No Queen. Loads of Cells - ONE Last Chance To Fix Things!

Oh, that doesn't look good. Oh, geez. And then look at all— oh, wow. Yeah, lots of cells. There are trees coming down as we speak. Oh, Zane, that is a little bit gross. Have you ever seen so many? Oh, oh, that is truly disgusting. I'm in a bad mood. Everything is going wrong. Let's see what else goes wrong. Right, I got told off as well for not wearing my bee suit last week.

Yeah.

People were not happy, so I've got my bee suit on, got my new orange gloves and smoker lip. So I went into your nuc last week, it all looked good, bees in the super, went down into the brood box and they were trying to swarm.

Again.

Yeah, and it's just like, it's these massive peaks and troughs this year, which is the annoying thing. Normally it's a bit slower, a bit steadier, but we're back to no queen and we need to take down the emergency cells and we need to put a queen in. And have I remembered to bring you a queen up?

No, of course not. Like, it's just one of those days, isn't it?

It's one of those days and I forgot to do the queen. So what we're going to do, the plan is I've got an empty cage, and there's a queen in there.

Okay.

We'll find her, cage her. We won't just like drop her in. You can drop her in because she's laying, but I'm not going to. We're going to do it properly for Zane.

Yeah.

I'm getting embarrassed of getting it wrong all the time.

I wonder if it's that part of the apiary, because if you notice, things over this side of the apiary tend to go wrong.

Wrong.

I wonder if it's a jinx.

I just think it's bad luck in the season. Yeah. So I'm trying not to get too You're a bit downbeat with this. Should we get inside and see if you've got any honey? Because that will make you feel a bit better.

Yeah, that'll cheer us up, won't it?

Come on, let's do it.

I'm convinced one of them is going to come this way in a minute.

There are trees coming down as we speak. Well, I'll hand over to you. There's a hive tool. Let you drive.

Thank you.

You've not been in for a couple of weeks. Couple of weeks.

I feel a bit rusty.

Intense sunshine as well.

Yeah.

So give me a little smoke. Oh, nice sound.

Do you know what? It's like watching those chiropractor videos.

Yeah. Oh, that doesn't look good. Oh geez. Go on, what are you seeing? There's nothing in there, no?

Yeah, nothing going on in this one.

Take a couple of frames out, show us what you're seeing. So if you're seeing that, if you're putting a super on and the bees have done nothing, it's not the end of the world, but let's take it off and go another layer down.

Yeah, nothing. No, the one below looks a bit busier.

Let's have a look at the one below.

Ooh, okay. Looks a bit nicer. Should pop one out.

It doesn't look too bad over there. What are you thinking, heavy frame?

Yes, really heavy.

Really heavy.

Okay, happy. I'm happy with that. I don't know what it means, but you've got to take the small wins. Yeah, so keep one out, or are we just going to move to the super offshoot?

No, yeah, just shove a couple in here and then we're good.

Cool. Jeez, yeah, they're nice and heavy. There's a lot going on there.

Nice.

They do get a bit thin on the ground down this way, but—

Yeah, so let's go and have a look and see what's going on in the brood nest. There doesn't seem to be anywhere near as many bees as last week, Zane.

Okay.

See that wasp coming in there? First wasp.

Oh, I didn't see.

Little wasp flying in there. Like, it's very much doom and gloom at the moment. Lift that box up there. Whoo!

Whoo!

Yeah. Yeah, whoo!

That's a lot of weight.

Official term, whoo, which is, it's a lot of weight, isn't it? It's probably like 15, 20 pounds of honey in there, maybe 40 jars of honey.

Yeah, that's to the point where I really want to put that down.

Yeah, okay, right. So let's have a look in here. There's not that many bees in here.

Yeah, like this bit, this half's just empty, isn't it?

Well, so what you got to remember though, last week I had to make a split.

Yeah.

So I had to knock this colony right back. So I want this to be quite hard-hitting. There's not a lot of bees in here, is there? But we made you a split and your split's over there and we're going to check up on that in a little bit. But go on, you have a look through. Nice handling.

Okay, frames feel pretty light. Oh, there's a big, big cell there in the middle.

Nice. So we'll come back through, we'll take down all the cells.

Okay, are we looking for anything in particular? Do we— are we expecting to see Oh, this is— yeah, there's a lot of cells going on. Could there be a virgin in here somewhere?

So I would say it's unlikely that there's a virgin in here. If we think back to what we did last week, I identified swarm cells. Yeah, so the bees would have swarmed. I took the queen and made a split, so the queen is off somewhere else, and I took down all of the swarm cells that were here. Yeah, so what I'm expecting to come back and see, what we should be seeing here now, is lots of— you're going to see lots of cells Some of them are going to be swarm cells, some of them are going to be emergency cells. All you need to know is that you have to take down every single one before you put the queen in. But we're seeing lots of cells, yeah?

Yeah, quite a lot.

A lot, yeah. So what we need to do, Zane, it's going to be your job. You're going to have to shake off all the frames, do it in order, and then do your favourite job.

I can't.

You can't do it?

I don't think I can.

I'll shake off all the frames and I'll do it and you film.

Okay, cool.

You sure? Yeah.

Is that alright?

Absolutely.

I don't know why I find this—

You've still not edited that short as well, have you? Pass it to me then, you can get the camera.

Yep.

We'll shake them off. Right, so a few observations first, Zane. There's no eggs, yeah, so there's no queen in here, which means there's no eggs, which is good. So if you look down in the cells there, maybe get a close-up, shouldn't be able to see any eggs. If you're doing this and you see eggs and cells, then you need to say, oh right, something's going wrong here. And then we're going to shake the bees off, okay? So just Shake like that, and then we're cell hunting. You see any cells?

Nope.

Yes. All right, one cell. So first, before I rip this off, let's have a look inside this cell. What can you see?

Oh, there's a larvae.

That's a larvae, yeah. In a beautiful pool— oh, sorry, bee— in a beautiful pool of royal jelly. So this is what you're hunting. These are royal larvae in royal jelly. That there will turn into a queen. Not that bee that's just eating some of it, but the, the actual larva. We need to remove every single one of these. So I like to work in order, so start at one end, check the bees off. Both clean?

Yep.

Nothing on them. Any on that side?

Good on this side.

Good on that side?

Yeah.

Any on that side?

No. Oh my goodness, look at that.

All right, come on then, Zane. I think you're better off just like blindly doing it like that.

Yeah, not a chance. No, I will try most things once, but that is not one of them.

Right, so this is what happens when you have a swarming impulse mixed with an emergency impulse. It doesn't really matter, to be honest. You could say that some of them are swarm cells, but I would look at all of them and say, no, they're all just emergency cells, especially these kind of piddly ones here. But I'm not gonna be gross for Zane. I'm just gonna take down every single cell. There might be a little bit that comes out, but I won't overdramatize it too much.

I appreciate that.

The important thing is not missing any. Yeah?

Yeah.

That's what's important here. So if you get a cluster like that, it is quite easy. You can— I'll try not to— you can just take the whole cluster away and then just don't miss any at all. Right, so that frame is done. Let's check that side. You have to be like— you have to get everyone here, Zane. There's no like, oh, I'll just try my very best to get all of them. You have to get them all, and there is a lot more on this frame. So you want to try and not damage the brood as best you can. Sometimes it's unavoidable. So you can see they do, they hide them in strange places like these ones over here. They're definitely emergency cells as well. They need to come out. And then they put them in the face of the frame there. All them out, and then look at all— oh wow, yeah, lots of cells. And then on that frame, you've just got like one puny little one in the middle. Some people will say that's a supersedure cell, Zane, because they say, well, it's one cell on the face, but it's not. Emergency cell, because we killed their queen or took their queen away. Right, last one. That's quite a heavy frame, that one. That's good. And that's just stores. And then your red frame down here. That little shake, that stores as well. So what I'm quickly going to do, I'm not going to do any checkerboarding here, but I am just going to take out this frame, a foundation, and just move them away from that wall. Kind of gives you a little bit more chance of a good expansion. Now look at all these cells here, eh? These are all the ones that we collected. So this colony now is what we call hopelessly queenless. It's got no queen, it's definitely not got any queen cells, and it's not got any resources to make its own queen. So we thought it'd be nice, this little mini mating hive, uh, mini National Plus, has been here the whole time and they are pretty chilled out bees, so I thought I'd get the queen out of here and this can be your new queen's aim.

There she is.

See her? I've got her, Zane.

Ah, very sneaky.

Right, so there she is, Zane. She is your new queen. Nice, isn't she?

This is the 3rd iteration.

3rd iteration, that. I'm going to put her in a cage for you, I think is a good way of doing it. Get her back out again now. It's quite awkward, this, because she just goes off and wanders, wanders around. Now, this is a laying queen. I could just pick her up and drop her in. I could put her in a cage. Yeah, like I tell you what we'll do. You've got to pick the hand, so it'll be left or right. So it'll be my, so it'll be like this. This is right. This is left.

Yeah, yeah. Okay. And if you can, I just point to a hand.

Yeah, that's easier.

Saves any confusion.

If you pick the cage, we're caging it. If you pick the no hand, we're doing it wildfire.

Right. I'm saying we're going the cage is in this hand and we're going to cage her. Damn it.

So do you want to overrule?

I absolutely overrule. Overrule. Okay. Right. No more risks.

We're calling over. Brawl! Right, there we go. There's too much drama for one day. Right, the queen's there, Zane. Let's get her. If you get the camera.

Yeah.

Okay, queen is trapped. She's a very nice queen, this one, and you can see that she was— I've given him a really good queen there. Beautiful brood pattern, really nice and prolific, hopelessly queenless colony. And what is important, Zane, is we're not going to open the tab.

Okay.

Okay, we're going to leave it 24 hours. I'm going to come back up after 24 hours and I'm going to pop the tab and we're doing that as like an extra precaution so they can't get in really quickly and kill her.

Yeah.

Let's stick that one in as it goes.

Getting déjà vu here.

Yeah, and then we'll stack everything back up, cross our fingers.

Let's do it.

Right, so quinacridone is screwed back on, Super back on. It's looking good, that super. I'll show that to the main camera because it's not like— it's not all doom and gloom. Like, that is a very heavy box of honey. I said 15-20 pounds there, probably 40 half-pound jars, which is a lot of honey. But we're going to get more than that, Zane. We're going to get more than that. You okay?

Yeah, I'm just watching them around this queen, see how they're acting. They're interested.

She happy there?

Yeah. Hope she does us proud.

Right, do we want to add that super on?

Is it going to do any harm?

I don't think it's going to do any harm.

Let's go for it then.

Let's get it on.

Yeah.

I think either, either on or off would have been acceptable there.

Yeah, yeah.

But we'll stick with it. You see I've got all the cells, all the queen cells and stuff in there, so go and put them off in a little wax bucket or If you want a little safe place, you just leave them upstairs and close the hole.

Okay.

And then you can put the lid on and we're all good. So lots going wrong, lots still left to play for. We will see you next week. Be quiet, where's that hiding?

Is that bee in my veil? Yeah, it is.

Cuffed wrists, that's not right. Long wrist cuffs, long, long cuffed gloves. Yep, long cuffed gloves. Smoked Zane a bit there.

Alright. Oh, what? What?

Zane's been so precious about this camera, he's kind of got a bit of sawdust on it now.

Okay. I thought I'd like cracked the screen or something.

You don't want to be sick in a veil.

The worst situation.

It's one of those years, right? Next frame.