This Is What Happens When You Don't Manage Your Bees

Welcome to the apiary in August. Now there's no getting around it, 2026 has been a really, really difficult year. Let me show you some of the highs and the lows from within the Forest Apiary.

So do you think it's been a bit of a bad year, 2026?

Um, yeah, yeah, terrible year, uh, both in my personal life and with the bees, and I guess they're connected a little bit. But some of them are good, look at that, got some big colonies here. But yeah, the management hasn't been consistent across all of them.

Yeah, the ones to your right look a little bit low, if I must say.

It's things like, this is the kind of thing that I do. I'll put 4 boxes on to make some splits and then run out of time and don't make the splits. But we'll have a look in that one. That's a big, massive colony of bees with no queen excluder in. But this is the one that I wanted to show you first. This is like my treble demerit.

Let's start with the positives.

Start with the positives, yeah. Let's go for the big one. So you know how heavy this one is, Zane, so we'll get you to do some of the heavy lifting, yeah?

That's great.

But I'm going to get my bee suit on, I'll get my smoker on, And we'll get inside the best colony of 2026.

Are we not doing the, the flick?

Change of Lawrence. Like, you know, that's not— you know, that's not the real me. The one like that. We're killing it. It's gone.

So why has that one done so well?

I'd say this one and this one here are the only 2 that have been managed properly throughout the whole year. Like, came in at the right time, did the right things, and if you do the right things, you can get Massive honey crops like this. I wish they were all like this, saying, but sadly they are not. Should we look inside? You see that? Like completely. sealed it up with propolis.

And why is that?

Just, they don't like the vents apparently, so. That is so heavy, Zane. A lot of honey in there.

That is a whole lot. Yeah, it's every single frame.

Oh my God, look at this. So it's just a huge lump of propolis, like you could break that off. What they've done is they've used it like a baffle for the entrance at the front. I've never seen them do that, so much propolis. Oh, it's so nice. You don't like honey, no? We're going to get Zayn liking honey at some point. Maybe not, maybe not that bit there. But I guess this is what good looks like, and I do, I wish every single colony was like this. The brood boxes are full of honey, but more importantly, the supers are full and they're spaced correctly like this, which means that it's going to be a breeze to uncap it all. This honey is perfectly ripe and ready to go, and this time of the year we're taking off the honey, getting the bees ready for winter, treating for mites, and packing things away. It's A little bit sad. You sad that the season's ending, Zane? I am.

Yeah, I didn't realise it was over so soon. This is my first sort of start to end of the season.

Yeah.

And yeah, it's sad how quick it's sort of been and gone.

You spend the majority of the beekeeping season like dreaming about it. But these have done really well, these bees. These supers here, every single one of them, and I'll show you a couple more, they are full of honey. I reckon we've got 150 pounds of honey in here. So all of these boxes, we'll be taking this off next week or week after, Zane, getting it into jars. But let me show you some of the colonies where they've not done so well, yeah?

Yeah, let's have a look. So why aren't they all like that then?

Because my management's been terrible. Like, that is the honest truth though, I guess. The demo is super easy, and if you get ahead of the bees and do your management well, you can have most colonies like that. But 2026 has been a roller coaster in terms of, yeah, you know what's going on. Like, my wife's got cancer and lots of chemo treatments, and it has, yeah, turned our world upside down. And meant that I've not been able to focus on the bees as much as I can. And it's made me think a little bit, we were talking the same, weren't we? How good would it be to have like a beekeeper here? Like a proper beekeeper, not a Laurence who's off doing other stuff.

I feel like it's needed sometimes. It's a lot of pressure.

It's a lot of pressure, and I'm obviously not doing like the best for the bees, and we could do better, but it's not all about that for me. But I just like the idea of someone kind of being up here and being the the expert and looking after them. And maybe doing some gardening as well. Like, you look at all the new herbs and stuff we've got up here. I'd like that job. That'd be a cool job, wouldn't it? Just like a beekeeper gardener.

I mean, it's a nice spot for it, let's be honest. Yeah, it's a nice spot, yeah.

If you're local, get in contact. That is a serious offer. I do need some help when it comes to beekeeping and gardening. Do you want to see some of the ones that have not done so well, Zane?

Not particularly, but I suppose we've got to, haven't we?

Come on, come on, let's go have a look.

Hey, the flowers are looking good, aren't they?

Flowers are looking good, yeah. Look, this one here, rosebay willowherb, is looking very, very good and just had a rebirth. But slightly more worryingly, come look at this, Si. This is like a real nuisance, this is. I've no idea how it's got here. But if you're enjoying this style of video, we're going to do one on the forest as well, so this is your task next week, mate. It is called Himalayan balsam bashing. Oh man, I actually can't believe how much is here. This is a bit of a problem, Zane. But look, this is what you have to do. You should just be in time. Look at this. They're massive, yeah, but they've not got mega stems, which is— that's crazy, isn't it? How is something that big surviving on such a small That's grown from a seed this year, and look at these little pods at the top. Yeah, they explode and go up to like 7 meters.

Yeah, that's a bit of a problem, innit?

Yeah, so that is a major issue, and because it's on a bank, it's just going to outcompete everything, and then we're just going to end up with loads of mud. So that's going to be our job for next week then, is getting all of that out. I was just saying, from one catastrophe to another catastrophe. Should we talk about these failed splits? So I made up loads of splits, small little splits, and left them to naturally mate, and they got caught in a really bad period of weather and they failed. And then like I'm coming around at the end of the season to mop up all the problems and this one here is a problem. So they're too weak to defend themselves, they're too weak to expand. So I'm just gonna shake them down, let them all go into this main nuc over here, take away the boxes, take away the frames. We'll stack them all up for cleaning in the winter. Like I guess today is about just having a proper tidy up, Zane.

So what happened with that one then?

So all 3 of those wooden ones failed kind of in one way or another. This one here failed because I didn't feed it, like I didn't, I didn't get around and feed it in time. It obviously had a bit of a drought and it knocked it right back. The other 2 were drone layers, so there was drone brood on it and the colony just collapsed.

And what about this one?

This one's not actually that bad. This one's a newer one there. We'll open this one up. There should be a nice queen in this one, Zayn.

So why did that one do so well?

This one was doing really well at the other side of the apiary and it had grown too big for its home, so I moved it here and all the flying went back there. So this one's just set up ready for winter. Next we have got something— I've got something really cool, Zane. Come this way, mate. All right, so this is pretty fun, Zane. You know me, I like to get excited about stuff. It was good fun the other day, wasn't it, taking this to Ivy's school?

Yeah, the kids loved it.

It was good fun. For anyone who's not, who's not seen that, we took the micro honey harvester to the school and harvested some of these frames here. And look at that, they've all gone now, Zane. All the honey. So these are the micro honey harvester frames, and you can see from the top there, Zane, these are unwaxed. So I was doing like a little bit of experiment on them. But these are very cool. Like, if you've not seen it, you get this little cordless micro honey harvester, and then you've got to get the frames in like this, plastic frames that you have to get completely kind of filled with honey and drawn out and capped over. And it's crazy how backwards these colonies have gone. These were full last week, absolutely full when we took this into the school. But it was good fun, like we took it in. The kids were so funny, weren't they? What was your favourite bee joke? Can you remember any of them?

Ah, there was a couple of good ones. There was a few terrible ones. You had to be nice because they were kids.

Yeah, there were a lot of terrible ones. But there you go, look, that's pretty good. I think we had quite good success with these frames, like we got them in at the right time. I think my favourite bee joke was the one that he was saying about like a honeycomb, as in like a hairstyle.

That was it.

But I can't remember.

What sort of brush does a bee use?

Oh, there we go, a honeycomb. Very nice, good memory. The funniest thing about all of it though, this is what made me laugh so much, is that we were there, weren't we, sitting down kind of all excited and we were showing the kids and you could see me on camera kind of getting the frames out and saying, oh, look at that, we've got all the honey in there, what do you think? And the kids were like, yeah, it's alright.

Because of iPads.

It's like, what?

It's iPads.

I know.

YouTube, they've got all this great stuff and they see something real and they're like, it's all right.

To be fair, I think they were interested. I think they were just like a little bit shy maybe, weren't they? But it was good fun. Definitely, if you're going into a school and doing any sort of education, the micro honey harvester comes highly recommended.

So what's next for this colony then? Is it getting ready for winter or?

So I've actually got an idea for this colony. So you know Swan's Farm Shop?

Yeah.

Yeah, I'm thinking we take this up there and just leave the micro honey harvester for the day and let them kind of harvest some of the honey and have fun with it.

I take it with no bees in?

Good idea, good idea. But then all I'm going to do is this, look, I'm going to take the super off. So I set these up on double brood about a week ago and they're only just getting up into it here. Okay, so they are drawing it out, which is good. But what next? It's kind of done, the season is done. I'm going to feed these bees, I'm going to get the varroa treatments in, and they are going to get wrapped up for winter. So the bees are only really active in the summer months. Come September, October, they slow right down, and then as the winter really hits, they just— they don't hibernate, they just cluster around the queen. There's not that much going on, but it's probably the most dangerous time of the year for the bees, and there's lots of problems that can happen then. You try and fix them all now and get them ready as best as you can. So that is the plan.

So covering them up, feeding them, that sort of thing?

Yep, so treating for varroa, treating for varroa mites is going to be the biggest one. feeding as well, and you can't do those 2 things until you've taken the honey off.

Yeah.

So you've got honey and then varroa and feeding, and that is the job for the next few weeks. So this is a flavour of what's to come on YouTube. We're going to do an update every single month of the season and cram as much as we possibly can in. But if you want that weekly, more detailed, more granular advice, head over to hiveq.com. That is the place where I give weekly updates, weekly guidance videos, near-daily posts And over 1,000 beekeepers all coming together to help them get the best out of their bees. Check it out now at hiveq.com. Right, first thing I'm doing is just these boxes here. So these are like a disease risk. So what I always do whenever I've got any failed colonies like this, I flip the floors around like that, and then it seals the boxes up so nothing can get into this now. And then I'm going to go and stack it at the back of the container, and then we'll sort all of this out in the winter zone. This will be good fun. I'll come back over here to show you something. I realized we've already filmed it. So what I was going to show you is the castellation and the spacing of the honey super frames. If you do that right at the beginning of the year, then build the frames out really nice like that, and it makes honey extraction so much easier. But let me show you something up here, Zane. Remember the swarm that we caught for Alex?

Yeah, out of the tree.

Well, out of the tree, but it came from this nuc, didn't it? And I want to show you what's in the nuc now.

I love how the pans are still on the hive.

The pans are still on the hive. Should we let people into the secret why the pans are there? We, we were trialling A new swarm management technique, weren't we? Which was when your colony is like quite clearly swarming, to bang the pans about a little bit. It didn't work.

No, it did absolutely nothing.

Timing was wrong, maybe.

We don't just beekeep, we myth-bust as well on this channel.

It was funny. That was a good video. I really enjoyed that video, and for anyone who's not seen it, I would recommend it. This colony here, which is huge, Still really, really heavy. Massive swarm left it and me and Zane caught it over there. Was that the most fun video of the year, Zane?

We were like little school children, weren't we? Running around like, oh my God!

I've watched it about 6 times, that video. It's really, really cool, but we had a massive swarm up there, caught it with a swarm catcher, did some excellent teamwork I remember as well.

Uh, questionable. It's a mixture of my ability and your lack of The perfect storm, I think they say that, don't they?

The perfect storm. Yeah, it didn't go well, but Alex was happy. That was a good swarm, that was. But the swarm that left was a really expensive queen. It was one of my breeder queens, and we packaged it up and sent it down to Alex, and he put it in his garden, and they are super calm. But always swarms, like, they leave behind a virgin, and I've not been back into this one here yet. We don't know if there's a new queen in here, but I think we should get inside and have a look. Yeah.

So how's this one looking?

Not great, not gonna lie. There's no eggs, there's no brood, there's no queen as far as I can see. There might be a queen knocking around in here. There's loads of brace comb on the top. Like, it's about as bad as it could go, I would say, Zane. But with beekeeping, it's not about like moaning about it. It's about fixing the problems that are there and getting the bees ready to go again for winter. That's exactly what I'm gonna do. So this one here, Zane, do you remember this one?

I don't.

So when we were doing the Just Alex swarm, yeah, we were kind of like walking back and forth, and it was right in the way, wasn't it? We nearly tripped over it. So I put it up here, but if you remember back, it had a queen cell in it, that one. So we put a queen cell in. We were testing it to see if it was— if it had gone well, and it had not gone well. So we added a mated queen in. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go in there, check to see if the queen that I've put in there has been accepted.

Fingers crossed.

Fingers crossed indeed. Right, let's get in this one, Zane. So that's all I wanted to see on that one there, Zane. We've got the queen, we've got Broodnal stages, we've got everything. This one probably needs a beehive before the end of the year, but they are good to go for another couple of weeks, I would say.

Mission successful then?

Mission successful, yeah, some good news. So I've been through this apiary clearing out all of the nucs, and some of them are just too good to not let them have a go at requeening themselves. I'm not expecting to find anything in these nucs, like it is way past the season of good queens, but I'll have a look, see what is left inside this one.

Any luck with those, mate?

I'm not 100% sure yet. I'm still looking to see if there's a queen. There is some eggs in here, but there's kind of multiple eggs in some of the cells as well, so it could more than likely going to be like a dud drone layer, I'd say.

So is that just a case of shaking them all out, cleaning them up, and starting again?

Yeah, the season, the season is long gone for queens. Like, I should have probably done this a couple of weeks ago, but it is my job now for the weekend, come around, finish all these off. Shake them out and put them into storage ready again for next year. Right, Zane, isn't it crazy how they've swarmed into the exact same spot as that Just Alex swarm?

Why is that?

I, I have no idea. I came back the day after to sort all the boxes out and came in and there was another swarm in there clearly going through. This hole here. But come in, have a look what they've done on the top. It's quite cool. So it's like an empty box, so there'll be some combs hanging down from here. I don't know how well connected it's all going to be. All right, so let's have a look.

Wow, look at that!

That is crazy, isn't it? Have you ever seen anything like that, mate?

I honestly haven't.

I kind of want to leave them in like a On the comb, what do you think?

Would it be—

It's like impossible to inspect them.

Yeah.

So it's responsible to get them onto— oh, onto some frames.

You've put a lot of work into that.

I know what I'm gonna do, I know what I'm gonna do. I'm not gonna take them apart now, we'll come back and we'll cut them out and we'll put them into some frames and like wedgie them in.

Okay, yeah.

Right, so that is a project, that is a cool project. It feels like they're really well attached onto here though, I think they are. One sec, let me see if I can bring it out into the light. Whoa, that's cool, isn't it? Look at that there. You see like the multiple combs, the bees just clustering up in it. So I'm not going to clean that one up now, Xane, because that is, that is too cool, isn't it? We need to do something special with that one. So what I'll do is I'll cut those combs out later on in the year and I'll get them into some proper frames. But for the time being, what I've done as well is I've just added this roof on here, another wooden roof to stop that condensation dropping down on the bees. So it looks like this colony here is set up on double brood, but this is actually a floor, so it's just on single brood. But my recommendation for people in July and August is if you're taking your honey off early, really easy to double brood the boxes up and leave the bees in that configuration for winter. I've got a perfect colony over there that we double brooded about 2 weeks ago. Let's go and have a look. Let's see how they're getting on.

So are you going to double brood this one?

Well, I did double brood it, and the bees have not really done that much up there at all. It's just they've completely left it. And this is what it's all about. Like, we teach this in great detail in 14-Day Beekeeper, which is you have to read the situation. So I double brooded this colony to give them enough space so that they didn't swarm, and they had enough space to keep their honey and they don't need it, I'd say I'm going to reverse my decision. I'll kind of take all of these frames, like shake the bees back in, and we'll just take that box off.

Easy as that.

Yeah, easy as that.

But I suppose it's a good precaution, isn't it, prior to putting it in?

It's a good precaution, yeah, good precaution. And like a standard thing that I would do, and then like in hindsight on this colony, maybe I did it on one that was a bit too small, but there's nothing wrong with coming back and fixing the error. So in HiveQ at the moment, there's loads of people talking about this, like whether to double brood or not. And until you open up the box, you don't really know. But then what the beginner beekeepers tell me, Zane, is they say, well, like, even when I open up the box, I don't know because I don't know what I'm seeing. And it's a good point. And this is where the HiveQ community just kind of pays its dividends because it gives you that insight into what normal looks like, or what should I do? What should I do here, Zane?

Yeah.

Yeah. Gives you that arm around your shoulder that you need. My advice was to put the double brood on here, and it was the wrong advice. Even though that frame there looks really, really good, I'm going back like tail between my legs a bit and changing the advice. But that's what we teach— change the advice, do it with conviction, and kind of read what the bees are telling you.