Stung THREE Times and they are Swarming - WORST Inspection YET!

I don't think I've ever come across such incredible bad luck when it comes to— Stung on the finger there. Ow. Swarm cell, swarm cell, swarm cell, swarm cell. Whoa, man. Could not make it up. Ah, fuck. Zane's first nuc, episode 11. Completely different view. 8 PM at night. I've got to be crazy, right? Let's get inside, see if we can find that queen, see if we can see some brood. and see how much honey the bees have made in the hottest week of the year. So just standing here now, like the smell, you can smell the nectar in the air. It is really intoxicating. It's such a lovely smell. I've got high hopes for this colony today, I have to say. Right, first thing to have a look at then is the super. And the first thing that stands out to me there is this white wax in the middle. You can see there, that white wax is a clue that the flow is on. I guess the other clue is that the bees aren't kind of coming up and going wild. Okay, maybe a few of them are, but they are busy. So you can see it from that angle there, like we're pretty much full now in this super. And I just got to take this frame out because there is loads of honey on this frame here. Right, that is crazy. And this is just boom and bust this entire year round. That is a super completely full of honey. They are capping that over. That is ridiculously heavy. You can see here all of that white wax. That is the bees saying the moisture content of that honey is low enough. We can cap it over to seal it, and they'll continue to do that across all of this side as well. But it is not just one frame, Zane. It is not just one frame. There are loads of frames like this. Oh, the smell is just so good. No stings. Bit close though. One more frame. Got one bee just checking me out, just having a little sniff. Definitely adding another super on here. So pretty much every single frame is like that. I've got one frame here, and even that frame that I was going to say has not got that much on it on this side, one side is, is pretty much full of nectar. It's quite heavy still. So the super is effectively full. We need another one, Zane, which means the brood box should be pretty ram-packed full of stores as well. But hopefully we're going to see some brood there. So definitely going to add another super. Let's get inside, have a look in the brood box. Now one thing that Stuart Wood, my friend, will know about up here is that there are lots of horseflies. I'm just getting bitten on the leg by a horsefly at the same time as being checked out by some bees. But no queen on there. But looking down on this brood box here, I would say we're back on track. All of the frames are being covered now, and even that red one there that we were having issues with before, you can see the white wax being drawn out. The bees are now covering all of the frames, and hopefully we can start to see See some nice capped brood. So this is what a lot of people will be seeing this week, which is lots of nectar in the brood nest. It's not the end of the world. You don't want to be seeing 5 or 6 frames of nectar downstairs in the brood nest at this time of the year. You want to see like 2 or 3 max ideally, but you do want to see a little bit down there, and you will see some if you're doing inspections this week. You're going to see nectar in the brood box because they bring it in, deposit it there, and then they work it up overnight. You can see another nice frame there, the red frame. Decent amount of weight to it now, which is much, much better than a couple of weeks back. So we did only see eggs last week. The queen was there, but we're not sure if she's mated properly. She looked good, she plumped out, she's laying eggs, so they're all really good signs. But until we see that capped worker brood, it could be a failed mating. So fingers crossed we find her, and fingers crossed the brood pattern is good. So another frame of stores. So I would say we're a little bit heavy for stores downstairs in the brood box, but By adding another super, we should alleviate that a bit. Really nice smell of propolis in this hive now, which is good to smell. I love— ah, never good once you've taken the first sting. Right on the forehead, that one. You literally couldn't make it up, mate. You could not make it up. Right, so for one thing, I'm getting stung there. Ow. And for the other thing, the bees are trying to swarm because I've got swarm cells on this frame. What is going on with this colony, Zane? 1, 2, 3, 4 swarm cells on one frame. Yeah, they are definitely trying to swarm. Fantastic, it's going so, so well, this nuc, Zane. Glad I came up here today though, I reckon they'd be gone tomorrow. So cells all over the place, it's definitely swarming because there's just There's loads of cells. I'll show you all the cells. There's probably like 15 cells spread across the frame, so definitely swarming. Obviously didn't give them enough space last week. They needed that additional super. They backfilled the brood nest and it has triggered swarming. Excellent. It is going really, really well. So we're on an F2 queen. Let's go down to F3. I will have to show you now what we're going to do with this then. And it's a shame that you're not here because I would have liked you to be here for this one. What I'm going to have to do is I'm going to have to make a split. I'm going to take a 2-frame split of brood, 2 frames of brood and the queen and some stores, and I'm going to go and take it off to somewhere else in the apiary. I'm going to leave you one queen cell in here, just one, and then hopefully we'll come back and that queen will have come out and mated. I don't think I've ever come across such incredible bad luck when it comes to beekeeping. Oh, stung on the finger there. Ow. Oh. Ah, so it's definitely, and I mean definitely, like 100% been triggered by not enough space. Just way too much nectar down here. So I was just having a think over there while I got the nuc, and I'm not going to do that because if I took the split away and left a single queen cell, we'd have to wait 4 weeks to see if that queen got mated. Realistically, she should be out in a couple of weeks' time, but then you've gotta wait for her to become sexually mature, and then you've gotta wait for her to come back into lay. And there is just not that long left in the season. It's really, really compressed season this year. So I'm gonna go slightly different. What I'm gonna do is I'm still gonna take the new marked queen off. We'll pop that off in a nuc, couple of frames of brood, frame of stores, shake the bees, take it off somewhere else. But then what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take down all of those cells, render the colony queenless, come back in 8 days. So I'll come back on Zane's next inspection, We'll take down the emergency cells and then we'll pop in a new queen. That way we should be sure that they're hopelessly queenless before we move on to the next step. This is definitely swarming. And a few people have actually emailed me about this this year saying, can a new queen swarm like that? I've just introduced her a week ago and now she's swarmed. Is that possible? And yes, 'cause I've triggered swarming. I've triggered swarming here by not giving the bees enough space. I blame Zane personally. I definitely don't. I think Zane said we need to add another super. I reckon I've got Every single thing wrong so far this year, but what I know is all is still not lost. So I'm going to find the queen. I'm going to take her off on a frame with no cells, and I'm going to place her off into that nuc over there. One more frame of brood, frame of stores, shake her bees. We'll take her off, take down all of the emergency cells, close it back up, give it another super, and then we will be back here for episode twelve. And something's got to come with this colony, isn't it? It can't all be for nothing. We will get there. We will persevere. But Oh my goodness, it is all going wrong, isn't it? Okay, so there is the frame with the queen on and loads of swarm cells on as well. So all I'm gonna do is just go through taking out any cells like that. So I'm gonna do the same on this side. Gonna try and mind that queen though. There's my queen there. Right, so there is my frame of brood. I've got the queen on there. The brood looks all right. I'm gonna take that off and we'll make up a nuc. Now we've still got a few weeks until the worst of the wasps are here, and I don't want to set Zane's colony back that much. So all I'm going to do is I'm going to call it a day with that one frame of brood. I'm going to take one frame of stores with a few bees on, and I'm not even going to shake any extra bees in. That should just be enough to get the mini nuc through. We'll keep a really close eye on it in this series. I'll go and put it somewhere off over there and we'll go back and check on it. But let's find a nice frame of brood to make sure that the nuc has got enough food. So that is a lovely frame to give a nuc because there's lots of pollen interspersed with open stores, only a little bit of it's closed. That is like a ready meal, open buffet for bees. That's probably the best frame that you could give them. Now there wasn't quite enough bees on that frame. Also, I've still got way too many frames of stores in here, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to take another frame of stores there with all the bees on, and I'm just going to add that in. So it's a 1 frame of brood, 2 frames of stores split, and that should give me a little bit more space in the brood box here, and that should give the bees enough food and enough bees to make sure that when I make that split in the same apiary, I don't lose too many bees back to the original hive. Right, so there you go, there's my nuc. 3-frame nuc, 2 frames of stores, 1 frame of brood. The queen is in there as well. I'm going to get my lid on, and I am going to take this over to its new home in the apiary, which we are going to put Right over here. So there we go, in between the Abello hive and the hive with the stands on. I'll get a cover on there now, leave the bees in. It's late enough though that they should cluster up, and I don't think that that many will go back to the original hive. Right, back to Zane's hive. Definitely Zane's hive, this problem one, isn't it? I'm going through now, and I'm checking every single frame to take down all of the swarm cells again. Now normally I recommend at this point is to shake the bees off so you don't miss any frames, but they are a little bit angry with me already, so I'm not going to do that. I'm just going to try my best not to miss any. Famous last words. There we go, there's one. Ah, shit! Ow! Right on the lip. Right, I'm gonna go put the bee suit on. Oh, I've taken a few stings this evening. Maybe I should have put this bee suit on a little bit earlier. That one on the lip hurt. It is very warm in this bee suit. Well, so I can shake them off now. What I recommend normally doing is just shaking the bees off like that, and then you can kind of take a look, and you can see down there they were having a go. And you can see all of those cells that I would have missed in that corner there had I not shaken them off. But look at this, they were definitely swarm cells. Maybe one was a drone cell, but there, swarm cell, swarm cell, swarm cell, swarm cell. You've got to get them all. So there's some really nice swarm cells on this frame here. I'll shake them out. I'll tell you what, I'll bring that down, give you a little close-up of the shakeout. So I'm really glad I came up here tonight because that would definitely be capped over tomorrow and then the bees would be gone because the weather's looking lovely. Brood pattern actually doesn't look that bad. I mistaken a couple of bits of them for drone brood, but it's not. It's fully, fully lined up here, so it's a good queen. I'm sure that nuc will be fine. But look, swarm cell, swarm cell, swarm cell. You can always see them because they're so brilliant and white, but you need to get in there Take down these cells and just look at all the jelly that comes out if you squeeze it. Whoa, man! So definitely swarming. Wow, lots and lots of cells and even more. Right, so I got a bee in my veil. The battery just died and then the SD card was filled up. It's going very, very well. Right, you'd say that was a supersedure cell because of the location, but no, this colony is swarming. You can forget about that, but take down every single one. Okay, that frame there is just nectar, no cells at all. And then the final frame again is just lots and lots of stores. Right, first things first, I'm going to fill up all the space in the brood box. Doesn't matter where you put this foundation because there's no queen in there, so they're not going to do anything other than just draw it out and fill it with nectar and fill it with stores. So there we go, brood box is sorted. We're back to queenless in the brood box, no queen, but they have the resources to make a new one. In episode 12, we'll come back, there will be lots of emergency cells down here. We're gonna have to take them all down and we will introduce a brand new queen. All the while, we're going to put the queen excluder back on, we're going to put that super back on, and I'm going to get another super in here as well. Started off so well, didn't it? Taking that super off thinking we were in business. But let's take the positives from it. They've not swarmed. We've got in before, we're doing our 7-day inspections. Like, that's the reason we do our inspections, to stop the bees swarming. I'm definitely going to add another super on here though, because I've been caught out by just how quickly that nectar's come in this week, even on a small colony like this. So they definitely need some space, and we might as well take advantage of the good flow that we're currently in. Okay, got myself another super, 10 castellation spacing again. Should have done this last week, eh, Xan? We'd have been on track. Polyash forth feeder going back on. Because I put the super on top of it, all the bees are there. I'm just opening the hole there so all the bees can go back down and they're getting squished. And there we go, let's put the lid back on. I honestly don't know whether to laugh or cry. It's turning into a brilliant series to kind of educate you on all the things you shouldn't do. But it is a little bit challenging when beekeeping goes wrong week after week after week. But I stand by it. I still think we can get something decent out of this colony. We've almost got a full super there. We'll definitely have a full super by next week, possibly 2 with the weather that we're having. And it's just a case of getting that colony, that brood nest back on track. It might not be going to plan, but it is still rewarding. I'm still up here enjoying my time in the forest, and I'll see you all next week with Zane in episode 12.