This Was NOT What I Was Expecting To Do This Spring!
Laurence Edwards walks through spring hive management, covering emergency feeding with invert syrup, space allocation with brood boxes and queen excluders, and evaluating colonies for drone-laying queens. He discusses his breeding partnership with Lutz on varroa-resistant queens and how to handle weak colonies, mouse damage, and swarm prevention with limited equipment.
Chapters
Not ideal doing that this time of the year. All the bees are dead in this mini mating nuc. Wow, take a look at that. That's a— it's a really nice strong nuc. That's actually a 14 by 12 nuc. Got to go to the next apiary and the battery is dead. I had a little bit of a panic going into this one here. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Look at this thing. But it's like, I don't know, never seen that before. Right, so that, that's a colony that's just lost its battle. Oh, this is salvageable. This honestly is.
It's not set up.
Definite mouse damage. Oh wow! So I've got lots and lots to do today. I'm not going to be able to inspect any colonies for the next four weeks, and it is. Spring. It is the time we need to go in. So today is all about damage limitation. You'll probably understand why, but I need to fix some things inside this apiary. No more YouTube voice. Let's get to work. Going to go around every single apiary today to make sure all the bees have got enough food. The drama came yesterday. I came up here and there's a there's a little mini mating nuc up there that's basically dead, and it's really annoying because a week or so ago it had loads and loads of food in it, and it's got me thinking that. Loads of other colonies are probably on the edge of the precipice, and it's kind of early March at the moment. Normally I wouldn't be doing any of this, but I'm going to be out of action for a few weeks, so I've got to get some things sorted to stop those bees swarming. So a bit over the top with the pellets. So the idea today is to get the smoker lit, not light it again, and it's about 10 o'clock now. Hopefully get it to stay lit until about 2, something like that. There is a bit of rain coming in. Now the idea of today wasn't I was just going to come out and fix that colony there and kind of double brood a few colonies and move some things around, set myself up for no action for the next few weeks. But I thought, well, I might as well bring Zane because I'm going to be here doing the stuff anyway and we can film. And I'm not going to do special YouTube voice. I'm just going to talk and get stuff done. So puffing away on that. Plan in this apiary here is just have a really good tidy up, make sure there's no empty boxes, make sure all of the colonies have got enough food. That's the biggest risk when we're there. So if I'm adding food on, I need to add space. So pretty much every colony I'm going to assess for space, underbrood, add some food on, and then cross my fingers. So again, if you watch the videos and you think it's really quick to light the smoker, it's not. It does take a while, and I generally get it lit, get it smouldering, give it a really good few minutes with the blowtorch, and then leave it, leave it for 5 or 10 minutes, go again, and then that's how you get super, super long burns. So I'm just going to leave it like that, leave it burning for a bit. When it goes out, I'll come back in, give it a few more puffs. I can work on the majority of stuff without it. I've got some new, new gloves. I know it looks like blatant advertisements, doesn't it? But it's not. I do, I do buy these gloves, but these are really good gloves. They're orange, which is pretty cool, and they're long cuff and they're very, very thick. So these are my new favourite gloves, nice texture on them. Other cool things that I've got at the moment, just to show you, I've got these roofs made for my Abello hives. So standard National come with kind of galvanised tin roof like that, and then the Abello deep roof is a bit too big, so I had these ones made and they're really nice, really nice fit, really solid. And it means that you can kind of get your smoker now and leave it on the polyhide like that, which you couldn't do before. Yeah, this is not, this is not good. If you come and have a look at this, Zane, this is what prompted me yesterday, which is really, really frustrating. And it's definitely my mistake. So as always with things at Black Mountain Honey, if there's a mistake, I'll come and show you it. So if you zoom in, if you zoom in there, Zane. All the bees are dead in this mini mating nuc. And I put a little bit of feed in there and no, they've not touched it. So I missed it. And again, it was my fault. Thought they had enough food and they didn't. They're dead and it's really annoying. So what I'm going to do is just quickly show you inside. Oh, I hate— I really don't like seeing stuff like this. There is actually a little tiny bit of life still in there. Let's have a look, see what's left. Okay, this is a good indication of a so-close-to-starvation colony. This might be— this is salvageable. This honestly is. It's not set up either, right? So these bees are struggling here. You can see you've got the queen. Right in there, you see her, pink queen. So I'm gonna try and fix this. I'm gonna pop that there. I'm gonna get some syrup, and this is basically what you need to do. If you've got a sprayer, you want to spray at this point, but you just want to get all of the frames out like that. This is their last little bit of life, and you just need to get a tiny drizzle of syrup on them. See, like that, not much. They will instantly go to that and start eating it. That's a bit too much on that one. Spray's best, but I've not got the spray at the moment. And you kind of want to do it on both sides if you can, but every one, every single face of a frame. Kind of mush it around a little bit. You're obviously going to attract a bit of robbing, so do it on a day where there's not a huge amount of activity. Yeah, but look, they're not— they're so, they're so close to being dead.
Wow.
So I did come up here yesterday and put some feeder in, and I dribbled a bit down, and they've obviously not found it. So this is, this is the next stage, and this is what triggered all of today really, because I'm thinking, well, okay, the little mini mating nooks are going. That means The bigger hives are going to be next. So then finally, I'm going to do it over here. I'm going to try and avoid the queen. She's right in the middle. Hit the gimbal there. Okay, and I'm not going to turn that one because the queen's the most important thing here. So I'm going to put that all back together. I just want to make sure I'm not squishing the queen when I put her in. So that's the queen frame. Okay, so then I'm gonna go a bit on the top bars as well. I know it seems extreme. This is a very, very extreme situation. They were probably hours away from death, so you've got to give it a go. But something like that. Then on the top, I'm going to put this back on, just try and make it not that attractive to any robbing bees that are going to come. So this colony was okay defending itself, it just ran out of food. But the back entrance was a little bit too open, so I'm going to close that completely. So we're down to one entrance now, fed on the top, drizzled all of that syrup on. There was no brood left. They were minutes away from dying. We'll cross our fingers and see what happens next. So this is, this is pretty much what I'm going to be doing today. I'm going to be going through, checking the colonies, giving them a heft like that. That's a nice strong colony, good amount of weight in it. Still got syrup, which I never like to see if they've still got a bit of syrup like that. So syrup's still in here, it's not been completely taken down over winter. Not fermented, which is good, so it's invert. So all I'm going to do is just dribble it back down that hole and then I'll close the hole, stop them getting up there. But what I'm doing to all of the colonies today is I'm double brooding. So I'm going to underbrood. I'm not going in, I'm not looking inside the colony. I might have a little peek in from the top, but I'm not going to take any frames out. And what I'm doing is just lifting everything up and putting a brood box underneath on the original floor. That means if the colony wants to expand, they can expand downwards. They're still in contact with their food, they're not going to starve, they've got space to expand. Basically buys you a huge amount of time in the spring. I'm going to do it on every single hive. So it is very, very easy manipulation. You do get a few bees flying. Easiest way I've found of doing it is just lifting up the entire box and blocking them down there. And then you could clean the floor if you wanted to. I'm not going to bother. Fresh box, 12 frames of foundation in there, summer foundation, a few that have got kind of slightly drawn-out comb on there as well. And then all you do is literally just pick the box back up. They always get angry at this point and just go straight back on. That's it. How easy is that? I'm doing that on every colony. I'm going to give them the space. So if you're giving space, you need to give some food as well. So I've got food in the feeder, I've drizzled it down on them. I've not checked inside, I've not seen anything, I've not assessed the stores apart from lifting it, and I've given them another brood box. So, uh, I've got this one here that needs doing as well. Okay, that's just an empty stack of boxes. So the plan was to do a lot of this in the winter, and then winter got really, really busy, and now March is a write-off, so we're doing it all in March. Doing our best. Right, so pretty sure this one's got bees in. So I always like to see that, that's a good sign for me where they've quite clearly just taken down every single last drop. And generally if you look down in those ones you can see bees. So I couldn't in that case actually. Take a look at that one quickly. So first one, drone layer, real shame, but what I do with my drone layers, if there's any bees there, I'll just toss them out. I turn it upside down like that, and then I place this back on the top. It's quick, but that seals all of the problems inside. It's a drone laying queen, so there's no coming back for that colony there. None of the bees can get in. None of the bees can get out. Anything that's in there now is completely confined. So not the best start, but we'll carry on. That one's definitely empty, I know that. Let's get that away. Okay, hopefully this one's a bit better. Yeah, that's much more what we're expecting to see there, which is a nice healthy colony of bees.
Oh, hello.
So this one here, bees look good. They still got foundation in there, which is the easiest sign in the world that we need to feed. Some very late season speculative splits up here, but they seem to have made it through. So you can see that one there had like 5 or 6 frames that were still to be drawn out of foundation, so it can, it can take quite a bit of feed. You can give it like half a feeder of invert. Can feed 1:1 at this time of the year, but if you come back in A couple of weeks and they've not used it because it got cold, 1:1 will be mouldy, whereas 2:1 or invert will stay like that for ages. So exactly the same as last time, I'm just going to pick the whole thing up including the feeder, everything but the floor, onto the new brood box. All drawn comb in that one. You know, lift the whole thing back up. Mind your back. And that's got half a feeder full of 2:1 in there. That'll last them ages, hopefully last them until All the good pollen's coming in, all the good nectar's coming in, and then they can build up. Fingers crossed that's enough for a good 3 or 4 weeks. Let's go on to the next one. Right, so luckily this one is empty as well. Can move that into storage. Everything looking good in this one here, nice cluster, maybe over kind of 6 frames. I'm just going to do what I'm doing with all of them, which is taking that off. Don't ever worry about a few dead bees, you're always going to get loads of dead bees there. You can go and take it away somewhere else if you want and discard it. Just looking at what we found in there, that's pretty cool. Look at this thing.
A beetle.
Yeah, but it's like, I don't know, never seen that before.
Cool, isn't it? Keep it there. Pretty cool. Not cool for him, but—
No, well, no. So you can, you can chuck the bees wherever really. If you want to put them in a fire, you can as well. This manipulation is great though. It does, it buys you a huge amount of time, makes later on in the season a little bit easier. And then if you know you're going to double brood and split anyway, then why not? Zane's definitely going to have his own colony at some point this season. Which one? You pick which one you want. Don't pick a dead one.
This one.
The hive wash one. The hive wash one, yeah. That's the one I'd go for. It's a good one, isn't it? Right, okay.
This one's on brood and a half already, so we might be alright space-wise.
This one's been fed fondant actually, so it is a little bit different. So I've got my feeder upturned here, and then I popped on some fondant onto this one because they were looking a little bit low. And this is what I like about fondant, so I can just shake all the bees out of that one now and pause, pause fondant feeding by putting it over there, and then I can just flip the feeder back around and go straight into syrup.
So why would you go fondant over syrup? What's the—
It is a lot of preference.
Okay.
The kind of time of year. I do everything I can to not feed fondant, but one of the nice things about fondant is you can just take it off like that. So if you fed too much, you can take it off quickly. I'm going to go back. They've got space underneath, plenty of space. There's a little bit of feed and I'm just going to give them maybe like a litre because the stores in that one's really good. It's warm now. I think it's supposed to be 14, 15 degrees today, so they will clear out these feeders very, very quickly, and there's no risk of it fermenting in the frames either. So I think that one's good, and then the natural pollen will come online, or now, and then the natural nectar coming in as well. It all happens very, very quickly in the spring. I've got my lid.
And can I take it you can overfeed them then?
Definitely can overfeed them, and this is why But you might think at this time of the year with an emergency like this, it would just be easy to come feed everything, and it would— all that would do is just make everything loads worse because it would block everything out. It would probably cause them to swarm a little bit earlier. It would make your colonies dwindle because there's not enough space for them. So if you are in an emergency situation like this and you just can't get to your bees, give them the food, but give them plenty of space as well, even at this time of year. But give it underneath. Because then it doesn't disrupt them. So with the smoker, you can see like that's still going really well. Can't even see because of the smoke, but it's just full. The pellets, tons of pellets in there still to go. So I got a little bit of a mess over here. We're doing— there's some work going on up in the forest and the bees get moved over winter, and I thought I had more time than I did, and I just, I put them here when I knew that I could move them very, very easily without going 3 miles away, and I ran out of time. So everything is in these awkward positions now. So what I'm going to do is remove this front stand and then shift everything along that back stand. It'll be close together, but the bees will work out where everything is, and then I can take stuff away after that. So I'm going to unstrap most things, get myself a bit of space. So because I'm merging these, you would think that you could move that one that way and put it that way, but it's actually much better to do that. You're just trying to work out roughly where things can move to, where it's the minimum amount of distance away from where they are. And then the bees, the bees work it out at this time of year. It's quite easy.
What is the golden rule? Is it 3 foot or 3 miles?
3 feet or 3 miles, yeah, when they're flying. And they're flying now, so anywhere within 3 feet, they work it out. You get a little bit of drift. You can see already that makes, makes it loads better, doesn't it? So that's an empty box like the one where the swarm landed in. It might actually be the swarm one. So feeling a lot of these colonies here, they're quite light, so these all need a good feed. So it's a good, good reference point. First week of March, that's earlier than previous seasons that they needed a good feed, which probably indicates a later season, more brood rearing later into last season, kind of burning through it before they should. And this is why early season checks are so important. Right, so this one, this is probably the only tricky one here. This box is— pretty sure this box is empty. Yeah, right, that box is empty. That box definitely got bees in, and then I've not got space for it, so you need to shift everything over. It looks like a nice little spot for it in there, but no, you need to be in order. That is the heaviest one yet. Wow, so look at that. Oh yeah. Right, we like that one. So this is the benefit of double brooding in the winter, because then you get this buffer in the spring. But the problem is, is that if you— this hive here, this is a big, massive double brood colony. It'll expand out big, nice and strong. Get that bee off there. But if you want to turn that into a honey production colony, you're going to lose so much honey to the double brood. So you end up splitting, and then you don't want to split, you're left with loads of colonies that you don't want, and then And there's me talking and not putting the strap on properly. Okay, so this one's definitely got bees in, they're coming out there. This is a local swarm of black bees that I'm going to remain completely impartial on. We'll take a look at that one, and then this one is empty. They are cool, these stands. So just looking at this Payne's one that I've got here, definitely going to double it, but it's a really, really nice strong colony. And then the box that I'm putting on has got quite a lot of honey in, so don't necessarily need to go in from underneath. Trying to get the crown board off. Always first one of the year is a bit difficult. There we go. But that is a very nice colony, look at that. So whilst they're still down in it, I'm just going to take this box that's got some good honey in and we'll run some this way as well. So that's double brood on top and then we just go queen excluder. Always make sure the right way. If you put it the other way and the queen's on top, you are in trouble.
So what's the difference between obviously Putting it on the bottom doesn't disturb them. I take it on top doesn't disturb them either?
So I would say optimum is at this time of the year at the bottom. That's what you want because it's much less disruptive for the bees. And if it gets cold again, it's fine. But this one here, because there's so much honey above it, the bees are going to go up naturally to that anyway. They're probably going to cluster somewhere in the middle and it's maybe a little bit less disruptive on a colony like that. But what is important with those ones where you're putting them on top is to make sure you give them a feed and then to make sure that they're taking the feed through. Otherwise, the feed can be like all the way up here, big void there, and all the bees downstairs. So that's the risk with double brooding on the top at this time of the year. But generally, if the bees are flying, if they find the feeder and there's enough bees in there, they kind of sort it all out. So happy with that one. And then I'm going to do the same with this one, but I've run out of pains boxes, so I'm going to use my My wooden boxes, the idea is to switch them over for the Abelo ones there, which is what we use going forward. So it looks like a spacing issue in here, which you often get with the panes if you forget to put the castellations in. So you just have to go and break the seal across every frame. A lot of people don't know that. Well, as in how you've got to break the seal, but it wasn't— the castellations are right there, it's just the first one of the year. You can see the spacing's just slightly off there. So I'm going to get another brood box. I'm just going to double brood with the wrong brood box. There. Bee space is still the same, so bottom bee space doesn't look that pretty, but these are nice frames for those bees. And then I'm going to do exactly the same, empty out any wasps in the nice dry feeder. If you keep your feeders on top like that, you never got to clean them because there's no disease risk because they always go back on the same one. And then if you open it up at the end, put a bit of straw in, the bees do clear them all out for you. So same again for this one. I'm going to open up the hole, put a whole extra box on there so I can— you could rim the feeder if you want, but probably go about halfway, a little bit down the hole, tempt the bees up. That buys me a good amount of time. So what you can see here is a few bees, they're not, they're not sure where they're going. There's different objects and stuff, so they're just working it out. A bit wet in some places. This will happen anyway, really. You can see they're just getting warm, ready to go again. So this is my multi-purpose crown board and then a little feeder. Bees down in there, which is looking good. So again, people say to me, why'd you leave the queen excluders on like that? It becomes a mess. And it does, but it means I never have to take them off, means I never have to clean them, which is very, very beneficial when it comes to stopping the spread of disease. So I'm going to do exactly the same with this one. I'm just going to— Okay, that one is— that's about as light as they come, that one. So that's very good timing. So depending on the strength of the colony, it does dictate where I would put that one. So see how the other ones were big strong colonies, they weighed a lot, they can take a box on top.
Okay.
Whereas that one there, that's a really small colony and they're light. So if I detach them from the feeder and then feed them and they don't find it, they'll probably be dead. So what's more important for that one is for the brood box to be on the top in contact with My feeder. They've got a much higher chance of getting the feed that I'm going to give them, which at this time of the year is exactly what they need. So this used to be my feeding setup before I used insulated feeders. So I used to make myself a multi-purpose crown board like that and then buy an English feeder and pop it in. And the capacity is not quite as good as a polyashworth feeder and nowhere near as insulative, and it still costs about half the price. They'll end up costing like 18, 20 quid nowadays. You're gonna make it yourself or buy them. I thought I'd prefer to have a poly insulated feeder for, for double the price. So I've still got a few of these though, I still do use them. Same thing applies with these feeders, always like send a bit down, just go wild, dribble some down like that, and then the bees come up and think, oh, that's nice, and then they clear it all out, which is what you want. Lid on, take that Feed her away. And then we go back on with this one here. Okay, onto the nucs now. So luckily the double nucs, yeah, that's perfect for a double nuc. The bees are probably just clustering about here, I suspect, if we go down. Okay, wow, take a look at that. That's a, it's a really nice strong nuc. That's actually a 14 by 12 nuc, and they're going all the way down. But that one's a really easy one because they have got tons of space still. Kind of overwintered with the extra brood box. And I always say to people in the spring, in March, like, it might seem like you've got loads of food still in there, but they work through it very quickly, and they generally do just end up at the top and the bottom is empty, and then you can remove it if you want. So I'm not going to add any space to that one, I'm just going to feed it because it's got tons of space. I will come back up and make sure that it's Got enough feed, that one. Okay, next one. I got a bit worried when I went into that first one. I thought, oh, please don't all be like that. Right, they're looking good, and I'd say that's like normal losses. We've got one that was a drone layer. We've maybe been through 12, and I would say anything under 10% is really, really good. Right, let me go and find this final brood box. Right, you, you know you're running out of boxes when you're dipping into your 14x12 Suyentes, but they are all good to go. And again, this one here, not a huge amount of stores in there when I lift it up. Yeah, very, very light. And then also the other thing is I'm placing this one here on a box of foundation. So if you've got a light colony, box of foundation, always put the bees above and then always really give them a good feed. You could almost rim this one. I've given them so much space, all with foundation. Even if I put it up to the top, they're going to get through all that with no blocking whatsoever. I'm going to put quite a bit in this one here. And again, it seems like a bit aggressive, a bit haphazard chucking that much syrup down the hole or even into a colony like this, but it's targeted. I've not done it on all of them. Some of them I haven't fed, some of them I've fed really heavily, some of them they've got foundation, some of them got drawn comb. You just have to adjust to what you think is going on and to try and give you the buffer that you need. Like, the idea of all of this for me is just to buy me some time, make sure that my bees don't die and they don't swarm over the next 4 to 6 weeks. That is the target. It's not going to be a perfect system, it's damage limitation very much. And hopefully I will get back up here to have a look as well. And this one here is already on double brood, and it shows if you want to make the splits and have an easy life, how easy is double brood? Because look at this, I've even gone ahead and put some insurance on this one here, and the bees are making the most of it. But when you come in here and I feel it and I heft it, oh.
It's heavy.
That one has the opposite problem, it genuinely does, which is— why have I put fondant on that one? Probably did it to show a video of something like that, yeah, I think I did. Right, they definitely don't need fondant. And remember you said it earlier, why do you put fondant on? Fondant's a good thing to put on if you're not sure, it's not as like definitive as syrup. If you put syrup in, you come back the next day, they've used it and they've turned it into something that might not be useful for them, whereas fondant you can see like a I've put 2 kilograms, or is it a kilogram that one? Yeah, a kilogram on, and they've used 10-20%, so that's 200 grams of fondant that they would have just eaten. It's not had an impact. And the reason that I'm taking that off there now is because they're just so heavy. Oh, and the weight is down there, so what I want the bees to do is consume that and move up to the top. They're probably sitting around there at the moment on the stores, which means they have more than enough to go, and I'm not going to give them anything. Okay, this one here I'm not doing anything with because it is a feral black swarm that just kind of landed in there. I've hefted them, they've got probably enough weight for 7 colonies, so they're not going to have anything either. I'm going to strap everything up and tidy up here, and then we're going to go again in the next apiary. 2 hours in, about 2 hours, maybe hour and a half on that, and look, it's still mega, mega smoky. That'll keep going all day. I reckon we're kind of up to there with it. So that's annoying, I'm going to go to the next apiary and the battery is dead. I'll tell you what, these L200s, I do like my L200, it's very, very good, but the batteries, there's something wrong with the batteries, they're always dying for No reason. And there's stupid little things like they have beepers and stuff on the inside of the car that you can't turn off. But I use this Noco Boost, best thing ever. One of my mates showed me this and said, get one in your car and you will always be able to get a battery going again. And I'll tell you what, it's never once let me down. So watch this, we'll get going again from dead first time. And I'm never ever confident about stuff like that, but watch. Yeah, there we go. Ever getting stuck in pickup trucks? Get one of them. They're great for charging up. You can charge up laptops and batteries and all sorts on them as well. And that's literally all I know about cars, so don't ask me anything else. We're back up and running. Let's go to the next site.
So what's today about?
Like, who's it relevant for, this style of video? Well, it's a bit of a sad day. The reason I'm doing all this, my wife's not very well, so it means that my ability to do loads of things in March has become diminished and I've got to focus the things on what I need to do in terms of getting nucs and stuff ready. So all of my own production colonies, colonies that I play around with and just, yeah, the colonies that I manage need to be put in a status where it's not emergency mode, it's not emergency feeding mode, it's not emergency space mode, because they're the 2 big challenges you're going to have at this time of the year going into spring. And it is only— what is it, 5th of March today? So it's very, very early on. I definitely wouldn't normally be doing stuff like this, but it's a situation that I have, so I thought I'll get Zane along and kind of— we go along and do the video showing exactly what I'm doing. I'm not recommending that people go out and do this. I'm not saying this is how you should manage your bees in spring. But if you're in the situation that I'm in, which is March is pretty much completely wiped out now, you're going to struggle to get out for any minutes at all, but you've got a couple of days to get things ready, then what I'm going and doing is trying to preserve those colonies a bit and making sure that they're not going to die. That's my biggest concern. They're not going to die over the next few weeks because March is the month when they die. The brood rearing starts, it's very energy intensive. The bees start going out and flying and then they don't all come back and the numbers go down. So there is that risk of collapse and risk of Starvation at this time of the year, and this is what's prompted a lot of it. I went up there the other day and found that little mini mating nuc that was so heavy, couldn't take on any more feed, and then a week later it was basically dead. But given that, like, little trickle of syrup may have saved it, we'll go back to that and see. But no one wants to put in all the effort and then their bees go ahead and die in the spring, so you do need to keep on top of them. But then the, the other problem is it's not so much second of Or first week of March. It's more kind of first, second, third week of April, which is if I do nothing and the colonies get through and they've got enough food and I don't give them the space in the form of supers when they need it, and that's probably when I'm going to be in a situation where I can't get out to give them the additional boxes, then they're going to swarm because they run out of space. So I'm tackling both of those two things. And I've said to people before, if you're adding space early in the season, always add some feed as well because you're giving the bees so much more of a buffer, and they can struggle unless you support them. So that's, that's literally all I'm doing going out today is tidying up anything that needs tidying up, double brooding everything where I can. If I've got a really nice strong colony and a good box on top, I can double brood on top as well. And then just strapping everything down and hoping that I've done enough for the next 3 or 4 weeks. And no doubt there'll be a point in April or maybe even May where I can get back out to these colonies, and we can look back on this video and see if if what I did was enough to stop them all swarming, because they're not going to get the kind of love and care that they normally get. But we're on our way now to the next apiary. We've got 3 ones, 3 apiaries that are very, very close to me. I'm going to fix all of those today, do a little bit of drone stuff with Zane as well. So hopefully it turns it into a reasonably useful video for people. Zane's going to make it look beautiful as ever, but it genuinely does solve a problem, which is if you're a beekeeper and you're planning for the season to start on the 1st of April, And you can't do anything in March, like, what do you do to prevent the worst thing happening? That is what we're doing today. Right, second site. Smoker kind of half went out on the way, but as you can see, just a few more puffs gets it back going again. I really do like having it stuck to the back of the car. Second apiary time. So I've had a little play around in this apiary. I brought everything in much closer just because of kind of access and egress, and it makes more sense to have it all like this. It's due an upgrade. I'm doing some stand upgrades earlier this year, but I have— I've reduced it right down, and then some of the queens are going to be mated over there. So splitting this apiary both into Some production colonies here and then the mating side over there where we've got some nice cover. But job today is simple, make sure the bees have got enough space. I was a little bit worried when I came here. I've already been around this apiary, fed them some syrup early March because they were very, very light. Really good strong colonies, didn't go into them, but you could feel they were struggling. So I just went in, put some syrup in. But what I'm going to do today is give them some additional boxes, make sure that everything is on at least a treble if I can get away with it, but definitely a double. And get some syrup into all of these nucs, and then any other boxes where I can get another box on, get a feeder on, that is what I'm going to do. So veil up, gloves back on, let's get on with it. So it's quite convenient really, I've got 3 on doubles and then 3 on singles, and I've only got 3 extra boxes over there, so it's pretty simple. They're all just going to be on doubles. Interesting to see this though. I came here, it was either yesterday, no, I think it was the day before yesterday, and fed syrup. There you go, look, all of the bees coming up to get that syrup. You can feed syrup in a number of different ways. This one here, they have just made themselves a little hole. Slightly frustrating, but really good to see that the bees are taking down the syrup. If you come and have a look up in here, Zane. I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna remove this. This is gonna sound really nice. Get the mic on this. I'm going to pull it away. Ready?
No. No.
Same thing again. The only reason I've done that is because you can you can use these feeders in a number of different ways. You can either put the the bit of plastic on fully like that, and then they kind of they come up and then go over and then go down, and there's like a pool of syrup at the bottom there that they can get access to. Very safe way to. Feed. And then that one had a little hole in it, and you can see I'd already got some straw in there. Uh, yeah, it is straw, so just kind of like really dry, sticky, woody straw I picked up from over there, chucked it in, and then the bees can just kind of come up over if there's any holes and feed on what they want, and then they can get out because of that. I'm going to chuck a little bit more in. Um, I always do this, I just kind of like find somewhere in the apiary. I like this stuff because it's dry, it's readily accessible. Just look how well it fits in.
Perfect.
I'm not going to feed that one anymore because that's hefting really, really nice. It's more the smaller ones that I'm worried about. So good, again you can see they're taking the feed down there. I'm going to heft that one. So I've got another brood box here, there's some remnants of honey in there as well. I do like to underbrood at this time of the year though. It's good that they've already taken up to that feeder, so if I go and put something this box here in between the original brood box and the feeder, then the bees are not going to be able to find where it is. So much safer, I find, at this time of the year, just lifting up the entire box like that, placing that onto your new brood box that you're adding in. Have I dripped syrup everywhere?
I have.
Fantastic. And then placing the whole thing back down, trying I'll try not to spill any of that syrup again. Okay, 3rd one along, already on a double, already taken down feed from yesterday. Really nice-looking colony, not going to do anything further on that one. Plenty of space, plenty of food. Like, during the first inspections, I'd be looking at seeing if there's a queen, seeing if there's eggs, seeing how much space they've got, checking for disease. I'll be doing all of these things, but there's no rush to do them in the spring. I see people going in way too early, and doing stuff like this is fine. This is sensible management, I would say, with minimal risk. But going in and pulling frames out and assessing brood patterns and looking at how much pollen's gone in and stuff like that, it's just not worth it. So I do not do it. Right, so that colony there looks a little bit smaller. Let's take a look. Not going to be the biggest colony in there. Not too bad, still over 3 or 4 frames, but They're using the feeder, so I'm going to do exactly the same as last time. Grab another box. These boxes are nice. Lots of nice honeycomb for the bees to go at. Take the box off as it is without spilling syrup. You can just see how it's very easygoing on all of the bees there. It really doesn't impact the bees in that box there. They're like, yeah, whatever, that's fine. They're in the feeder still, all is good. Right, so final box here. I've got a 14 by 12 box, which should be fun. We're underbrood with that. Loads of bees in this one. Here we go, look at all those bees. First bee trying to sting me there. Okay, this one here I've not got a spare box for, but I just looked inside and there's a missing frame in there, which is very convenient. So I'm gonna just slot an extra 14 by 12 frame in, give the bees some extra space. Here we go. They've also gone through They've gone through all of their syrup as well, so I'm going to top their syrup up. I always leave those bits of plastic in, extra life raft. Okay, right, next one. I'm going to go and take a look at some of these. Right, so this one here, this is a swarm that landed in this apiary here, and I just let them go. I just thought I'd give them a double brood. They're not the nicest of bees, and I'm just going to give them more space now, but I will peek inside and See how they're getting on. They're very dark local bees, so I know I fed them well. I suspect there's gonna be loads of stores left. Okay, no, not, not quite as much as I thought. It's still a decent amount, so I think there'll definitely be bees in here. And there is. Um, looking all right. You can see they're a bit buzzy, aren't they? But all I'm going to do with these ones here is I'm just going to give them space underneath. I don't want to start pulling them apart. They're not the friendliest of bees, so I'm just going to be sensible with it. I've not got feeders here with these ones, but I'm just going to chuck on an extra couple of boxes to give them lots and lots of space, because I know, yeah, they're very, very— they're heavy enough to be able to do what they need to do. So I'm going to grab a couple of boxes for those and we'll stack them up. So I've got some double Lang extensions here with just really nice drawn-out Langstroth combs, few bits of foundation in there too. But all I'm going to do with these ones, because these are local feral stock bees that I don't think are going to produce a huge amount anyway, I'm just going to give them the space. They're filling that top box almost, and all I'm putting is 2 Langstroth extension boxes, 8 frames each, mostly drawn, bit of foundation, and we'll see how we go. I'm not going to feed these either because they're quite heavy and I'm going above them, so I'm just gambling that there's enough food in there. These 2 boxes are empty.
Have you got a long-term plan with them or just kind of see what happens?
Do you know what, with colonies like this, yeah, it's It is quite difficult to have a long-term plan because even with the best intentions, I suspect I know what will happen with this colony here. Like, I won't come back and inspect them, and I think I'll come back and they will have swarmed. So they might get to there and swarm, they might get to there and swarm. It's all brood, they're not going to leave me a huge amount, or they didn't last time. So I kind of think if I come back and they prove me wrong and it's full and they've not swarmed and I've got loads of brood, then brilliant, I'll make up some splits. And just put some other queens in. And if they don't, then I'll just disband everything, clean it up, and start again. I think that's a good plan. I think both of these are swarms that just landed here. See, very well stuck down. Nowhere near as much activity. It's really interesting because what I can see is that there's a huge amount of stores here. I can't quite see what is down there, but I suspect the bees are down there and then the stores are up here. That's why you're not seeing them over the top like that. I'll just have a couple Little check. Oh, and there we go. They're not, not the biggest— 1, 2, 3, or maybe 5 frames— but the bees are down there. So again, like, they've got loads of stores, they've got loads of time to work through all of that, and I'm not going to change anything. I'm not going to checkerboard, I'm not going to mess around, I'm just going to stick some more boxes on the top. So these 2 here are just 2 boxes It's completely brand new foundation and frames, and I can see the temptation. People will say, well, take that box and put it up to the top, and then it's a kind of weird way of doing a demarei, but it's not. It's very dangerous doing that. If you've got a colony like that with all of the honey there and the bees downstairs, it's a small colony, definitely don't split it up. Definitely not at this time of the year in March. If you're doing emergency stuff like this, just stick it on the top, pray that you've got enough down there, and then hope that you don't lose too much heat upwards. In polyhives like this, it really isn't too much of an issue though. You can see how like big tall ones like that will topple over very easily. These two here, I've got the two Paradise Smart hives up here which did swarm again and kind of scuppered my video, which would have been the same video. I'm struggling to stop them swarming in here for some reason, but all of the honey is still in there and hopefully it's not crystallized, so it should be quite a simple reset for these. It is way too early to be doing it, but I'm not going to be here when it's too late, so I just got to go ahead and give it a go. So you can see my feeder full there. This one swarmed again and again and again, and you can see that's not even really covering 3 or 4 frames. I'm just going to sort the frames out with my hive tool though, because they are a little bit of a mess. You see how the spacing is just gone here. Worthwhile getting in here now whilst you can. Fixing that one. This looks all right though, not, not the biggest colony, but looks healthy, looks like it knows what it's doing. Plenty of stores in these frames over here as well, so feeding's not an issue with this one. Wouldn't want them all to look like this. There we go, frames are Now evenly spaced, and I've realized that I've not got my queen excluders for them. Fantastic, that's annoying, but you always forget something in beekeeping, don't you? So I forgot the queen excluder. I'm just aggressively smoking them down. On these Paradise hives, you do crush quite a lot of bees. The bee space is a bit all over the place. Let's try and minimize it. So I'm putting them back into the configuration that I overwintered them on, which is Brood box, feeder, roof, and then the super is kind of sealed in like that, just protected from everything. I'll come back here and get the queen excluders on. Okay, we don't need to go into that one. That is just a stack of boxes awaiting cleaning. So that one's done, that one's done. We can't do the other Paradise one. I had a little bit of a panic going into this one here. I was thinking, oh, please don't have brood upstairs. But what I've done is I've left it in That configuration and left the queen excluder in, so fingers crossed they've got through okay. I'm not going to pull it apart now because this is the configuration that I did actually want them in now. Oh yeah, that is right, that's really, really good. We might have honey. Remember that one there? We might have honey on that one early. We get a bit of oilseed rape around here as well, and it makes extraction from any sort of Flow frame or Smart frame like that fun. Very fun. You've got to get it out early. Okay, next one, keeper's hive. So keeper's hive, lots of fun, the keeper's hive. You can kind of open it to go into the brood area down there as well. Oh, how many ladybirds are in here, Zane?
Is it all right to have ladybirds in there, or?
Well, they're not— yeah, I suppose so. They're not really doing anyone any harm. Don't mistake them for small hive beetle, which luckily we don't have in the UK, but Ladybirds like that is yeah, it's fine. I like seeing like a little cool cluster of ladybirds. It's the kind of thing I would normally take a picture of. How many different? There's so many different types. Like one, but they're they're heavy enough. They're weighing pretty good. And this concoction here with mixed up boxes that don't work has actually probably got the best colony in the whole April in it. Look at that. Really nice calm. You can just tell when you open up one of our our special colonies. They are lovely, aren't they? I missed this. Like, I could just get in and start doing the frames. We're not going to do that. I should have brought more of these frames as well. Right, we need to come back to this apiary. I'll tell you what I'm going to do, Zoe. I'm going to write it down. Right, so another apiary done. It's frustrating. You try and bring as much stuff as you possibly can to fix everything, and I missed a couple of things there. So we'll be back maybe later on tonight or tomorrow, but at least we got the majority of the things done. Fed some bees, given them some extra boxes, given them some space. Bit by bit, I'm just going to get through it. So I'm at the final apiary now. You can tell that this definitely wasn't planned because I'm using boxes that I really don't like, the Suyenti boxes, but are also 14 by 12, which I also do not like. But I, I think they look quite cool in beekeeping. Like, that's a 14 by 12 frame there. They're, they're much, much bigger, kind of like a national brood and a super, but a little bit less. But they're cool. So we'll get some of these drawn out, have some good fun with them. The idea here is to save some time. And as I said, I've not planned for this. I've not got the right boxes, not got the right frames, but at least I've got what I've got. and I'm going to make the very best of it. You find that a lot in beekeeping, that you, you kind of plan for every eventuality and then something else hits you and you just got to make do with what you've got.
Smoke is still going?
So yeah, it's still going. You get this, it's not been puffed for— didn't use it much at the other one, did we? But it's still going and you can, like, if you come and have a look, see, like, you've just got tons of pellets left, like loads. That's how you get it going all day. And then every time you just got to shake it around, keep it going. You see, back on, back on fire. Good smoke. Right, so I'm going to be quick with these ones here because I'm just going to do exactly what I said I was going to do. Going to go veil up. I'm using all the wrong boxes, but I'm just going to underbrood because it's foundation. I don't like to put foundation above, and then I'm going to feed as well. So idea is just lift the entire box over, maybe we can have a little peek in one of them. He says that, gonna do it quick and then straight in looking at things. These are— I've got some queens off Lutz, Lutz Eggert. You'll see the Lutz Eggert queens coming online, sure to cause some controversy no doubt, but take a look. These are the queens that I overwintered from Lutz and they are Very, very nice colonies. Look at that, definitely calmest colony of the day, isn't it? So all of these are Lutz here. Usually put the queens in right at the end of the season. Let's have a heft, see how they're getting on. Just, just right, these are perfect. Look, no dead bees at the bottom. Very happy with that. Okay, so you can imagine now with that little mix, the bees are just Not gonna care whatsoever. But they've got tons of space now. So whenever I put that much space on there like that, I like to give them a good glug of feed. This is perfect kind of illustration of why this system works so well. Look where the bees are. The bees are up in the feeder. I'm gonna feed them in the feeder now. If I put that box in between the feeder and the brood box, which is where I see a lot of people doing it, you're kind of hedging your bets that the bees are gonna find it, but then also giving them a really difficult task of bringing it back down. I know people say bees work up, and they do like to work up sometimes, but in nature as well they will work down, and forcing them like this in the spring, they will work down as well. So if there's any colonies that I'm really confident about, it's this one here. This is pretty much textbook, and I think we'll come back in 5 to 6 weeks, maybe as that second round of brood after this one is emerging, and that box there will be completely full of bees and very well primed for Aggressive splitting, which would be fun on those big 14 by 12 frames. You can see how much time that's bought me. That colony was maybe over 8 frames, something like that, and the risk with that colony is twofold. One, that it's going to just burn through its stores. It's North Wales, it gets cold, starts to rain, bees can't get out, burn through all the stores and they're dead. Or we get a really nice early spring and all the flowers are out and the nectar's coming in and they've not got this additional space that I've given them, and then they swarm. And your job as a beekeeper is to find that middle ground somewhere. You generally do that with inspections and putting supers on and going in every single week. If you can't do that, you need to come up with another way of doing it, at least even if it's just temporarily. The only frustrating thing with the Payne's box here is that they, um, they put a little nugging, like a little nudging thing at the bottom. I don't even know how you say it. It's like a nugging.
Yeah.
Which means that you can't put boxes, other boxes on. I hate that. Because I would like to put the brood box underneath this Payne's one, and I'm not sure it's going to work. But let's have a look at the colony first. I like a good pop of a seal like that, shows that they've closed it all down. There he goes, another Lutz one. They're super nice bees, are they? You can kind of see why I've gone with the Lutz lines. Very, very nice. I've not done this for ages, Zane, got this close to a beehive. You can see as well, if anyone's bought Lutz queens before, they come quite late in the season, so you end up having to do like a really late Introduction, still got the cages in there, which helps me know exactly which line this one is. I spray painted them on the back with a bit of pink as well, so anything with pink on the back is my Lutz lines. I'm going to gamble with this one and I'm going to put the brood box on the top. Okay, I found, I found a really good suitable box for this one, so I'm going to put it on top, which isn't ideal because it is separating them from the feeder, but this one here has actually got some nice kind of not soaking wet honey frames, but some Kind of sticky wet honey frames. It should tempt the bees up like you would if you put wet supers back on. And then I'll put the feeder back on top. And also it minimizes the space, so if you're losing lots of heat up, I might as well go with a smaller box, not the 14 by 12. As I said, you've got to, you've got to try and use what you've got available. Also, if I was going to go back with a normal configuration, I'd put either one of these queen excluders on here like that I'm introducing a double bee space on that side there. I've only just noticed that. So what I'm going to do is not put the queen excluder on, and then that should— No, it's not going to maintain the bee space. That is a little bit tricky. So if you ever come across anything like this where you've got something that's on either half bee space or top bee space and you've not got the correct feeder to go on it, a queen excluder in the middle like that doesn't solve the problem. It makes it a little bit easier to clear it up at the end of the day. This will need clearing up 100%, but I'm here and I have to do this now, and if I don't do it now, I'm not going to get it done. So it's one of those frustrating ones where you're using the wrong tools, unfortunately. I'm going to get that bit of comb off there. Always first, first inspections of the year or first bee work of the year, you realize you've not got your wax Bucket with you, but we'll try and be as tidy as we can be. That should sit on there a little bit better now, and then that should sit there. There we go, cool. So you can see bees up in the feeder. That's really handy because they're already there, so they're going to fill up on this syrup that I'm putting in here now, take it back down, realize that they've probably got to go a little bit further, and then hopefully they'll come back up and tell their mates as well. It is very handy, and people will look at some of the configurations here like National Brood and 14x12, both one on top of each other. But really, like, I know what I'm going to do with all of these colonies here, which is just make those splits. So it doesn't matter that you've got the different size frames because you're just going to take out maybe 1 or 2 frames, put it in a nuc box, and then add in the rest of frames of foundation of that correct size. So you can split them up quite aggressively. So I've done, I've done this before a few times where you just stack up all the boxes that you've got, split them all out into nucs, and then They go into cleaning for the following season instead. So it's another looks one. It's so funny, you kind of go through the winter season and you forget how easily you just put down your hive tool and then forget it in places, and you come back to beekeeping and it's— you just start doing exactly the same things again. Looks nice, doesn't it? Just pretty chill, aren't they? What do you think, Zane?
Probably some of the nicest bees I've had the pleasure of working with.
It seems like it's such a plug, innit? Fiver in the post for Zane when we get back into the truck. But it is true, isn't it? They're just, they're very, very calm, gentle bees. It's great.
I get a bit nervous when you open it up.
I know, I do.
Torpedoing out of there.
Yeah, but they're really not like You do this to a lot of hives, that's quite aggressive, isn't it? So there is a plan behind the craziness. Right, let's get another frame, another box even. It's a bit of a collector's item, that beehive there. I'll tell you what, there won't be anybody else, I guarantee this, there won't be anybody else in the world who's got a Lutz Egger Queen in a 14 by 12 and National Double Brood, yeah, where the National Brood is made by BS Honeybees, because they made that beehive and then it folded super, super quick, which is a shame because it's a good beehive. All right, let's get some syrup in them. All right, so here's, here's a common mistake that a lot of people make, and I say it from true confidence having made it myself many times over. Right, so in spring you generally come to a point where some of the colonies need feeding, and what people do is they'll kind of like sleepwalk into that period thinking everything's okay, and then they'll go in and they'll say, oh no, I need to feed them urgently. So at that point you've not got a huge amount of time, so then you run down to the shop and you make up 1:1 sugar syrup because you hear 1:1 sugar syrup is best for spring, which kind of generally it is, but early, early spring like this is not what you want.
No.
Because one, you've got to go and make it and it takes time, when really you should have something on hand like this. But then also, if it gets colder— have you seen the weather tomorrow? It's crazy. So it's 15 degrees today, goes down to 6 degrees tomorrow, and then overnight it's -2.
Geez.
Yeah, so the bees are going to shun that syrup completely tomorrow. With 1:1, if you do that and then come back after a few days, it goes all mouldy and it can give the bees dysentery. So you think you're doing the best job, but you're kind of rushing. So all I do now is I just, I have loads of invert on hand.
Yeah.
And just keep a buffer of it, and it is expensive, but it's good for situations like this when you know you're going to have to feed them, and it gives you the most versatile feed. So it's a good tip. So for anyone, just keep, just keep a couple. You don't need loads. If you've got maybe like 3 or 4 beehives, just one, one big jerry can, like £20, lasts forever. Keep it in the garage, and then you've got a great emergency way of Feeding your colonies early in the spring and giving them extra space like this, and go on holiday if you want. Could plan it in every March. Just get them set up like this and then go away. Oh, look at this! How interesting is this? Yeah. So this isn't a Lutz, and the reason it isn't a Lutz is this. This is what I would have done in the spring, and I kind of half remember it now, which is I've got these really nice, amazing Lutz queens, and I need to put them in good colonies. So I come to this one. I'm like, "Yep, brilliant colony." Come to this one. Yep, big strong colony. This one, big strong colony. And I would've come to this one with the 4th Lutz queen and looked inside and thought, yeah, I'm not wasting a Lutz queen on that colony. And then if you come have a look, Zane, see how they're buzzing up so much more?
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, there's no way that's not a drone layer. Definitely a drone layer in there. I wouldn't say definitely, but so what I would do in this situation here, when I say to people, don't like take frames out, I need to make A judgment call here. Is this a drone laying queen or not? If it is a drone layer, I'll probably shake them out and use this box for something else. If they're not a drone layer, then I will not give them an additional box because they've got tons of space. I'll just get the feeder on, give them some feed. So I'm just going to do a quick check. I've got a lot of space. Isn't it interesting, the difference in temperament though?
Yeah.
The first— yeah, the first non-Lutz ones. Right, let's be nice and calm with them. I reckon this might be all right, you know. I reckon we might see brood in here. Okay, so nothing there, it's just stores. They're light. Yeah, droney, definitely droney. That's what I thought. So look, you can see the queen, queen there.
Mhm.
Yeah, little bit of worker brood, which is all this flat stuff. Probably a late supersedure queen. Spotty with drone brood, which is never a good sign, and then a weak or small kind of failing colony like that, almost certainly going to be a drone-laying queen. I'm just going to give it one more frame to see if she's got any good worker brood in her. No, nothing there. But that is not— that's not like a foregone conclusion there, because there is some decent worker brood there. And then when they come back into life after spring and start— or after winter and start laying again, They can fire out a little bit of drone brood when they're getting started. So what you are seeing is there is some signs of good, healthy worker brood. So I'm going to give it a chance and say it needs some food. So queen's there. She is small, not ideal. She's nice, just a little bit small. Like, definitely a superseder queen. It's not a queen that we put in there because it's not got the mark.
But I'm going to give them some feed.
I'm not going to give this one any additional And you can see the way that I had them fed as well. I obviously didn't have the right bits here, so what I've done is I've made a makeshift feeder here. You can feed like this, it's quite a useful little tip. So queen excluder, and then you just take a rapid feeder, place it anywhere, and then you kind of just like pour the syrup in still. And they still kind of, well, they still come up exactly the same way as they would normally in a rapid feeder. Let's get the lid on. Get any live ones out. Good emergency setup, obviously not ideal. I was saying to someone commented on a video about propolis and said that the bee space was wrong, and it did get me thinking. I thought about this a few years ago. It'd be a really boring channel if it was just like perfect, because I'd never be able to replicate any of the mistakes. So Zane's been looking at me today saying, "Are you sure? You sure you know what you're doing?" Definitely doubt myself.
You're a beekeeper, aren't you, Lawrence? Yes.
So I know people have got a lot of questions about the Lutz lines and why we're using them, and I would say the simplest way of saying it is that, like, I'm not a queen breeder. I don't breed queens. I do some selection, and I help on that side occasionally for other things, but I don't do that myself. I work with kind of like good people across Europe, but I wanted to work with someone who kind of believed a bit in the project and Wanted a bit of two-way collaboration, and Lutz was very much up for it. And I've had a lot of experience with Lutz's queens. I know they're very good. And we're going to go down a slightly different operating model for Lutz. But you can, you can see for yourselves, every single one that I've gone into here is really, really nice. This is the smallest of them. Isn't that a nice sound? So you can see they were— it was a small colony going into winter, that one. I'm not going to pull any frames out. But yeah, they're looking all good. So I'm going to get a final box. So the idea with Lutz is to have a long-term collaboration with him and kind of work back and forth on these different lines to improve them, to make them better for everyone, which I think would be really, really cool. We're going to fly out to Lutz's island in Germany and see the island mating, and he's going to come on and present about how he does the selection and the varroa-resistant side along with the calmness side. So we're just, we're we're teaming up to try and bring really good queen rearing, but especially queen breeding information on the Buckfast lines back into the channel because we very much support that. Well, I'm going to stack all of this back up again. So this one is set up in, in exactly the same way. You can tell I was in a rush at the back end of the season. I've got a few— oh, there's a few dead bees in there. It's not the end of the world, but I will clear that out next time. The English feeders do fit very, very well into there like that. I'm going to give them loads this one because they were That's the lightest one I've seen so far, and there was a bit of foundation in there as well. So I'm just going to take it up to the point where it's not dribbling over. I'm loving this sunshine. I do think that's, I do think that's the end of the sunshine there though. It looks a bit grey and a bit rainy. These are great though. I know, I know in some of the apiaries there's not been like, you've not been able to give that much space or something, but adding in a 14 by 12 on a big National Deep like that, that's filling 5 or 6 frames, maybe even filling the box and then adding some feed on. That's going to look after them for this round of brood, for the next round of brood, and it'll only be after that one, probably after 9 weeks, 6 weeks, let's call it 6 weeks, 2 rounds of brood, but anytime between that 6 to 9 week period I would say this is going to be full. And what a lovely hive it's going to be to go into. This is interesting, look at this. I said so much stuff about these frames, actually I feel bad saying it, but Come and have a look close up, Zane. So this here is an attempt to try and get the bees to work on these frames. I hope they're not dead again. It does really annoy me, these frames. So they do not like them, Zane. The bee space is wrong. Oh, that's close, that's close to starvation already, you can see.
Wow.
But look, they just don't— oh, they do not like these frames at all. So I'll try and open it up. They might be a bit angry, these, as well, if they're there. So what I'm thinking with this one is that they need some wax. All of the frames in there are the old ones.
Okay.
Like the black plastic ones, and they struggle. And I know, like, this box here, a bit old and dusty, but it will help them survive because it's old wooden frames with wax on. But I'm gonna have to get it open. They're gonna be— they're gonna get a bit angry, but I think we just have to. Go for it.
That sounds fun.
It's annoying because it's just the fact that these frames are not the right bee space, which means that the distance between the top of that frame and the bottom of the frame underneath is the wrong size. So the bees have filled it all up and then you can't get them up properly. You've got to go like frame by frame. Very destructive. I think that's it. Okay, so you can see, not ideal doing that this time of the year. Luckily they do have a bit of wax downstairs, so you can see like good strong colony there. I'm not going to pull any frames out, but that does look okay. So I'm going to go a little bit rogue now. I am going to split them on this one. We'll just go for it. I don't think they're going to take much in the feeder is what I'm going to go with. Feeder back on. I'm going to place that on there. I'm going to give them a real good go of syrup. So I'm going to go all the way to the top knowing that those plastic frames are a nightmare to get drawn out and they need all the help they can get. But also because I'm splitting them a bit, this might be up here for a while. And then what I do is I just drop a little bit down there. So just a couple of live stragglers in there. I've not got the, the lid for that one there, but that will seal it completely. So that one's done. And then we move on to the next one. I do love it when they crack open like that, but they wouldn't be sealed unless it was really full of bees at one point. So that one there, Zane, look, it's huge. That's 9 Langstroth frames on a treble already. So that's overwintered like that on the basis of making some splits. So I'm just going to leave that one. I'm not going to add any more feed, and it is really, really heavy. That one's got more than enough space. I wish I'd done more like that in the winter. Okay, that doesn't feel quite as heavy, that one. I think I stacked boxes in this one. Is the entrance— oh no, the entrance— oh dear. Right, so that's a colony that's just lost its battle. Obviously not put the guard on that one, but that is, uh, that is long gone. Yeah, you don't really want to see that, to be honest, because it's clearly been robbed out. Looks like to me back in the last year, definite mouse damage. Oh wow.
Um, yeah, I'll zoom in.
Are you scared?
I'm not like scared.
My little brother Sam, this one's for you, Sam. He is petrified of mice. Oh yeah, there's a mouse in there, there's a mouse in there. Big mouse. Wow.
Right.
Oh, I don't like it when you have to take the mice. Come have a look. You scared of them? Do you want me to hold it? Oh bless.
You seen it? Nope.
Okay, buddy, it's gonna come darting out. It'll go out the entrance, I suspect. Oh, there's his little house. I can see what's happened though. Worth saying what's happened. It wasn't a huge mistake. It turned drone lane, so all of that was drone, dwindled away naturally. Mouse has come in. Again, deflect from any bad beekeeping. Oh, you see it go outside the front?
No.
Oh no, here it is. Oh bless. Oh no, he's—
oh yeah, a couple there. I would have—
like, it is— they're going to find— oh, they've gone now anyway, haven't they?
But there's still one in there. Yeah, yeah, he's there. There is one right at the entrance.
Come and see at the entrance this side. Oh, bless him. Sorry, mate. Why don't you go out and then I am going to have to close it up. Oh, there are 2 in there still. They do not want to go.
It is cold and it is about to rain.
I'll come back here tomorrow with a new house for them. Yeah?
Yeah.
Right.
Bless them.
Chill little mice. Kind of want to build them a little house now. Right, so that one there, that's frustrating. I'll tell you what we'll do. Yeah, so I've got a crown board there so we can like limit anything upwards, and it protects at least this comb from any bees. I'll come back tomorrow and fix that. So this is kind of raw, this is live. I've not come up here and taken away any of the colonies that are dead or anything. These are the losses. So it's not looking that bad in this apiary. This one here is the one that's failed with the mice on it. I know this one here looks a real mess, doesn't it? But the bees are going in with pollen. There was obviously some sort of mass collapse. At some point. So I'm confident we've got good bees in there, you've got pollen going in, like it's a big strong colony, tons of space, it's hefting well, which is good. And then we move over to some of these, which again, these are set up really well for what I need, which is they've been set up just for additional space for 2026, which is good. I do love coming in and seeing kind of bees right at the top like that. It generally means that they kind of worked through their food relatively quickly, unless it is just a huge mega strong colony. I've not got any additional boxes for this one here, so I'm going to give it a heft. I suspect it's going to be relatively heavy. Oh, it is, but it's not, it's not as heavy as I would like. So we'll feed it. We've only got small feeders again. You can see this one here is a 14 by 12 super on a standard Abello crown board, and it leaves that gap there, but it works. So we're pretty much done over there. Got a couple more hives to do and it's starting to rain now, so we're just gonna pack away all the camera equipment. But look at that, the smoker is still well and truly going. If you want something to burn like this, stack it up, get it really, really hot at the beginning and just replace that green plug and it will go all day. I really enjoyed today. I think Zane enjoyed it as well. It meant we got a lot done that needed to be done and hopefully got like a usable bit of content out of it as well. If you enjoyed it, definitely stick it in the comments. This is gonna be a Zane Paul production.
