In this instructional video, Laurence Edwards of Black Mountain Honey demonstrates how to harvest honey from a Hyde Hives long hive without using a queen excluder. He begins by explaining his initial plan to employ a queen excluder to separate brood and honey, but quickly abandons it after observing that the long hive’s layout naturally forces the colony to keep brood near the entrance and store honey toward the rear. Edwards walks through the hive, showing clear visual distinctions: the first four frames are 100 % brood, while the subsequent three frames are exclusively honey, with capped honey rings surrounding empty or nectar‑filled cells. He highlights key visual cues—such as a ring of capped honey and the absence of brood—to decide which frames are ready for harvest. The harvest process is described as simple: work outward from the middle, remove frames that are at least 80 % capped, and replace them with stores or feed the bees. Edwards notes that, over a season of use, the bees consistently self‑regulate the brood‑honey boundary, making a queen excluder unnecessary for most years, though he remains open to using one if needed. The video concludes with a reminder to subscribe and a brief outlook on future observations.
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In this video, I'm going to show you how to harvest honey from a long hive. Hi, I'm Lawrence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping and the next episode in our long hive series sponsored by Hyde Hives. Now, when I first got this long hive, I had a long hard think and I looked at how other people managed them. Did they use a queen excluder? Didn't they use a queen excluder? I'll have to say my initial plan was to build the colony up as big as I could possibly get it, slip a queen excluder in where the brood nest naturally ended, give it 6 weeks or so, and then one side of the queen excluder is going to be all honey and the other side of the queen excluder is going to be all brood nest, or maybe a little bit of honey as well. And I have to say I quickly abandoned that idea because it appears that in a long hive the bees just take care of this for you, where in a normal vertical hive if you let the queen just run loose She can go wild and she can go all over the place. Whereas in a long hive, it does seem a lot more regimented. And I'm gonna show you this today. The colony isn't a massive colony, but there's a clear distinction between where the brood nest and where the honey frames are. And it means harvesting honey from a long hive like this is the easiest thing in the world. That's what I'm gonna show you today though. I'll get my bee suit on. Let's go and take a look how to harvest honey from a long hive. Right, so let's get inside, see what the honey harvest is like from the swarm that I captured early on in the year. In the Hyde Hives long hive. I think I'm just going to have to open the roof like that every time. One-handed, one finger. I do really like the easy action open of the roof. So this is what my colony is looking like now. It's over 8 or 9 frames of 14 by 12. Really interesting. They are not interested at all of having top ventilation. They have closed that up, well and truly closed it up. Always find it interesting when they do that. Let's get inside though, see where that brood nest finishes and see where the honey frames start. So just looking down from this colony, they always start the brood closest to the entrance, and then as you move over here, you can see on these frames already lots of nice honey. Now my concern was going to be that there was going to be loads of brood in the middle of it and they were going to store it around the edges. Let's pull out these frames though, see what it's all about. So I've been through all the frames and this set of 4 here is 100% brood. Pull out a couple of frames in a sec and show you what it's like, but they are completely full of brood. These 2 frames here, they are 100% honey. They're not full of honey because this colony was only a swarm earlier on in the year, but they're doing pretty good. And then that final one over there, that is pretty much full of honey. I'll pull out some frames now though, but I just wanted to show you that distinction that you've got the first 4 frames there That's all the brood nest, and then the next 3 frames are exclusively honey. So this is what the brood frames are looking like. Really good quality brood on here, gotta say. I'm very, very happy with how this small swarm has come along and expanded. Nice brood pattern, ring of stores all the way around the edge. Definitely not interested in harvesting anything from this frame. All of the other brood frames look exactly the same as this. Especially in a 14 by 12, you get a nice ring of stores and then you get brood in the center, not interested in terms of honey harvesting. Then you move on to frames like this, and I've picked this one out because I think it tells a really, really nice story. You've got what was a brood frame, and you can see the darker cells in the middle. That would have once had brood in it, and now it's got nothing in it whatsoever. Few little bits of nectar in there, and then we've got a nice ring of capped honey. Okay, that could be full, and on some other hives— and I'm sure I'll get it next year up here— that will be full of honey. But it goes to show they've contracted that nest down by themselves, and I haven't had to use a queen excluder. As far as I'm concerned, that frame there can come out. Might give it a few more days just to get them finished off. There is nectar coming in up here because they're on a bit of a heather flow. But when you see a frame like that, when they've started to cap it all over, you can just take it out if there's no brood in it. And that is the way that I'm going to do my harvests on my Hyde Hives long hives. And there you go, it's as simple as that. I know I said earlier on in the year that the queen excluder was going to be the most important piece of equipment with the Hyde Hives long hive, but I've realized over the course of the season that they just don't need it in a long hive, and they manage that themselves. They keep the brood nest over to one side and they keep the honey over to the other side. Get the brood nest closest to the entrance and the honey further back where it's a lot more easily defendable. So if you're looking to harvest honey from your Hyde Hives long hive, all you need to do, work from the middle on either side, come back to where the bees are starting to store honey, pull out the frames. If it's completely covered in capped honey, 80% capped even, Take it out. That's your honey harvest. As you move closer and closer to the entrance, you'll see more and more brood on the frames. But in my experience of using these hives for a year now, they restrict the brood all the way to the front, and then they keep nice separate frames of honey at the harvest point of the season, and you've got no contamination with any brood. So there you go. I think you'll agree it's a very, very simple process. I'm going to have to do a little bit of research into this to see If that is repeatable year on year, but both of the colonies that I got in that long hive there, absolutely straight down the middle, you've got brood on one side and the honey on the other side, and they just know where to stop that brood nest, and they didn't expand it any further out to the right. I think in future years I'll just see how I go though. If I need to use the queen excluder, I will, but I think going forward there's going to be no need for that. I can just take out any frames that I want, use those as my honey harvest, And then backfill with stores and feeding. I hope you enjoyed that video though. As always, please hit the subscribe button, please hit the bell so you're notified of every video, and I'll see you next time. Bye.
