In Episode 25 of the My First Nucleus series, Laurence Edwards of Black Mountain Honey returns a week after his previous video to demonstrate how he prepares his upland heather apiary for winter. He transports roughly 500 kg (about 12.5 kg per colony) of baker’s fondant using the landowner’s quad, taking advantage of a brief window of dry weather to avoid the site’s typical wet conditions. Edwards explains his feeding rationale—colonies are lighter than ideal after an early honey harvest, so a full slab of fondant is placed on each hive to ensure sufficient stores. He walks through the simple placement process: opening the blue‑plastic polyash feeder, removing the feeder, laying the fondant directly on the queen excluder, then up‑turning the feeder and sealing it, while keeping the plastic wrap around the slab to retain warmth. He stresses two critical points: maintaining an open face of fondant in direct contact with the bees and using the polyash feeder (or alternative insulation such as Kingspan, Celotex, or a crown board) to keep the feed warm. Over‑feeding is not a concern; any excess can be consumed in spring when a second box is added beneath the colony. Finally, Edwards previews Episode 26, where he will apply an Apibioxal varroa treatment in early December to achieve a broodless period, aiming for low mite loads and successful winter survival.
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We're on to episode 25 of the My First Nuclear series. One week later, we're back up here again feeding a big slab of fondant to make sure they get through the winter. Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping. In the last episode, I said I'd be back up here in one week's time. I'm back up here with 20 boxes of fondant. It's about 500 kg, half a ton of fondant to feed all of the colonies up here. But I'm going to cover that on episode 25, getting a big slab of fondant on because the bees are light for this time of year. Now I've covered this in a separate video talking about the seasonal changes, much more noticeable in the last few years how warm it is going into November, especially up at the heather though. I do have an issue with weights going into winter. We swipe away all of that heather honey first week, second week of September, and they don't have a chance really to get up to a really suitable weight going into winter. They're not far off it. They're not dangerously light, but they're lighter than I want them to be. And the big issue that I have up here, and I'll show you on a little clip here, is that it's wet. It's so difficult to get up here in the middle of winter. So in December or January to bring a decent amount of fondant up here. The landowner is fantastic though. He lets me borrow his quad with a little guard dog as well that takes that quad round. And I've brought up half a ton of fondant while it's still relatively dry. So I'm sticking on 12.5 kilos of fondant onto each of these colonies here. Really, I'd probably go with six kilograms and then add on another half block. The fact that I've only got really one chance to get up here, don't want to be doing it in the rain or the wet. I'm just going to stick a full slab on each one. Anything that's left over at the end, maybe it goes to waste. But even up here, I don't worry too much about that because what I'll end up doing if I've got too much fondant on the colony comes spring, I'll stick another box underneath and I will just leave them until they finished off that fondant. And let them expand downwards into the box into a double brood configuration, and then I can sort them out way before we get into heather flows again. Lots of flexibility in this apiary. Overfeeding is not an issue for me. Make sure I get them through the winter, make sure the varroa load is low. Apibioxal early December, I reckon, to try and hit that broodless period. That will be episode 26, so hit the subscribe button to stay tuned and up to date with this series. Got my bee suit on, I'll get my veil on, Let's go and take a look inside, get that big slab of fondant on, make sure the bees get through the winter. Right, I'm not gonna cover this in loads of detail. I have done this to death on loads of videos. 12.5 kilograms baker's fondant, cheap as you like. I'm just gonna take the blue plastic to open up that face, take off the feeder, put the fondant on, upturn the feeder, close them back up again. It's as simple as that. This is no-nonsense beekeeping. I leave my wooden framed wire queen excluder on, place the fondant on top, and the 2 important things to say are make sure that you've got an open face of fondant directly in contact with the bees, and then keep the blue plastic on all the way around. Upturn your polyash forth feeder, that keeps all the good warmth in. If you haven't got that, you can place it above the crown board, or you can place it directly onto the colony, put some Kingspan or some Celotex on top inside a super, That's a really good method as well. So I hope you enjoyed that video. Stay tuned for the next episode, episode 26, when we're going to come up here in December, do the apibioxal sublimation to make sure that mite load is really low, and then these are ready for winter. Hopefully we're going to get all of them through up here. So as always, thanks for watching. Please hit the subscribe button, please hit the bell so you're notified of every video, and I'll see you next time.
