Laurence Edwards inspects an overwintered nuc in mid-August, checking brood, queen health, and food stores. He uses fondant and 1:1 syrup feeds timed to natural nectar flows, repositions Apivar strips to avoid brood suppression, and prepares the colony for late-summer expansion before winter.
Episode 8 of the Making Splits for Winter. We're going in to check the progress on the colony. Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping. We're on to episode 8 of the Making Splits for Winter series, and we're just into routine inspections now. We've done pretty much everything we need to do. We've made the colony, we've seen that it's expanding, we've seen that it's queen right, we've treated for varroa, We fed the colony syrup to get them going, given them a nice slab of fondant. Still gonna do some winter feeding to get them up to strength, maybe a little bit more stimulative feeding in the next couple of weeks, but we're just into regular routine inspections now. Just a quick check. All I'm looking for is just to see how many frames of bees there are, how many frames of brood there are, check that the queen's still laying, and that's pretty much it. It is the quickest inspection ever. You don't need to go through every single frame. You're highly unlikely to find swarm cells at this point of the season. So it's just a quick check, see how the colony's getting on, make sure they've got enough food, make sure the queen's still laying, check to see if there's any disease, close them back up again, and go in for next week's inspection. So I'll get inside the colony and I'll see how they're getting on this week. I know a lot of bee farmers, they get to the end of the beekeeping season and they are just happy to have a rest. I hate it. It's the middle of August and it's getting dark and it's like half 6. I can't stand it. I wish it stayed light until 11 o'clock. Every single day of the year. Let's get into this nuc though, see how the bees are responding to the nights drawing in. So here's the colony now. We're definitely over 5 frames of bees now. Last week I moved everything into the middle, so those 4 frames there were the most populated ones, and they've definitely moved over to that frame on the right, working away on that fondant as well. They're making good progress into that. That will just keep them going all the way through the winter. We'll probably end up taking that out at some point though and just giving them a little bit more 1:1 just to get that brood on as As we possibly can, but I have to say I'm really happy with how this one's looking. Middle of August and they're over 5 frames of bees. Let's get inside, we'll take a look at a couple of frames of the brood as well. I think we're going to see 3 frames of brood here today. So 5 frames of bees, 3 frames of brood, middle of August. I'm perfectly happy with this nucleus's progress. So nice brood pattern again, we've got some nectar coming in, that's always good to see, that's going to get the queen going. Looking a little bit light of stores, but we've got the fondant in there, so there's no risk of starving. The weather is looking good next week, so I'm going to resist the urge this week to take that fondant out and to give them 1:1 syrup because there's going to be a good amount of natural nectar coming into the colony this week. What you don't want to do is you don't want to feed them too quickly. You can see there we've got natural nectar coming in. We've got space here, nothing in these cells. That is good. This time of year, you want to have some space in your colony like that. If you backfill everything up with syrup, you have a problem because the colony can't expand. It can't get big enough because everything's clogged with syrup. It's not like a normal beehive or nuc. You can't just go and add more space on. It's the wrong time of the year for that. You need to work with the space that you've got, and you need to try and balance the resources between giving them enough food, getting them stimulated to lay that brood, And making sure there's enough space for them to do that at all times whilst they don't starve. Always a little bit of a balancing act at this time of year to make sure they don't go too fast, but also that they don't die. Next frame of brood. Quick close-up of the queen. She's looking good, really nice queen doing her job. Lovely brood pattern, really nice. And very similar on this frame here, you've got a bit of pollen, you've got some capped stores around the edge. Then over here you've got some empty cells. Always good to see a few empty cells, but very happy with how this colony is coming on, and I do particularly like the look of this queen. So just a quick note on the Apivar on this frame. You'll see that it's completely stopped them laying any brood underneath it. So if I just take that Apivar strip off, got no brood underneath there. If that happens, it's no problem. All you want to do is just remove the strip And place it over some brood like that. Right, so I can close these up for another week. They're looking good though, 2.5 frames of brood, a little bit of stores, plenty of room for the colony to lay. A really, really good week of weather ahead, and we've still got some flows going on around here, so they'll start to find bits of Himalayan balsam. There's little bits of bramble still around as well, little bits of clover. You can see there's Evidence of nectar coming in this week, and the weather next week looks really, really good. So I think next week we're going to see a dramatic increase in both the size of this colony and the amount of natural stores that are being collected. That's why I'm not taking that fondant out just yet and going in with one-to-one sugar syrup, because I think we're going to get a natural flow that's going to boost this colony. All about balancing the resources within that single box there. So there we go. Colony's looking really, really nice. You can see a decent expansion. And I said this last week where we didn't see too much of an expansion. With these splits, you get to week 4 and you do see a big expansion 'cause all of that brood has emerged. And then you're just getting a constant trickle of new bees emerging week in, week out to get them to the point where they're really nice and strong. I like my nucs absolutely packed going into winter. I find that's how you get really, really good overwintering performance. You do run the risk of them starving because there's a lot of bees, you need to keep them fed, But I find that's so much easier to manage. Just give 'em a slab of fondant. That'll keep them happy and that will stop them from starving. So I hope you enjoyed 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. Thank you.
