In this video, host Laurence Edwards visits Adam’s apiary to inspect Adam’s top‑performing 2024 colony of Black Mountain F1 Buckfast bees kept in an Abelo 12‑frame rebated system. They discuss the colony’s early‑year split, current supers (three full supers with double brood), and the potential honey yield if no split had been taken. Adam explains his use of plastic Frames & Feeders, how he spaces frames, and the nuances of uncapping with plastic versus wax frames. Laurence highlights his choice to forego a bee suit, instead using disposable gloves for hygiene, and notes the calm temperament of the bees. They demonstrate an alternative to smoke—spraying diluted sugar syrup—to keep bees occupied during inspections. Management recommendations include condensing the three supers down to two for easier harvest, timing of honey extraction, and balancing apiary resources by sharing frames. Equipment setup such as the stand for stacking boxes and minimal use of a hive tool are also covered. The video serves as a practical, instructional walkthrough for beekeepers interested in colony performance, equipment choices, and seasonal management strategies.
Chapters
We're back in Adam's apiary and we're going to take a look inside his best performing colony of 2024. So this colony here, Black Mountain honeybees, Abello supers, Abello boxes, 12-frame rebated system. You've not made any splits out of this one yet this year, is that right?
One early in the year.
So one early split. It's now early August and there's a good 3 supers on the colony. Wow. So if you hadn't have taken the split out of it, you could be talking kind of 4, 5, 6 supers.
Yeah, and double brood, I'd say, at least.
Wow, double brood. So is this one of the ones that was on 14 by 12?
No, I did a split from that to this earlier in the year.
Early this year?
Yes.
Oh wow, so this was an early year split. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so a split's been taken from it and it was an early season split and you've got a brood box and 3 supers of bees on. So that's pretty good. Should we take a look inside then and see how the bees are, how much honey you've got in there?
Yeah.
So talk me through it, go on, it's your beehive. How are they getting on?
Yeah, so pretty happy with these considering the number of splits I've sort of done this year. I've tried to contain them into one standard national brood box towards the end of this year, just so they can then bring in the honey rather than drawing new frames and wasting their energy on that. And that might mean just every couple of weeks taking out a frame of stores and putting some foundation in there just to stop them potentially maybe swarming at this late time in the year. So yeah, 3 supers. Bottom one probably isn't going to be as drawn, but they've drawn these Frames and Feeders frames very well. I've been quite impressed. And again, with these, you don't get any blowouts in the spinner. So I've got them all on the plastic, and I'm quite happy with those, with the supers.
Now, if you're interested in learning more about Adam's experience with the Frames and Feeders plastic frames, the subscribe button is just down there. We are going to do a full separate video talking about your full experience with the shallows, the deeps, the 14x12s, and everything Frames and Feeders frames. So don't miss that one. So also, if anyone's wondering why I'm not wearing a bee suit, it's easier for me to talk into the camera without a bee suit. But also, they're my bees, so I need to give them a little bit of a chance to prove how nice and calm they are. F1 Buckfast bees from Black Mountain Honey. And you said it before, didn't you, in terms of the calmness when you're going through working them, you're not maybe aware of it, but they are pretty chilled out bees, aren't they?
Yeah. And considering it's not a sunny, sunny day, it's pretty impressive.
Like, we're leading up to the perfect time that I get stung in the nose or stung in the face, but— and if that does happen, I will put my bee suit on, but until we get to that point, I will continue without the bee suit. So what I won't continue without though is I'm going to get some gloves because I kind of want to protect my hands from any potential disease, and I want to protect Adam's bees from any potential disease. So we're using a brand new set of gloves, and we'll chuck them away at the end of the day. Always good apiary hygiene. Right, should we take one of them out? Got that one out quite easily without the hive tool. Do you find yourself using a hive tool much?
Usually when they've been, you know, if I was to put another box on and not adjust these, they're all drawn out. But because the outside ones probably weren't as drawn as the centre, I've moved them around to speed that up. So they're probably a bit easier to move because I've been in sort of last week to move them around.
And then in terms of like spacing, I see you've got like the full 12 frames in here. Do you ever kind of like try and space them out a bit to get easier uncapping?
Yeah, I've got a tool that will manually space them, but I find that until they're fully drawn, it's better just to put them, you know, as many as will fit in the box, which is 12. And then space them out.
Yeah, I think that's a good shout, and it's probably at this point, maybe a tiny little bit before, before they start capping it, it's good to go. But you're right, this is one of the nuances I think with plastic frames, that, that would be fully drawn out, wouldn't it, on a wax one, and they wouldn't start capping it. But with plastic frames, you, you'll get like these bits in the corners where they've not finished drawing them out, but they've already started capping the stuff up top, so it's difficult to do that manipulation properly. I'll go get the tool. He's gonna go and show me the thing now, it's really good. I'm really happy with how chilled out these bees are, and I know I go on about it a lot, but we do sell calm bees and we pride ourselves on the ability to have nice calm bees. And we're just in Adam's garden here, kind of like tucked away. Lovely, lovely apiary, I might add. And you can keep bees here and you can inspect them without a bee suit, without a veil, and obviously wear your gloves still, but pretty chilled out bees. Nice. Okay, yeah, so I've seen these before and they work quite well, don't they? Those, they're like alligator claw things that you push down and you get a designated spacing. Perfect for kind of like spacing things like this where you can't get castellations in. Do you want to just hold that one again? I'll just grab another one out. So another nice frame there. So how long do you kind of, when do you normally take your honey off?
Do you have a date? Well, Usually it'd be a spring crop, but since this year was so bad, I've just sort of let them at it really, and even had to feed them in between.
So I see you've got your stand set up there. You can see it on this camera here. So you've got your stand and then you put your box or your empty supers on it upturned, and then you use that for stacking?
Yeah, I like to have something that I can just lift the boxes onto. If you're putting them on the floor, it's not the best hygiene and With this slate that I've got down, it can pick up bits and then you're putting them back together and there's a gap.
It's surprising, like there's quite a lot of frames of honey here, not a huge amount of bees in some of these supers. Do you think they're down in the brood box or out foraging? What do you think's going on?
Well, when I split them, maybe the numbers knocked them back a bit. So initially they would have been absolutely booming, maybe filling 2 to 3 boxes at least. And now they're sort of catching up again. Maybe because of the weather, they've been sort of down in the brood chamber just doing other bits. But I mean, the last time I inspected this one, it was on the verge of exploding. So there's plenty of capped brood down there, I think, to fill the supers over the next couple of weeks.
And when did you split this one?
What are we in? August, maybe. A month ago.
And when did you do the last inspection on it?
A week and a half.
Okay. I'm just— they're not leading questions. I'm just interested because there's not a huge amount of bees, but you can see them. They are coming up. Like, it's not— I think it's nice. There's more than enough bees in here. Oh, so there we go. That was the first sting. Sting in the beard there. See if I can get it out. We don't mind a sting in the beard, they get one, everyone gets one. Should we take this super off and just have a look quickly down before I go and put the rest of my bee suit on?
Yeah, the super below is not a great deal then, I don't think. There we go. So I tried to do— that's heavy.
So it's unusual to get frames like that when you use wax, but you do, Occasionally get that when you're doing all that plastic frames. And you can just sense now, just as you're getting a little bit closer down to the brood box, you've got a few more bees buzzing around. Maybe get your sugar syrup out. Spray my face with it. There we go. Do you ever like spray it up into the air just to get—
or you always do it on the frames? Sometimes. It depends how, I mean, this, yeah, as I say, this has been reduced. So when this was full and really booming, It would have— it would be a very different story controlling them, and maybe I would have had to get some smoke.
Yeah.
But I'd know, I know the strength of the colonies beforehand, and if I'm doing a full inspection, then I would have the smoke on hand.
Well, I think that's definitely worked, isn't it? Because they were all buzzing up there. I know that was the previous video talking about the diluted sugar syrup to be used in place of smoke, but that has worked. They were buzzing, And you've sprayed that now, and they've— I don't know whether it's like knocked a few out the air, but it's definitely given them something to go and do down there, isn't it?
I think also they feed as well, so it keeps them preoccupied cleaning, feeding, and they don't want to fly.
So you know what I would do with this colony here? I would knock it down to 2 supers.
Yeah, that was my—
I think because you've got like the 2 top supers are probably like 70% good to go, The one down here maybe a little bit less so, but we're coming towards the end of the season. I think it would condense them down, would make your life easier.
Yeah.
Because these frames here, you'll need a good flow to get that drawn out and it will take up quite a decent amount of the honey remaining. So to maximise your crop, but also to make it easier for you, yeah, I would probably condense that one down. Pick out the best frames because you've got a couple of frames down here that are really good.
Yeah, probably put them down here to Encourage them to draw the rest.
Yeah, like that one there, that's perfect. And I think the bees, given a couple more weeks, will finish that off, fill it all with loads of honey. And then by taking all of the good ones out and putting them and just condensing it back down again, you'll get more bees, more bees over each frame, so more warmth, and then it'll be easier to finish the rest of them off. That's what I would do. But they're looking really, really good. And like you say, it's a split early on in the year, and then you've already taken a split from it as well. So to get some honey as well is It's pretty impressive.
I've probably also taken a frame or two to give to Lee as well.
Which I think is the right thing to do. You want to kind of like balance all your apiaries out, make sure they've got sufficient food, sufficient brood, sufficient bees to protect themselves. But yeah, it's really, really good, and I'm glad I only got stung once. Right, we're going to package this one back up. We're not going to go into the brood nest on this one. We're going to do that on a separate video, and we're going to talk specifically about the Abelo 12-frame hive. If you're interested in watching the rest of the videos in this series, definitely hit the subscribe button. We've got about 10 to 12 videos that we're filming here today.
