In this instructional video Laurence Edwards shares his personal top‑ten management strategies for achieving exceptionally large honey yields from a single colony. He begins by stressing the necessity of weekly hive inspections throughout the UK season (April‑August) to detect and prevent swarming. He then advocates a pre‑emptive Demaree method as a way to control swarming without making splits, keeping each colony intact for the whole year. Edwards explains that the foundation for a bumper crop is a healthy winter colony, achieved by moving varroa treatments forward to mid‑August so that winter bees are mite‑free. He advises beekeepers to "follow the flow" – mapping nectar sources and relocating hives to successive crops (oilseed rape, beans, heather, etc.) to maximise foraging opportunities. He discusses splitting the season into two harvest periods (spring and summer) and the extra work it entails, noting that it can boost yields if the beekeeper can bridge the June gap. Selecting the right bee strain is highlighted as the most important factor, as different genetics excel at honey production, disease resistance, or swarm tendency. Choosing and iteratively evaluating apiary sites is next; under‑performing locations should be replaced, with a focus on arable forage‑rich areas rather than marginal habitats like North Wales. Maintaining hive health through vigilant disease monitoring and timely varroa control is presented as essential to protect the crop. Edwards stresses the value of preserving drawn comb, arguing that it dramatically speeds up honey storage. Finally, he recommends providing ample super space throughout the season, adding supers proactively to avoid overcrowding during peak flows. The video concludes with a call to action for viewers to like and subscribe.
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In this video, I'm going to give you my top 10 tips for bumper honey crops. Tip number 1, make sure you're doing weekly inspections. In the UK, from April all the way through to August, you need to be going into your colonies every single week to check that your bees aren't swarming. That is our mission as beekeepers looking for the very best honey crop. Make sure your bees do not swarm. If your bees swarm, you can scrap the honey crop for that season. You're definitely not getting anything more than a super. You do that by weekly inspections. Every 7 days, you need to take action if you find swarm cells. But number 2 on the list slightly contradicts number 1, and that is you need to master the art of effective swarm control without making splits. I've said this loads of times before, making splits is the easiest thing in the world to do. My 4-year-old daughter could easily split a beehive. You take some frames out and you put it in another box. You knock them back, you trigger the emergency impulse, and they basically think they've swarmed. I know it's not the same as the swarm impulse or the supersedure impulse, but colonies of bees only swarm when they reach a critical mass and they say, that's it, we're big enough, we can swarm. That's how we reproduce, that's what we need to do. The art in beekeeping is keeping a single colony as a single colony all the way throughout the season, and the way that I do that is my one trick, of course, is my preemptive demeroe Works for me, works pretty much every time for me. I'll stick a link at the bottom of this video because it is quite a long process, but effectively what you're doing is you're doing your weekly inspections, but you're keeping that one colony as a single colony all the way throughout the year, maximizing the number of bees and maximizing your honey crop. So for number 3, we need to rewind a little bit. Don't think about how you can make a massive bumper honey crop in February or March. You need to do it in the previous season. I've done a separate video on this in terms of how to stop your bees dying over winter. That's obviously the first thing you need to do, stop your bees dying and getting them through to the spring. But the biggest change that I made in my beekeeping was scrapping the late summer honey. And when I say late summer, I mean the back end of the bramble and the early little bit of the ivy, and for us around here, a little bit of the heather as well. Bringing forward my varroa treatments to around the middle of August, to a point where I know when the bees are creating that first round of winter bees, they're not going to be impacted by varroa viruses. What that means is come spring, your bees are bubbling over the top of the boxes. They really go wild at this time of the year, and that's as a result of what you've done in the autumn. Healthy bees in the autumn means healthy bees in the spring. If you delay that varroa treatment because you're trying to maximize last year's honey crop, You will pay for it next year. If you want bumper honey crops, cut the end of the flow off and focus on the first 80% of the season. Number 4 is follow the flow. Now, not everybody can do this, but this is how you genuinely maximize your honey crop. This is how you get 200, 300, 400 pounds of honey in a single season from a single colony. You need to map out where your bees are going. There's no way I'm going to get 400 pounds from a single colony in North Wales in a static apiary. But if I move them down to the OSR and then they go to the field beans and then they go to somewhere nice for the summer and then they go to somewhere for the heather, you are going to really maximize the amount of honey that you can get from a single colony. There's a separate debate to be had as to whether that's good for the bees in the long run, but there's no doubt about it, if you're looking at it over a single season, maximize your honey, you need to move the bees around and follow that flow. Now my advice for you for number 5 is to split the season in 2. I know I did 3 hand movements there, but by splitting the season in 2, if you're working on a static apiary basis, for say people in the UK, focus on your spring harvest, take the spring harvest off, develop yourself a method to get your bees through the June gap, but not only to get your bees through the June gap, but to boost your bees through the June gap, and then you can focus later on on that summer flow. And if you match all of those things together, you Definitely increase your honey crops. Now for me, I don't do that, and the reason I don't do that is because it is more work. And the reason I don't do that as well is that I don't have to deal with all seed rape, so I can leave the honey on the colonies and I don't have to feed them in the middle of the year, and I don't have to do 2 separate honey extraction processes. But there is no denying it, I got more honey when I used to do that because I took every single last bit of honey off the bees up until the June gap, and then I tried to rely on not feeding the bees through the June gap. And then a couple of years I did that because it was terrible weather, and I found that the bees were booming coming out of the June gap after I fed them. Now, if you're taking off all of the supers and you're feeding the bees directly into a brood nest, then you've not got to worry about contamination of your supers because they're not on. Just give the bees a couple of days after feeding to start processing that sugar syrup before you put your supers back on. What that does is it stimulates the queen, continues to build up that brood nest, You do need to watch for swarming at that point because you're backfilling the brood nest and the bees might say, I've had enough of this. But you can move over to a double brood configuration at that point. But this video here is top tips to maximize your honey crop. I wouldn't go to a double brood. You're pushing the line, you're pushing the boundaries of the bees. Feed them through the June gap and then aim for a monster, monster summer honey flow. Number 6, this should probably be number 1. I would say this is the most important one of all. Get the right bees. Not all bees produce the same amount of honey. Some bees are survivors, they tackle varroa well, they deal with the mites, they're good at uncapping, but rubbish at honey. Other bees are really good at dealing with chalkbrood, other bees are swarmy as swarmy can be. Some bees have mastered the art of producing bumper, bumper honey crops. Now that's not to say that they don't come without other issues, and that might be that they need additional feed throughout the year, And definitely need additional feed to see them through the winter. That's exactly what my bees are like. If I didn't feed my bees throughout the winter, they would die because I've taken away maybe 100 pounds of honey from them. They'd be absolutely fine if I just left them with that honey over winter, but you need to try different breeds of bees and you need to breed from the ones that produce the most honey. Bees are not all equal. Some are lazy, some are hardworking. Get the right bees and you're halfway there to getting bumper honey crops. Number 7 on my list is get the right apiaries, and I'll double down on this as well in that if your apiaries aren't performing, iteratively change them out. Now don't go in and say, right, they've not performed for 1 year in an apiary, I'm going to go somewhere else, because you will have seasonal changes, you will have good years, you will have bad years. But if you've got an apiary that's been there for 3 or 4 years and is underperforming versus other colonies that are maybe a couple of miles away, there might be too many beehives there, but almost certainly what it's going to be is that there's just not enough natural forage around for the bees to produce bumper honey crops. Now North Wales is not the place for bumper honey crops. We have a few trees, we have a few brambles, we have a little bit of heather, but we don't have arable fields of crops. That is where you get your mega honey crops from. Oilseed rape, borage, beans, all of those good ones down there. Comes with some risks, maybe disease spreading, EFB, AFB, but if you're going for bumper honey crops you need to follow the arable crops. So before we get to number 8, if you're enjoying this list, definitely give the video a thumbs up, hit the subscribe button. We've got loads more videos like this. Number 8 seems like a really simple one, and it's keeping your bees healthy. We spoke a little bit about how I treat my bees for varroa by bringing that cycle forward, but it all comes down to your weekly inspections again. Monitoring for chalkbrood, looking for sacbrood, looking for all of the foulbrood diseases, making sure that it doesn't spread across your apiary, because before you know it, you might have one colony that's got EFB, you've not got good hygiene standards, and you spread it across a whole apiary. That is a very, very easy way to completely obliterate your honey crop for that year. You'll be burning colonies, you'll be burning wax combs, everything you don't want to do to maximize your honey crop. So stay on top of your hygiene, keep your bees healthy, and you'll be halfway there to getting really big honey crops. Number 9 is take care of your drawn comb. Can't do that if you're a beginner because you've not got any drawn comb yet. Drawn comb is worth its weight in gold, not only in the brood area but the supers as well. You want to protect it, especially when you're extracting your honey. Do everything you possibly can to give the bees back a really nice, well-protected piece of drawn comb, which means that all they need to do is focus on repairing it as opposed to using their energy reserves to go and make new wax combs. I could not believe the difference in my first couple of seasons when I exclusively used drawn supers. The bees just fill them up so quick, and it's not like you even need a 6 or 7 week period for the bees to fill them up. You'll get it in like a week or 2 weeks and you've got 4 supers full. They go wild when you've got drawn comb. Protect it in any way you possibly can and you really will benefit your honey crops. And then number 10 is make sure you give your bees enough space. Now I'm not suggesting, although some bee farmers do do this, going and putting 4 or 5 supers on a colony at the beginning of the year and then just leaving them to it and coming back and seeing how much honey they've produced. That's definitely not for me, but always stay one step ahead all the way throughout the season, barring the first couple of weeks of the season. Instead of adding one super at the beginning, add 2, and Always make sure that there's an empty super on top of the bees. There is nothing worse than coming back to a colony after a week, seeing the bees at the very top of the hive, and seeing every single frame in that box completely capped with honey. As I said, the bees don't create and store huge amounts of honey over a long period. I find, especially in North Wales, but I do think it's the same across the world, you'll get these massive peaks in terms of flows, And then it just dribbles off a little bit and you'll just get a constant flow after that. When you get those timings right and when you do get those mega flows, you need to make sure you've got the boxes there. And that is my final tip to make sure that you get bumper, bumper honey crops. As I said, if you enjoyed the video, please do give it the thumbs up, hit the subscribe button. We've got loads more videos like this.
