Laurence Edwards of Black Mountain Honey inspects a nucleus colony before winter, removing Apivar strips after eight weeks and finding the hive light but strong. He plans to feed it about 6 kg of fondant in coming weeks, emphasizing that heavy colonies with good stores survive winter best.
We're on to episode 24 of the My First Nuclear series, and we're going to take a last look inside the hive before winter. Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping. It has been 2 months since the last episode where we did quite a lot. We put the Apivar strips in, we got them fed, We left them alone. That's what I said I was going to do in episode 23, is I'm just going to leave them alone now. They were nice and heavy, they'd done all the work for me throughout the year, they produced a good spring crop, an even better summer crop, and a really, really good heather crop. And then we got into the manic season, which is always the first week of September, so I was busy doing so much stuff. So apologies if the last episode was a little bit rushed, but we took all of the honey off. We fed them, we got them up to weight, we put some Apivar strips in there to treat for varroa, and now we're into the first week of November, 8 weeks after we put those Apivar strips in, and I'm coming back just to do my final check of the season. I'm going to get inside, I'll take a look, going to get those Apivar strips out, probably going to put some fondant on in the next couple of weeks as well, because across all of my colonies they're quite light, especially up at the heather where we didn't get a chance to do the trickle feed. But I have no issue putting fondant on for the sake of £10 worth of fondant in, in money, or 12.5 kilos of fondant. That is always going to be more than enough to get the colonies through. I'll probably start up here putting 6 kilograms on, and I'll do that in a couple of weeks, and I'll cover that on the next episode of this as well. So enough of me talking, I'll get my bee suit on. Let's go and have a look at the colony after 2 months, see how much they've contracted down, and see how well they're getting on. Right, the weather's taken a real turn for the worse. It's windy, it's wet. I'm going to get in here quickly, get the Apivar strip out, quick snapshot, see how the colony's going on, and I'm going to wrap them up for winter. Right, first thing I'm going to do is give the colony a little bit of a heft. Always get in that habit, heft those colonies. I'm lifting it up and it's definitely light. Not too bad, they're not close to starving, but we've got to the point where they can't take any more syrup. They're very, very light, so I'm going to come back in the next episode, I'm going to add Fondant. Make sure you know what good feels like and take appropriate action where necessary. Right, so here's my colony. I think you'll agree they are looking pretty good. They're definitely angry with me though because it is cold. It's about half 4 at the moment, it's getting really dark, but they are super, super strong. Generally find this with the heather bees that they are really, really strong. Really good looking colony. It's exactly what I want to kind of see at this time of the year— big strong colony. But they are light, so they do need a big feed of fondant to make sure they've got enough food to get them through the year. But first week of November, this is what the My First Nucleus colony is looking like. This is what happens when you condense big colonies down into single boxes. They get jam-packed full of bees and they do very, very well going through winter. Right, so I've been through the colony, I've taken out all the Apivar strips, They're a little bit light. It's too cold to feed syrup now. I'm going to come back in the next episode, give them a good slab of fondant. I'll show you how to do that in the next episode, but really happy to see just how strong the bees are. First week of November, big strong colonies like this get through the winter so much better than small colonies. Really, really happy with what I'm seeing. So there we go, bees are looking good. Don't be disturbed at how small the colony looks at this time of the year. I know we didn't go in and pull frames out, but there is no need to do that at this time of the year. First week of November, what are you going to do if you pull a frame out and there's no brood or there's no eggs or there's no queen? Nothing you can do whatsoever. So don't even bother going in to check, because going in to check can cause problems. Like you could squish the queen, damage her in some way that the bees can't get through the winter. So you're much better off managing the things that are in your control. One is apivar. Taking them strips out at the right time, or doing a varroa treatment at the right time. Get that mite load down. Make sure they're up to weight. And if you can't get them up to weight with syrup, add some fondant, which we're going to cover in the next episode. So I hope you enjoyed that video. I hope you enjoyed the series so far. Episode 25 next. We're going to add some fondant on, and we're going to get this colony through the winter. 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.
