In this vlog, Laurence Edwards inspects his concrete Langstroth hive after winter to assess colony health and prepare for the 2023 season. He checks for brood at all stages, confirms the presence of feed and nectar, and searches for the queen, eventually locating an unmarked queen on a frame. Edwards then replaces the existing wooden runners with threaded‑bar metal runners, installs new pre‑waxed plastic Langstroth frames from Modern Beekeeping, and attempts a double‑brood configuration despite the shallow‑box dimensions that limit true double‑brooding. He discusses the challenges of transitioning from National to Langstroth hives, the risk of frame slippage, and the experimental nature of leaving gaps between frames. The video concludes with the colony alive, queen present, and ready for the upcoming season, while noting the need for future adjustments.
Chapters
Today is the day that we're going to go into my concrete beehive, check that they've made it through the winter, and then set them up for expansion into 2023. Right, time to get inside the concrete hive. Got my hive tool, clean hands. I'm going to get in there, see how the bees are getting on, take some frames out, maybe add the next layer as well. So you can see at the front of the hive, good amount of activity. I've taken the top off there now, and you can see we've got a decent-sized cluster of bees in there. I know I said I was going to fix that runner. I'm definitely going to do that today, get some metal runners in there. But at the moment, it looks like we've still got a decent-sized colony of bees. So I was very kindly given some threaded bar. That's what I'm going to use as the runners in this colony. I'm going to take the frames out, find the queen, look to see if we've got brood, fix it with the runners, and then we're going to go above with a double brood configuration. So we've still got some bees, we've got some feed still in there as well. Happy to see that, that we've still got some feed in there and that they've not starved. Good to see that there's some nectar coming in as well. And then on that frame there, you can see we've got some brood, brood in all stages, eggs and larvae. So still not found the queen, but there's brood. I can see eggs. They're not bubbling over the top like I would expect in my poly, but then a lot of my wood, they're not bubbling over the top either. But good-looking, healthy brood, decent amount of bees. Oh. And I told you before, I've done a video on that, and I, as you know, I always keep my mistakes in there. The move between National and Langstroth causes so many drops like that. It annoys me so much. Such bad beekeeping practice. And it's the way that I swing the frames that I'm so used to on a National that when I do it on a Langstroth, I occasionally slip. I just hope the queen wasn't in that fall. We'll have to try a little bit harder to make sure that we can find her now. So still not found that queen, but as you can see there, brood in all stages. Most of the frames in here actually have a decent amount of brood, good healthy brood, no signs of any disease whatsoever. I'll continue trying to find that queen. And there we go, I found the queen. She's not marked, that's why it took a little bit of time. I'm going to put her off to one side now, take all of the frames out, get the runners fixed, and then we're going to go up with an additional box. And for anyone who didn't see her, she's around there. Zoom in a little bit. Hopefully you can see her. And there we go. I'll give you one more close-up. She's just on the frame there, right on the edge. Hopefully that's in focus. Right, so I've just popped that frame up there with the queen. I'm going to take all of the frames out and put them directly into the super next door with the correct runners on. Right, just double-checking that I've got my queen. She's still there. I can put the frame back in now. Changed that round a little bit because it's quite difficult doing it up there. Just wanted to make sure that I wasn't crushing that queen. I wanted to make sure that she was going to stay in the colony. So I've just realized one of the limitations of this hive is that you can't double brood it. So at the moment I don't have any Langstroth mediums and I wanted to double brood this here where all I've got is shallow boxes, but they don't actually make a brood box. The way that you get the brood dimensions is that you put a shallow onto a floor and that extends it down. So got a little bit of an issue here. I'm just going to have to see how they go. I'm going to put these new runners in and I'm going to put my new set of plastic frames in here as well. And then we're going to have to come back and fix it at a later date. And that's pretty much the story of beekeeping, is that if you don't come prepared, you make little errors like this. We'll still double brood them though. It'll mean that there's going to be a gap between the frames. The bees are definitely not going to like that. But we will see what happens and see how they take to it. So what I'm using here is fully plastic, pre-waxed Langstroth frames. Got these from Modern Beekeeping. Really nice, similar to the Frames and Feeders style. They're going to go in and see how the bees take to them. So there we go, all complete, double brooded, bit of a gap in between, little bit of a gamble, still some work to do, but at least we've got a colony. They're not dead, got a queen present, and they're ready to go into the 2023 season.
