Laurence Edwards inspects a single Buckfast colony in mid-July with no splits or interventions, just weekly checks. Seven honey boxes are nearly full, the queen is prolific with no swarm cells, and he estimates a 90% chance it won't swarm before season's end.
We managed to get this colony through all the way now to the middle of July. What am I doing now to stop these bees swarming? All I'm doing is weekly inspections. Nothing fancy, no horizontal splits, no vertical splits, no demarays, no moving things around. We're just leaving it to the bees now, crossing our fingers, making sure they've got enough space in terms of honey supers, and just praying that the bees don't swarm. The risk hasn't gone, but it's massively reduced. Like, I'm going through my colonies at the moment, not seeing any swarm preps whatsoever. But don't let that fool you into thinking that there's no chance that they're going to swarm. I've seen them go as late as kind of September up in North Wales. It's only July, so we've still got maybe 10 weeks where they can really go out and actually swarm. I'm gonna do a very quick video today. We're going to look in a couple of the supers. I'll just show you some of the frames, give you a little bit of a status update in terms of how much honey they're collecting, and then we'll go back downstairs into the brood box, see what they're doing. As always, famous last words. I've not gone in there, I've not checked. We're definitely going to find some swarm cells today, aren't we? I'll open them up though, see how we get on. So just a little observation here of my F1 Buckfast is that you don't get completely propolis-free bees. Some people might not like that. I have to say I'm actually a bit of a fan of it. I think that propolis is a very good thing to have in a hive. It's a natural thing that bees go out, they forage it, they collect it, they bring it back, and it has been linked to honeybee health. So hives with more propolis tend to be healthier. I don't know the ins and outs of it. I know generally though, Buckfast, you don't find a huge amount of propolis, but these ones here have got a good amount. And I'm seeing this across a lot of my apiaries, so it's not just location dependent, and it's a trait that I'm actually really, really happy with. They don't go over the top. It doesn't take me a day to get them apart because they're sticking it all together, but each and every time I come in here, there is actually quite a decent amount of propolis. Right, so you can see again today, not killer bees. They're not killing me. F1 Buckfast, very, very nice and calm. And today I'm not even using a smoker 'cause I forgot it and left it at home. But even without it, very nice, calm, gentle bees. I have to say, I'm quite surprised with this colony. I've got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 supers on it. Probably too many boxes because compared to some of the other colonies in this apiary, I'd say the yield on this one is a little bit down. Is that because I've done aggressive Demarée splits? Wouldn't really think so. Maybe it's just one of those things, and maybe it's just because that honey is spread around all of those 7 boxes. 3 National Deeps and 4 National Shallows. But we do still have 6 weeks to go in this April, so I would say if I had hive scales on there, I reckon we've taken a dip kind of from the beginning of June into the beginning of July, and hopefully we can make it back now. Strange though, because the one next door is just chocka, completely full of capped honey. In here, it's kind of spread around a little bit more. Let's get in the brood nest though. That's what you're all waiting for. Has this queen swarmed, or is she still in this box? Like, I'm sorry if this gets boring every week, but I'm just amazed at the brood in some of these colonies here. Very, very good queen, very prolific, end-to-end brood. Difficult to find eggs because she does not leave the space open for long. Same on the other side, tons of brood, really well capped. This bodes well, and it makes me think I'm not too worried about empty supers above or partially empty supers because I've got a lot of young bees still to come out. Again, another beauty of a frame. Both sides completely capped, no sign of any swarm cells yet. And there she is, I won't hold the suspense. Middle frame, lots of brood, queen's in the middle, same queen. Very good to see. So there you go, final frame to show you. Lots of nice brood. Checked over all of these frames, absolutely no swarm cells whatsoever. Definitely a flow going on though. Check out to see why I think there's a flow going on from what I'm seeing on this frame here. They were doing it when it was facing me. Let's see if they're doing it again. And if you haven't guessed it, or they're not doing it anymore, they're doing the waggle dance, which is they're saying to each other, there is a flow on and it is over there. At least that's what I think they're saying. Might be something completely different, but I'm led to believe the waggle dance indicates a good flow is on, especially when coupled with the presence of nectar in the brood frames. So there we go, another week has passed. No swarm cells. I'll be back every single week checking this colony, giving you the updates, showing you how much honey they're putting away. It's gone down a little bit over the past few weeks. 6 weeks to go for the season here. Hopefully we can get all of these boxes full. Do I think this colony is going to swarm now? I reckon we're past swarming. I'll continue doing the inspections, but I would say you could go with maybe a 90% chance now that if I just left this colony until the end of the season With all of these boxes on, I would come back, the queen would still be there, and most of these boxes would be full. Hope you're enjoying this series. I'm really enjoying this one. Goes to show what you can do if you put your mind to it in terms of keeping the bees there. Has it had a detrimental impact on the honey yield? Have to wait until the end of the season before we make a judgment on that.
