Laurence Edwards opens his 8-nuc long hive from Hyde Hives to show how his colonies are overwintering. Despite minor mold and one case of dysentery, he expects six robust nucs to emerge from winter, each with strong brood patterns and separate populations fed with individual rapid mini-feeders.
In this video, I'm going to give you an update on my 8-nuc long hive from Hyde Hives, show you how the bees are overwintering, and talk to you about why it's one of my favorite pieces of equipment in my apiary. So let's jump straight in, open it up, see how many colonies we've got so far. So you see from the front, they've got a little bit of deterioration, a little bit of mold and mildew growing on that pine. I'm going to leave this one to go silvery. You can also see there a bit of dysentery. Wouldn't worry too much about that though, because we'll see how the bees are getting out through the winter. If it gets any worse, we'll have to take action. But what I really love about this hive is all of these different entrances and the flexibility that it gives you. Every single one of those entrances there is an entrance into a different section of this nuc. Let's get inside and see how the bees are getting on. So you can see the setup that I've got, really nice setup. I've cut the insulation boards to provide added insulation, keep those bees nice and warm. And then I've got my little mini feeders on there, rapid feeders, and it means that each individual section can have its own feeder. So just pop the feeder off that one there and you can see we've got lots and lots of Bees, really healthy amount of bees there. They are loving that insulation. You can see the water there, they're going up, having a little drink of that water. Just going to pop this insulation off for a second and see if we can get a snapshot and see just how well they're filling up that slot. So you can see the bees have moved up a little bit above that crown board, not exactly what I wanted, but you can see really nice, good-sized colony, nice and strong. And nice and separate from its neighbors. So here's the colony next door, and again, you can see completely full, completely separate from the colony next door. They've got their own separate door down there. Overwintering nucs in these long hives is so, so easy. I made these splits from one single colony and I got them to requeen by themselves. I've subsequently added in some very expensive breeder queens, and I'm not going to take them out today 'cause it is just too cold, But I think without a doubt that colony there is going to have a decent amount of brood even at this point in the year. I'll show you one final little split now. This one here, a lot more active, and if you look up into the corner, we've got a little bit of mold building on the corners there. This one is a bigger split. It's not quite as easy for them to keep that the right temperature, and you're getting condensation on the sides. However, bees are looking good still. I reckon they're probably going to get through. So I think with this one here, we're going to have 6 really strong nucs coming out of winter. So I'm really happy with the progress that they're making here. Without a doubt, my favourite product from Hyde Hives is the 8-nuc long hive. Recommend it to anyone if you're looking to overwinter a number of splits. Really, really easy with this beehive. If you've got any specific questions about these long hives, there's a link at the bottom of this video. Ask me a question and I'll answer it on one of my live streams.
