Stocking The Zest Beehive

Right, so we're back at the Forest Apiary. Today we're going to put a colony of bees into my newly built Zest Hive. I love the design feature of this hive in that it's compatible with British Standard National kit. Means I haven't got to wait for a swarm, means I don't have to go and buy a package. I can just transfer over my British Standard National frames, intersperse them with plastic, and then move the bees over gradually. Makes my life so much easier. In this video also, I'm going to show you how to transfer a colony into another beehive Doesn't matter what beehive that is, but doing it on the same day without letting the bees orientate to that spot first. So all I've done, I've built this hive, I've gone off to another apiary that's over 3 miles away, I've collected a colony of bees, I've not even dummied them in, strapped them in, they're flying around the back of the car. And what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna put them right next to this hive here, transfer the frames over, and the job will be done. Now, it's a bit of a slapdash way of doing it, but sometimes you need to do stuff like this. Best practice for this would be you set it up, put the roof back on, let the bees orientate to the top of that space, give them a couple of days, come back over, transfer them in. Unfortunately, I don't have the time to do that. It's late on a Sunday, I've got work this week, I need to get the bees in there. So this is a slapdash method, but it works. And the reason it works is that you find the queen. If you get the queen into that new hive, doesn't matter how many bees are up in the air, They will work it out. You might lose a few, 10%, 5%, something like that, but you will get the vast majority of the bees in there if you find the queen. So I know I'm setting myself up for like the perfect fail there where I won't be able to find the queen. 9 times out of 10 though, I reckon I find her. We're gonna transfer the bees into the Zest Hive, finding the queen using a slapdash method. I'm gonna get my veil on though, 'cause they are gonna be angry in the back of that truck. Right, so I've got my hive here. As you can see, I didn't even close up the entrance. The bees here are gonna be roughly orientated to this spot now. But I'm going to go through, find that queen, transfer them over, take this hive away, and I reckon the bees are going to work it out. Right, to set the Zest Hive up, I'm going to take out these queen excluders and the partition boards, give myself plenty of space. I'm just putting one colony in here. I'm going to spread it all along. I've got a mixture of 14x12 and National deep frames, but I'm going to get them eventually over to these plastic frames. But for the time being, just going to move everything along, give myself loads of space, transfer the bees over. Thought I'd take this opportunity to give you a little sneak peek inside the hive as well. I missed that off the original video. You can see we've got the plastic carrier frame which doubles up as the frame rest, and then inside you've just got these insulated aerated concrete blocks that form the inside cavity. There's some gaps in there. The bees will propolize everything down as they do with beehives. I quite like the look of it in here. Again, you look at that floor, I did the floor completely wrong. You look at Bill's video, he staggers the floor much, much better than my half-assed design, but that is what I'm famous for. This is no-nonsense beekeeping, but this is just actually me doing it wrong. So do not copy my floor design, copy the video that Bill's done, it's way better than mine. Right, let's get into this colony. Fingers crossed we can find the queen. I'm going to start transferring them over though, just to give myself some space, start getting them in there. Hopefully we find the queen though, kind of rests on me finding her. So just taking my time going through the frames, this colony This colony here is on a double brood configuration, so we've got brood up top in the National Deeps and then brood downstairs in the 14x12 as well. Can't see the queen on that frame, and as you can see, it fits perfectly in there. I'll give you some nice close-ups of that in a little bit, but it does— it's a really, really nice fit. Bee space is correct on both sides as well. I love that it's compatible with the British Standard National. Really happy with that. Just thought I'd show off this really nice frame of honey that was in there. One single cell in the middle that they didn't cap. That is lazy bees. You need to make sure that you cap that single cell in the middle. How nice is that frame of honey? And that is what happens when you leave a space in your brood area. Nightmare. They have filled that out with drone brood, and if I was a queen, I know exactly where I would be hiding. What a nightmare. I'll put that off to one side. I'll go through the frames. Still not found the queen. I'm halfway through. I'm gonna go into these 14 by 12 frames down here now. Really nice colony, this one, doing really well. Good size, good amount of honey, reasonable temperament. I think they're going to do very, very well in this nest hive. Right, how typical is that? These are trying to swarm. What a nightmare. Thought I picked a nice big strong healthy colony, and yeah, I did, but they're on the verge of swarming. So, oh, maybe I'll keep one of these cells if I I can't find the queen, and maybe the move will actually sort them out a little bit. I'll put these frames off to one side though, and I'll make a decision on what I'm going to do when I find the queen. Right, so I can't find the queen. Absolute nightmare. What I can find though is a capped queen cell, numerous capped queen cells. So really confused with this one because Can't find the queen. I know she was clipped. Lots of capped queen cells. So what does that mean? Doesn't really mean that much. The queen could definitely be in there. What am I going to do? I'm going to go for a little bit of a kind of half and half method here because I'm not sure if the queen's in there or not. And I just think that this change of scenery for the bees might stop them trying to swarm if the queen is in there. So my strategy, I'm going to go through every single frame. I'm going to shake off the bees. I'm going to take down every single swarm cell, whether they're open or closed. There's eggs in this colony, there's young larvae. So if the queen isn't there, the bees can build new cells, and then I'll knock them down to one and let them requeen. If they try start swarming again, building lots of new cells, but there's still eggs coming through, then I'll go through, find a queen, and I'll do a split. But hopefully what we will see in a few days from now is more eggs and no more cells. So I'll do a follow-up on this video. We'll see how they're getting on. I don't think they've swarmed though. Pretty confident they've not swarmed and I've not lost the bees, even though I've got a capped swarm cell because there's so many bees here. Like, they were boiling out of the top of that double brood configuration. That doesn't mean that it's 100% they haven't swarmed, but I don't think they have. So I'm going to go through the frames again, take down all of these cells. Look at that one, that's a beauty. And then I'll condense everything down and I'll get the roof back on. So this is what the colony is looking like now. I've got all All my national deep frames over there, all of my 14 by 12 frames over there. I'm going to go through every single one, shake them off into the bottom of the Zest hive, see if there's any swarm cells, take down those swarm cells. Might find the queen as I'm doing it, but I'm not holding out. And then we'll close this hive up and leave them to it. What you're seeing there, that is going to be my entrance. I'm going to have them flying out that way, and I'm just going to have that wide open just to get them going. So I'll pull that wide open entrance for them there. Once I close it up, they will work that out. That is going to be their single entrance. So there's my capped swarm cells, absolutely loads of them. That would normally indicate that the queen has left, but because I clip my queens, you generally get until the first virgin emerges. And again, another reason why I always clip my queens. Right, so that's all of the bees in there. I've shaken off all the frames, I've taken down every single Queen cell, no sign of the queen. So I'll come back here in about four or five days just to see if they've built new swarm cells and to check for eggs. And we just have to take it from there. But I've now got bees in my zest hive. Worst case scenario, the bees swarm with the queen. They leave me a couple of cells and I'll just requeen them from there. Just going to set me back maybe a few more weeks. But hey ho, that's bees. I never knew those ones were swarming when I brought them up here. I pulled out a couple of frames. I saw eggs. I saw a brood, I thought, right, these are ripe for transfer into that Zest Hive. Should have probably gone a bit further and checked to see whether they were swarming first. What I'm going to do now though is fill that void up with the plastic frames, and then I'll close this Zest Hive back up and I'll leave the bees to it. So there we go, I've now got a completely full Zest Hive. I'm so excited. Can't believe I chose a colony that was swarming though, what a nightmare. How nice is it though that the national frames fit in there? Makes that transfer really nice and easy, even if you do choose a colony that's swarming. What I'm going to do is while there's not that many bees in the air, I'm going to get that roof on, close them up, and then we're all ready to go. So there we go. The colony is now in the Zest Hive. I've tweaked the roof a little bit there because I don't want to have to put the blocks on each time. If you're doing this yourself, if you're building one, as I said in the previous video, don't copy what I've done. I've completely bodged this Zest Hive. I'll stick a link in the description below because Bill's put together a really nice comprehensive video showing you exactly how to build it. And to build it correctly. Also, if you want to win a Zesthive kit, check out this video here where you have the chance to win a Zesthive kit worth £125.