't get mold buildup in there. That's good, right? Alex is going as well. Uh, I'm gonna go at like quarter past, I think, because otherwise I'm gonna turn up for the stream tomorrow with David and no one's gonna be here. I'm gonna answer all all the questions. Um, but I will do these like— I, I, 15 more minutes, I'm gonna try and answer a few more of these questions. Uh, and I will do these regularly. I think I'll do one a week. That can be my target, just for like an hour, because it does get a bit difficult when it's like 4 hours of talking. Um, I enjoy it, but the next day I literally cannot talk. Uh, what I— before I answer some more questions, I did some cool— I did some cool videos today. So I did the first one with Richard filming me adding some fondant to a really angry hive, but I had a bee suit on so you don't get to see me get stung. I did A Tale of Two Nucs, that was quite cool, a little bit funky. And I did How to Heft a Long Hive, which is a good video as well. So 3 videos filmed today. Right, Martin again, fantastic, very educational videos, and must be beginners. Well done, sir. I'll just put so nice of you. You can see here that there's like pre, uh, you don't have to— I don't have to type them all out. I think it like learns what I say, or you just get generic ones. Awesome. Uh, hi Lawrence, when it comes to the best overwintering format for a national hive, in your opinion, should I go single deep national and a super of honey, or 2 national deeps and let the bees fill in what they want, or should I go 2 national deeps plus a full super of honey? Which approach would best balance out harvesting honey with colony survival. JP said, I go national, deep crown board with a huge block of fondant insulation in the top above the fondant wrap, uh, the outside reflective foil heat. I like that approach. Right, so I'm just going to say I've answered it in a stream, save me loads of time doing this. So my approach would be none of those because I, I went down the double brood, uh, a little bit before, but if you're going to go double brood, you don't need to do anything else. Double brood, straightforward. Probably don't even need to feed them. They'll backfill that, stick loads of stores in there. Personally, I would just cram them down into a single brood. I find they overwinter so much better in single brood because there's less heat that's needed. They don't need to generate as much heat to keep that void warm. So if you cram them all down, you see my videos, take a big stack, take all the honey away, cram them down into a single box, and then manage them in that single box. And then maybe later on in the year you need to put your polyashford feeder on or an insulated super upturned and put your fondant on if they need feeding fondant. That's what I would do. So there we go, answered in the stream. If there are any leftovers of honey after winter and bees start to collect a new one, should you remove the old honey syrup stores? Yeah, so on that one, it's Any— anything like that, just, just close them up. Don't let the bees go in and collect anything. Did a video today with something a little bit nastier than that, and you just need to close them up, make sure that the bees can't get in and steal it. Because as soon as the bees start flying and they realize you've got a dead out, there's honey stores in there, they strip it out within a day. And then anything nasty in there, they— that's it, it's game over, and you've got it in all your hives. So yeah, that one's been answered. Uh, cheers Adam, I'll see you tomorrow hopefully. Peter's here. Peter's like the first one of the— I think the first 3 members of the channel and has been supporting it for ages and lost all of his bees. So I'm really sorry to see that, Peter, but thank you for your support and I know you're going to catch some monster swarms and get back on track and I look forward to helping you out with that. Uh, would you mind showing what masonry paint you use for your feeders? So yeah, so I, I don't actually use masonry paint. So Santex masonry paint is fine. Any masonry paint, any external masonry paint is fine. I find oil-based gloss exterior grade is much better, like really much better in terms of cleaning, because a lot of the masonry paint you get like a rough texture and then you will get more crud and stuff accumulating there, whereas the gloss is like glass pretty much, so it's so much easier to wipe clean. I find it a lot easier. Jasper's comfortable. Yeah, he's good. Um, I have to dig my truck out of the snow. Have a great day. Yeah, thanks for stopping by. Uh, it's crazy, we've not had any snow this year. None at all. Uh, Toby, self-flattery here. Toby said, only found your channel a few months ago and you're my go-to bee channel. Brilliant content, and that's my I've learned a lot from you, and I've only been beekeeping 18 months. 4 hives, 2 nucs, and fingers crossed haven't lost any yet. Thank you, Toby. I always, always appreciate a nice comment. Thanks as well. Uh, David's saying, wow, that's so cool. That's just going to be a thanks. I'll filter past some of these. I think I think we have to go to the Oh, I don't know how to say this name. I'm gonna have a go though. Paszkalski Sokak. I think that was pretty good. I prefer the dry method. Maybe wet frames deter wax moth, but they're a magnet for all other animals around. Guaranteed that is true. To eliminate wax moth, we need to eliminate things like hot, dark environment. Here's how I do it. Well, it's a mega one, right? I'm just going to say thanks to that one. Read that as well. Do you know what? I love it when people comment stuff like that and open it up. And this was one of the things that I was talking about to Richard in the truck today, because he was saying, how do you keep up with all the comments? Can you not just turn the comments off? And I know other YouTubers, not naming any names, turn all the comments off on their videos. And I just— my view is that when I'm doing these videos, I'm not saying— so that one there, how to store wax frames, I know it's kind of saying this is how you store wax frames, but It's never meant to be like that. It's meant to be saying, this is how I saw wax frames. Here's a video about it. And the comments are open to everyone. So if you do it that way, if you don't do it that way, great. Let me know how you do it and let other people know how you do it and let everyone know why that's a better method. And then I'll probably adapt my method to do what you're doing if it is better. I'll definitely give it a go. If you turn the comments off, it's kind of like saying, you know what, uh, I know everything. This is how you do something. Don't even bother sticking a comment on here because It's not wanted. So I will, I will always leave the comments on. Um, I might not be able to answer everyone, but you can always have a little bit of a discussion in the comments. Uh, Roland Queen on there. All right, let me jump through to some more questions. Yeah, these are people talking about Um, why that colony died, I'm going to respond to that one later. They're my favorite comments, the Arabic ones, because I just have no idea what they're saying, and then I put them into Translate and it tells me. Amazing. Oh, so yeah, so this is one I was going to get back to. I don't think it's an immunity, it's a tolerance. Our branch had an anesthesiologist visit and talk to us about bee sting reactions. Basically, I think the answer is it can go either way. There are plenty of beekeepers that have to sell up because they developed an allergic reaction, and more that have become tolerant of the bee stings. We had one person in our branch that became very allergic, then came back from it. I'd kind of say it's a little bit of both, because it's an— it's— you're building up a tolerance to an immune response, is what I'd say. So semantics maybe with the words. Um, I'd say overall you are probably right. It's me getting it wrong in terms of you're not building up an immunity in that you'll, you'll get stung and there'll be zero reaction. You're never— you're building up your kind of level of immunity. Um, but the— yeah, tolerance is probably the better word for that, building up a tolerance to be able to cope with those stings. Again, prime example of like what a great comment that is, because he's not— he could have just come along and said, you don't know what you're talking about, who are you? This is, this is right, you're wrong. But he's given me like a lot of detail and told me, and told me I'm wrong. And I agree, I was wrong as a tolerance. Thank you. How many beehives do you manage alone? I got about 100 production colonies and loads of nucs. Laurence, it's been my first year coming up. I actually put out a few swarm traps to see how it goes. Went too early. That one. Um, JP's saying, I put a handle on the roof, then use a rope over a tree to hoist it up. You can let it down real easy then. So I, I'd say yeah, it's, it's a good idea. Um, it's not something I do though, because I found that I don't, I don't see there's much of a benefit to it being much higher than it was there. Um, and that's just through trial and error as well. Uh, so it's kind of like overcomplicating it maybe a little bit. But if you're finding that the swarms are only going up 3 or 4 meters, then yeah, I think that's a really nice little mod. Um, right, that's just talking about bee stings, but also a mention to the bee sting compilation. So yeah, I didn't, I didn't do it. Do you know why I didn't do it? Because I lost so many of my videos, and when you download them from YouTube, I reckon it's like a grand total of about 7 pixels. It's such bad quality. So I'm building up a new sting compilation, um, but I am trying not to get stung as much. I don't want to— I don't want to get to the point where I have to stop beekeeping. Um, Blue Lab saying about prolonged cold spell. So it's— it was pretty cold, and you just need to kind of take what you've got. Like, if it's— I wouldn't do it if it was 15 degrees, but it wasn't. We had a good 3 weeks where it didn't go into double figures, hovered around like 8 or 9. You might have the odd bee that flew back to the original apiary, um, but it was like the coldest part of the year. And you don't want to— you don't want to gamble and say, oh, it might get cold in February or March, and then it's just— you're into summer and you've missed the opportunity. And then you're back to moving them along one foot at a time. Be a right pain. Uh, Everett Denny saying about not being veiled, uh, it's, it's a good point, but like I've said before, it's not— when do these videos, it's not like I'm standing there with no veil on, like waiting for the bees to come and sting me. The videos are really rubbish if they're constantly veiled, and we found a real difference in the retention rates and people watching them. So they like to see your face, they like to be able to kind of like communicate with you a bit. So it's me talking to the camera and then getting stung is a lot of the time. And obviously that picture there was 7 years ago. Um, all right, someone's saying it looks like you might have the Flow Hive 2 possibly made with Australian araucaria wood, if not Western red cedar. So Dean cleared this one up, so it was that. How good— do you know what, Australians and New Zealanders are amazing. They are the kings of marketing. So I found out this Australian araucaria wood is just pine. It's like a type of pine. They've made it sound so much better than pine, haven't they? And then Manuka honey, they used to wash it out because it was— no one likes the taste of it because it tasted not that great. And now it's like the world's best honey in the world and sells for thousands of pounds a jar. And I need some help with my marketing because they're pretty good at it. But this one here, yeah, you can see it, like, that's a serious comment. So thank you for the comment. Uh, I'm not going to answer it all here because I see that Brad's come back and answered some of it. But what I would just say is that Dean's cleared that one up. It is, it is Red Sea, that one. And just bear with me in terms of what I'm saying, uh, like for Classic Flow Hives and Flow Hives 2. Like, I'm not up to speed fully with all of the lingo. Uh, so all I know is I've got a Flow Hive that is a legitimate Flow Hive and a fake one. And that's it. And I'm going to compare the two, and it'll be interesting to see what they're like. But this, this as well, I like it. I love it. I love it when I go to a comment and there's like other comments on there, people helping them out and pointing them in the right direction and having a bit of a conversation. That is why I started YouTube, to build a bit of a community and to give somewhere for people to kind of talk and communicate and learn about bees. And that's it, I got down to the bottom. That's amazing. Right, I'm gonna I'm going to quickly do the comments in there. I'll stop sharing my screen. Um, so basically— oh yeah, if— so basically, if you make your feeders out of wood, I should use oil paint and that should work, I guess. Thanks for all the info. Yeah, so out of wood, you just need to seal them as best you can. I know someone who does them out of wood and they work quite well, but just make sure that none of the oil is leaking or leaching. And that's it. It's 10 past 5. I've done all of the comments that I've got in my comments. I'm going to tweak a few of those and make sure that I'm completely up to speed on it. I've answered all the comments in the comments section as well, so I'm going to end that there. I will do this on a weekly basis. I don't know when I'm going to do it. It might be a Friday, a Saturday, or Sunday. It won't be in the week because obviously I work in the week. Um, I'll squeeze it in though, so if you've got any questions just stick a comment on the video and I will answer it in the next live stream. But thank you to everyone that came to this. I wasn't expecting it. I'll catch you all tomorrow. We're gonna do a long live stream then, so if you've got any, any questions, get them ready for, for David tomorrow. Go and have a look at his website in advance because it will give you ideas for some good questions. He's got some amazing content on there. It's theaprist.com. All right, I'll see you all tomorrow. Thanks for stopping by.