My Beekeeping Resolutions For 2024

In this video, I'm going to talk to you all about my beekeeping resolutions for 2024. Now, the first one I've chopped and changed throughout the years, throughout the seasons, but definitely going forward, every single year I'm going to take a spring crop from my bees. The reason that I didn't used to take a spring crop was because I didn't want to double up on the workload, and I found that if I took a spring crop and then the weather turned really bad, I was doing quite a lot of work going around and feeding the bees. But I just think over the past few years when I have taken a spring crop, I've actually been really happy that I've taken it. And okay, it's resulted in a little bit more of a workload, but last year if I hadn't taken a spring crop, I wouldn't have got a single jar of honey from my bees. The summer was just that bad. With the way that the climate is changing, I can't afford to take that risk going forward, so I'm going to split my honey extraction into spring harvest and summer harvest. And every single year I'm going to make sure that I do both. The next change that I'm going to make going into 2024 is I'm going to reduce the number of bees in each and every apiary that I've got. If you flash back a few years, especially for this apiary here, I used to have like 30 or 40 colonies in a single apiary, and I got the advice from Richard who said there's just way too many bees in that area, especially for North Wales where you don't kind of have the arable crops to sustain huge numbers of bees. He said try it in a couple of apiaries, take it down to like maybe 12, 10 colonies in a single apiary and see how well they do and see how much honey you get from a reduced amount of colonies in that apiary. I've done that now over a couple of years and without a doubt for me it's making much more sense to reduce the number of beehives and colonies in a single apiary and increase the number of apiaries. It's more work, it means going around to different sites and managing your bees, but you get the return on the investment because each colony is able to produce more honey. At least that's what I found in my experience running it for a couple of years now. So reducing the colonies down in each and every apiary, I'm going to aim for between 6 to 8 colonies for each apiary site I've got. My number 3 resolution is almost certainly going to end up on the 2024 beekeeping regrets video because I do say this every single year and then every single year I don't really do it. And I look back and I think, I wish I'd done that, I wish I'd kept better records. And record keeping for me is something that's very important, and like there's legal requirements in terms of like mite treatments and stuff like that. But I just want to get a little bit better in terms of like managing the different breeder queens that I've got, tracking the lineage, tracking the different apiary sites, not just anecdotally but putting some real firm data behind the sites that are performing well, the mite treatments that are performing well, the different breeder queens that are performing well. Like, I know the best ones. I know that that's my best breeder queen and the daughters do well. But if you said to me, rank your breeder queens from 1 to 10, I'd probably struggle anything past like 2 or 3. So I want to get a lot better in terms of record keeping, but actually focusing in on the record keeping that's going to provide me value as a professional beekeeper. The next one is very interesting, and if you like a bargain, your ears will probably prick up at this point, because if we look over there, I have got so much beekeeping equipment that I really do need to get rid of. I try to standardize everything, I try to keep everything simple on one hand, and then on the other hand I try and keep as many different beehives as possible in order to do videos on them. And I'm just looking over there now, I've got a Hyde Hives long hive, I've got a Layens hive, I've got National hives, 14x12 hives, Langstroth hives, concrete beehives, like it's really difficult to manage all of those different variants. And now that I've done the videos and I kind of completed those videos and put them out on YouTube, a lot of these hives now are surplus to requirements. And in particular, the 14x12 poly hives that I've got from Suyenti— I've got quite a lot of them, and I mean a huge amount, probably like 150 of those hives. So if you want a really good deal on some Suyenti 14x12 poly hives with frames inside them as well, get in contact and we can work something out. So I've got a little bonus tip for you at the end, but before we get to the bonus tip, I'm going to go with number 5, and that is go out and meet more beekeepers. I want to meet more beekeepers at like the beekeeping show and beekeeping conventions, people from the UK, people from outside the UK. I'm going to the North American Honeybee Expo in a couple of days, and I'm really, really excited to go and do that. But more specifically, I don't just want to go and meet beekeepers, I want to go and film beekeepers. I want to film professional bee farmers, I want to film people who have just started with bees and they're in their very first season. Them, and everybody in between those 2 extremes. I'm happy to travel a little bit, but I think it adds value to my beekeeping channel going out and meeting other people and seeing how other people manage their bees. I'm not the best beekeeper in the world, I'm just the amateur in front of the camera. I want to go out there and film a real range of different beekeeping practices and upload them onto my YouTube channel. And that ties in very nicely to my bonus resolution, which is going to be, how can I add more value to my YouTube channel? This year I've started doing some more live streams and answering people's questions, but I kind of want to open this up to anybody who is watching this video and say, what can I do to help you in your beekeeping adventures? Like, that's it. It's a completely open question. Can I make my website better? Can I make YouTube better? Is there a certain type of content that you want me to go and film? A certain type of person that you want me to go and film? Should I do more basic stuff? Should I do more advanced stuff? Just absolutely anything that you can think of that I can help you with your beekeeping. Stick it in the comments. I'm really keen to know. If you've not got any ideas and you just want to stick your beekeeping resolutions in the comments as well, I'll be really interested to hear what's gone well for you, what's not gone well, and where you're looking to improve.