Set Up A New Apiary - Best Hive Site, Stands, and Layout for UK Beekeeping

Today I'm setting up a brand new apiary. Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping. I'm setting up a brand new apiary today and I'm going to talk you through all of the steps from identification of the apiary through to stocking it with bees. I'll try and keep it short, I'll try and keep it snappy, but I'm going to cover all of those important steps. So you might think I've got enough apiaries and I'm trying to reduce the number of bees that I keep, but that doesn't mean that I'm never on the lookout for new apiaries. And I think it's a bit of an iterative process in that you need to identify what your best performing apiaries are, what your worst performing apiaries are, and then move things around a little bit to try and identify where the best ones are. Because if you just have say 5 or 6 apiaries, you have your better performing ones, have your not so good performing ones, and they're pretty much the same year in, year out, obviously dependent on the weather. Now I've got a couple of apiaries that are pretty good, but they're not so convenient for me. Access isn't the best, they're a little bit too shaded, so I kind of want to improve those apiaries, and that's what's led me to this new site here. So I'm just going to quickly cover the things that I look for again. I've done a separate video on, on finding out apiaries, top 20 tips And I'll link you out to that video now. But the big one and the driver for the move is vehicular access. I like to get my vehicle right up next to the hives, save me massive headaches throughout the season. And the big one for me at the moment is I'm trying to get all of my apiaries in the sun. I want full sun throughout the majority of the day because I find that really does help the bees, increases yields, and keeps like little disorders, brood disorders like sack brood and chalk brood down to a minimum. Now that last point there may be a little bit anecdotal, but I do find the ones that are in darker locations tend to have a little bit more chalk brood later on into the season in comparison to the ones that are in open sun throughout the whole of the year. Doesn't tend to be that bad, or if it is, it's very much limited to the beginning of the season. Right, I'm going to jump straight into it. Obviously don't need the bee suit today. I'm going to do this in 2 stages. I'm going to set the apiary up behind me, I'm going to come back later on this evening and stock it with bees because I want to get all of the flying bees in from the hives that I'm moving over here. So there we go, we're all done. That might not have looked that hard, but that was very, very hot and hard work. It's about 27 degrees here today, 2 o'clock. Hottest time of the day, wearing all black. I am completely stupid.

So I'm going to go home and cool off because that was really, really difficult work.

But continue to watch the video though because it's not finished yet. I'm going to come back up here later this evening. I'm going to strim all around the area. I'm going to finish off setting up the apiary. I'm going to bring the hives up as well, get the nucs up, leave them for 24 hours to orientate, and I'm going to put them into the hives. Now you may have noticed they're quite multicolored, these beehives, and they are my Abello beehives. I've been meaning to do this for such a long time and have a dedicated Abello apiary, so that's what this apiary here is going to be. The reason I'm doing that is that Damien's been so good to me over the years, he's given me free bits and bobs. These ones here were free hives that he gave me a good while ago now, and I've just not had the time to do anything with them. So this apiary here, a bit of a thank you to Abello for, for all the help and support in growing my bee business and growing my YouTube channel. So we'll have a dedicated Abello apiary. So I'll fast forward to later on this evening and I'll finish off the job when it's a little bit cooler and all of the bees have stopped flying. Right, so we're back at the apiary. It's about half 8 in the evening.

It's just been the most spectacular day. We've still got a good few days left of this really nice warm spell, so I'm making the most of it.

I'm setting up the new apiary.

I'm back up here in the evening. I've closed all of the bees in, many as I possibly can, within the nucs. I've got them in the truck. I'm going to get them set up now next to their respective hives.

I'm going to leave them to orientate for 24 hours.

No need for anything more than that. They're going to be crazy busy tomorrow. Forecast for 28 degrees, which I know in the grand scheme of things across the world at the moment is relatively mild. But for North Wales to have 27, 28, 29 degrees for any extended amount of time is really, really good. And the bees, they're just piling in the nectar at the moment. So I'll get these nucleus colonies all set up, and then I'll talk to you a little bit more about this apiary.

So there we go, simple as that. All I've done is I've taken the nucleus colonies And I've set them down next to the hive that they're going to go into.

Really easy to mistake, so kind of bring them up here at night and start opening them up. The bees have no idea where they are. They've come from about 3 or 4 miles away, so this is real new territory to them. Best way to do it: come up here, put them on the hive stand, let them orientate to the spot, and then the next day come back late afternoon and you can just transfer them over to the hive, take the nuc away, and you'll get pretty much every single bee in Into your new hive.

So I've got another two hives that I need to bring up, contemplating whether to do that tomorrow night.

If not, I'll just stick with the four. I'm going to make a couple of splits up here as well. Middle of July at the moment, so 16th, 17th of July, and there is really good forage around here at the moment.

Not too far away from the heather, but I think it's probably out of reach for the bees.

But there's lots of nice stuff for them to going on for the next four weeks.

So I'm just going to focus on getting these colonies nice and strong.

Going into winter, and then we'll do some splits early next year in this apiary.

So stay tuned to the end of the video. I'm going to come back here tomorrow, I'm going to transfer over all of the bees, and then that will be it.

The new apiary will be set up.

Right, so we're back at the apiary and we're going to transfer the nucs into their hives. Really warm here again today, all of the bees are flying. When you're transferring them over, the only thing you really need to make sure you do— find the queen, make sure the queen is in the new hive Take the old nuc away, and then all of the bees will find that queen. So I'll get into the colonies now, transfer everything over, and then wrap it up at the end. And there we go, finally complete. So we've done it over a couple of days, transferred over those nucs now into their new homes. They were only over 6 frames, those nucs. Late on in the year, middle of July at the moment. So all I'm looking to do here is build those colonies up for winter. Four colonies.

See if we can get four colonies through, and then early next year we'll get some early queens in, and we'll do some really early splits to try and boost this apiary up to eight or twelve colonies.

Don't like to go up any more than that.

I found around here kind of ten to twelve colonies is where I want to be in terms of the numbers. I find that gives me the best return per hive. If I start going up higher than that, especially around here, start to see diminishing returns.

So I hope you enjoyed that video, something a little different, setting up a new apiary.

I'm just looking around up here, it is such a good apiary.

Fields full of wildflowers, the farmer's put loads of stuff in for me.

I think these guys are going to build up really, really strong. I'll follow it up later on in the season, show you how strong they are going into winter. And because it's a nice light bright apiary, I'll do plenty of videos up here as well throughout the season.

So that's it for the video. 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.

Bye.