UNCENSORED: The Beekeeping Show 2024

The time has come for the 2024 Beekeeping Show. In this video, we are going to see absolutely everything from live streams, demonstrations, vendors, products, and absolutely everything in between. I've arrived at the show 24 hours early. We're going to get some early access inside the show, take a look at the vendors setting up, and see if there's anything brand new for the 2024 season. Right, so first stop, and there couldn't be a better first stop. Griff from Gwynedd Griffiths. I can't say it properly. Had you seen the Gavin and Stacey sketch when they're saying about the guy being Welsh?

Yeah, I know.

Yeah.

I'm not Welsh.

Hey, don't worry, I'm used to it. I'm used to it. Just Griff.

So I hear Gruff, I hear Griff, and I hear Griff.

The Welsh way, because I'm G-R-U, so it's Griff, as if the English way would be G-R-I. Because it's the U, if you're English you say Gruff.

It's definitely— I've not said Gruff.

It's Griffith.

Right, there we go.

Griffith.

Spot on, look at that, boys.

It's because I live at Fortepentra, so I've got a double D down.

Yeah, you've got a—

and that—

and that— So I was just talking to Griff earlier about my new thumbnails that I was doing for my livestream, which is brilliant. I was going through trying to update all of my thumbnails, and Griff is laughing here because this really is absolutely hilarious. So I was trying to find a really good picture of Griff. I got onto the internet and I've searched Griffith Rees.

Yeah, dodgy, dodgy thing to do.

And the very first picture that comes up is this picture here. Tell me about the picture.

Well, that was straight out of uni. I got a job as a countryside ranger. I can't remember, was I approached by The Guardian for like a magazine on the weekend or something? They were looking for interesting people. They wanted a ranger. And I thought, yeah, well, I'll do it. And they said, well, wear something crazy. So I thought cowboy hat, vest, little scarf. We'll go to London and see what happens. And unfortunately, 12, 13 years later, that still ranks really high on Google.

It's number one. It's number one. So I've shown you it there, but feel free to search it at any point. People like that. But read the text as well because it's brilliant. Basically, Griff goes out in the wild. armed with nothing more than a vest, a scarf, and a knife.

They over-exaggerated what I told them, but we'll go with it. That proved to be my first bit of fame.

It was brilliant though. So this is the Beekeeping Show, and we're already talking about Griff's episode in the weekender of The Guardian. But trust me, it's the best picture ever.

The history of some beekeepers here, some of them are convicts, some of them are dodgy, you know, who knows. We're all beekeepers, we're all dodgy people really.

So tell me about the Beekeeping Show. You're here, you've got new products Yeah, excited for it.

Yeah, so we've got a bigger stall. Last year we were just with La Ped. We are representing Anel. Gotta be careful how you say that. It's Anel, not how you said it before in the video.

Ah yeah, well that was the Welsh twang coming out.

Yeah, that's it. So we're representing Anel. We've got the range of their Langstroth hives, some of their traps, their smokers, a lot of their range. We're showcasing that, selling it. We've got a lot of pre-orders, which I'm glad we hired the van because we wouldn't fit everything on the stall. But yeah, we've got a bigger presence this year than we did last year. Obviously we're very small in Beekeeper Supplies compared to a lot of the established brands here, but you know, we're picking up.

We're taking over the world of SEO, Mr. Griffin.

We're trying our best, we're trying our best to grow, and you know, we're going the right way. Every year we're growing and we're expanding the range. We're bringing stuff out, trying to be a really good price as well. The bee farming advice, you know, it's one-stop shop really. If anybody wants to, you know, buy bees or buy a hive or go on training, we try and cater for it all, you know.

Very good. And how's the business going as a whole? You've got YouTube, you've got your bee farming, you've got honey, you've got nucs.

Yeah, it's going pretty well.

We just We've just employed a 4th member of staff, 4th member of the team, starting next month. So hopefully that's gonna be a huge help on the bees, because I know with you, you know, the amount of nucs, well, you handle, I handle, it's a job just to do the nucs and to keep on hold of the honey production high so they're not swarming, because he's spending so much time on nucs.

Yeah.

So we're hoping this year we're going to be a bit more on top of it and aim for a better year again last year. Every year is getting better, but it's because we get— not I'm becoming better beekeeper or or anything. It's just we've got more bees every year so that the honey crop is going. We bought the bee farm out last year, which took some getting used to, you know, running someone else's bees and running in 2 different counties than what we're used to. So logistics, diesel, we've got a lot more costs now, but you know, the business is going right. We're profitable every year, that's the main thing, you know, we're not making a loss.

Good.

So we're continuing to grow.

And what do you predict the bestseller to be here at the show then? Beekeeping Show 2024 bestseller?

I think on the stall Judging by the pre-orders, it's the NL hive. I mean, you've got a complete Langstroth hive built. Don't need to paint it, nothing. 115 quid with a VAT. I mean, and if there's any bee farmers watching and you want price on discounts, we can do a price on discount as well.

Never ever misses an opportunity for some viral marketing, do you?

Well, I'm on the big channel here. Bigger than my channel. Lawrence overtook me a long time ago. So well done, you Lawrence. You had my channel.

Thanks very much.

And it's a pleasure to watch you grow as well.

Oh, nice one. Cheers, Griff. Got it right there. But best of luck for the show. Like it looks really, really good. I'm excited to see how it goes for you.

Kind of not only yeah, well, there we go. Come back and see us now once everything's set up and hopefully good day tomorrow and good luck with the presenting the MC.

Yeah, the MC and I'll just be babbling away.

And look after Angala with the candles.

I know.

Yeah, she doesn't want to do it, but she's doing it anyway.

Yeah, the best candles in the UK, I hear.

Well, that's what they say. That's what I think so. But You know, making my own mind up. There are other candle manufacturers on the market.

Yeah. Excellent. But nice one.

Hey, Tom and Laurence, see you soon.

Yeah, take care. Right, next stop on the Beekeeping Show 2024 pre-tour is Darius from Pluck Metals. Welcome to the show, Darius.

Hello, how are you doing?

Very good, thank you. Tell me about what you're bringing to the Beekeeping Show this year.

We've been supplying expanded metal mesh for varroa mesh floors over the last 3 years. So obviously we've got selection of the of the metal in different types of aluminium, galvanised, or stainless steel.

So which is the best? Because I've bought a lot of this before and I've always plumped for the cheapest, which is the galvanised. But what do you think's best? Is it the stainless?

Is it the galvanised? The best is stainless steel, but obviously the cost is much, much higher. So I think that's where people will use most of the time, will use the galvanised, which is great quality anyway.

If you were building your own beehives though, what would you go for?

Well, I would use the stainless steel. Purely because it just lasts so much longer.

I'm a massive fan of stainless steel. Like, I work in an industry where we use a lot of stainless steel, and we use kind of like some galvanized stuff as well, and everyone's like, no, no, don't use the galvanized. Especially the big conflict I think with the galvanized as well is when you put it anywhere near cedar, it can impact the cedar, can't it? It can actually make the cedar run.

That's right.

So I've had that before. So if you're mixing kind of any metal with cedar, even if that screw's going in, you should make sure they're always stainless. But as I said, I've used these products before. You can buy them Purposely cut, can't you?

That's correct.

460 for nationals, but you can buy them on the big roll as well. And when you buy them on the roll, they really are quite cheap, aren't they?

Yeah, yeah, you can— you get about 20 sheets out of, out of a roll, which saves you, saves you money. You can cut as many as you need and put the back in the garage, which, um, or in your, in your shed, in the garden, which, which is great. And of course, yeah, we cut ready-cut sheets in any size required, so you can always contact us and we can cut any size you need.

Gary had said to me before this that he was out of his comfort zone. You're an absolute natural, flowing off the tongue like that. I got told off the other day on Facebook for calling something cheap. I said, oh, it's really cheap. And she said, no, you can't use cheap. It has to be affordable. And I said, fair cop, that's it.

That's a good phrase. Value for money.

Value for money, affordable. It's not cheap, it's not bad quality. And this is the very stuff that I use to make my underfloor entrances. So if you're interested in making underfloor entrances and you're looking for that mesh, you're looking for good quality mesh, you want stainless steel, you want a good value mesh, not a cheap one, an affordable one, Highly recommend the 20-meter rolls of the stainless steel mesh from Pluck Metals. But it's not just metals that you do now, so tell me about your expanded range.

It's not. So tomorrow we will introduce a new brand to UK market, which is Tektron. Fantastic time for us. So we're kind of expanding to what we want to do in beekeeping world, and we're going to introduce everything from honey extractors, from uncapping tables, wax melters. We've got anything to do with with honey processing. Yeah, our range will expand, so we're very excited to bring amazing value for money brand to UK.

Excellent. Well, I'm really excited to go and have a look around. Thanks for coming on the show. See you next time.

You're welcome. Thank you.

Right, next up on the tour of the pre-Beekeeping Show 2024 is Paul from Modern Beekeeping. Thanks for being on, Paul.

No worries.

The number one question that I've been asked in relation to Paul is, when are you bringing out the hive that is going to kill the Well, it's available here today. Okay.

And it's going to be available all year round, we hope.

So I was so excited about this last year, and I think there was an issue with the one that you had. There were some issues with Paradise as well, but all of that now seems to be completely resolved. So I have got 2 of these coming next day delivery when Paul gets back home. We're going to do a season-long series on the Paradise Smart Beehive that I'm so, so excited about. So for people who haven't seen that before, Paul, tell me about it.

Smart Hive is an extractless hive. So, but not only just for the hobby market, but for the commercial market. So in Finland, where these are produced, they have many, many, many of these. They're extracting in the field, they're saving bringing supers backwards and forwards. Really, really efficient way of managing your bees. It's definitely not just for the hobby market.

When I saw this last year, the best thing, and Paul just touched on it there, the most exciting thing of the new Paradise Smart Hive is the difference that it has to the Flow Hive. And I'm allowed to say that because I'm just an independent person who reviews different But the Flow Hive, you have to tap each frame individually unless you've kind of got some system to do it all together. The Smart Beehive is not like that at all. It basically all goes into a single collection point. And I thought at one point that's maybe a disadvantage because you want to have the separate flavors from each of the hives. That was before I tried my Flow Hive and went through the pain of extracting each frame individually. Takes absolutely ages. I love the idea with these that you just turn the key, And you can just come back, can't you? Because everything's sealed, it all goes into one single bucket, and you can just come back like at the end of the day and pick up your bucket of honey, and you've not got loads of dead bees in it. So like I said, I'm getting a couple of these Paradise Smart Hives. I'm going to take them home. We're going to run a season-long series on these hives. But what do you think of the Beekeeping Show 2024? Is it going to be as big as last year?

What are your plans?

I think, I think it's going to be bigger than last year. We've booked more space than last year. We've got more products to show you and display to get your hands on. Yeah, I think we're in for a good day, definitely.

And if you had to predict number one bestseller?

It's always going to be a National hive, isn't it? You know, that's the country we live in. It's the hive that we use.

It's an interesting observation, that, because I've always said, you know, if I was going to switch formats, I'd probably go to Langstroth. But the fact that the whole of the UK is on Nationals makes that very, very difficult for kind of logistics and swarm management and selling nucs.

But you know what?

We are selling so many more Langstroth nucs this year.

Yeah, the Langstroth has picked up, and it's always been there. We, you know, I mean, we've been selling Langstroth now for a lot of years. It's what we use. I mean, you go and talk to a bee farmer, a bee farmer will tell you, oh, if I started again, I'd start with Langstroth. It's cost efficient because you need less boxes for more honey. The brood boxes are bigger but not too big. So yeah, Langstroth is It's popular. We will sell more Nationals, but Langstroth is really popular. Not only that, we do Langstroth hives in 8-frame and 10-frame, very similar to the Lyson ones from Abello, and actually they're all interchangeable.

Oh, it's interesting. I didn't know that. That's good to know.

So we've got a great feeder that fits our Langstroth hive that is interchangeable, and the Smart Hive will even fit your Abello hive.

Wow, really?

Is it?

All interchangeable.

Excellent. Well, thanks very much, Paul. I hope you have a great show.

No worries.

Nice one, take care. Right, next up on our pre-Beekeeping Show tour is Ian from Oldcastle Farm Hives. First time at the Beekeeping Show. Welcome, Ian.

Thank you.

You excited to be a part of it?

Yeah, yeah, it's good. Um, there's a lot of work involved, but yeah, particularly bringing a lot of the big stuff that we do. Yeah, it's very difficult, but yeah, it's good.

So what are you bringing to the show this year?

Well, we've got a fully automatic line, which is a new type which Conaghan have developed, and we're the first in the UK to have it, and hopefully we find a big beekeeper who wants it.

Very nice. So you've got a lot of pre-orders, I see. What's the most popular thing?

A lot of pre-orders, yeah. Extractors, as you can see, they're all behind you here, ready, waiting for people to pick up, which is fantastic.

And what size extractor do you think people go for? Like, what's the sweet spot in the UK market?

Well, I think you've got a 9 and a 12, but it's certainly different sizes, but the 20 seems to be the favourite one at the moment, particularly the price. Yeah, you know, £895.

It's a good price. I think whenever I recommend it to someone, I say if you can get one that does like shallow frames but also maybe some brood as well, precisely, then the 20 frames tend to do that. Do you also do 20 shallow and then is it 8 deep?

No, no, 20 shallow and 20 deep.

Wow, see, that's really good.

Yeah, and you can put a set of screens in it as well, and then you can do 14 by 12.

Nice, tangentially?

Tangentially.

Excellent.

Oh, good, a good versatile option then.

It's an excellent option. Yeah, it can do Honestly, they did a new style controller on them because Connegan did have a couple of problems with the controllers in the early years, but that's been rectified now. We got the belt— they're not belt-driven anymore, they're gearbox-driven, so there's no belts whatsoever.

Nice.

And the new controller is absolutely fantastic, it doesn't miss a beat.

Excellent. Well, I can see that you're all set. How's life outside of bees? You do turkeys as well?

Yeah, we got a farm, but we're cutting back on that now at the moment, and Hopefully by the end of 2024, 2025, going into '25, we'd have finished completely and concentrating solely on the bees. So, and it's growing and growing and growing, and we're opening, hoping to open a little place in Ireland as well.

To do what, sorry?

Sell extractors.

Oh, very nice.

Yeah, we've got a lot of, a lot of following in Ireland, which is very, very good, and I'm hoping that it will work and it'll take off.

Well, thanks, Ian, for showing me around. I hope you have a really good show.

I hope so too. Thank you, Laurence, appreciate it.

Right, so we've had to send Damien away there because I originally asked Damien to come and do this video to give us a tour of the Abello stand, but he was a little bit scared. He didn't really want to do it, so Kerry has very kindly volunteered. She put her hand up straight away and said, I'll do it.

I would love to do it. I've always wanted to be famous.

So we, we set everything up and there was a slight issue with the setup, wasn't there? So I'll just flash down now because Kerry is actually standing on a box. We aren't the same height normally.

No, we're not. I'm not 6 foot 2.

But anyway, Kerry, pleasure to have you on.

It was carnage getting set up, especially trying to get up the actual ramp with the weight of the van. We had to have 3 attempts. We had to unload the entire van nearly in order just to get it inside the building.

Well, you're doing a fabulous job. Like, it's all coming together. I'll put a little sneak preview up of the video that Kerry sent me, like day zero or second zero. It was a bit of carnage.

It was carnage.

But it's looking really, really good now. So are you excited for the show tomorrow?

It's going to be fantastic. It's going to be better than last year.

What is your favourite bit? It doesn't need to be kind of like beekeeping. What's your favourite bit of the show?

Meeting all the customers. Everyone you've talked to over the phone all year, you get to meet them in person.

And it is great meeting Kerry, isn't it? Because whenever you ring up Abello, you know, Damien gets Kerry to be involved and Kerry just gives you all the information. She's so nice and kind and sorts stuff out. So it's great for you to be on here now. I know you might not be enjoying it.

I'm not enjoying it at all.

So go on, give me your prediction then for the 2024 Beekeeping Show. What is going to be the bestseller on the Abelo stand?

The bestseller, I think it's going to be the 12-frame hive. We've just been to Ireland last weekend for the Ulster Convention. All the 12-frame hives completely sold out, so we're hoping for the same.

Excellent. So I've got a little something here that we're going to kind of show, which is Abelo are giving away some free bags. So they've not decided yet kind of what the value of the order is, But if you spend enough at the Abello store, you will get a free—

Show them the back, Lawrence.

That mountain honey. We were going to give them away as freebies, but I think we, we realized that the UK market is not as used to getting freebies as maybe the American market, and someone might just come and take them all. So they're gonna— Damien's gonna give them away with certain orders, but obviously I'm telling you this now, this video will go out after the event. So if you've got one of these, you are in a very select few.

You absolutely need one of these bags.

They're really nice bags. We were talking, weren't we, on the kind of on the emails and stuff. They've come out really nice, and what I like is that's like a forever bag.

You know, absolutely bag for life. Beekeeping bag for life. What more could you want?

I know.

Got both of our websites on it as well. I love this. This is a brilliant.

Yeah.

So Damien didn't want to be in the video.

Now he's giving us advice from behind the camera.

Don't forget to say that.

Turn it around and you can. film. Look, there you go.

Hi.

Ah, that's brilliant. I love it.

He did—

he didn't want to come on camera, but what is it he said?

So you've got to forget. So basically, if you want to come and buy anything from our stand any point in the day and you don't want to carry it around for the rest of the day, you can leave everything with us here. We'll put a nice— find a nice safe place for it, and you can come back and collect it at the end.

It's a good shout, and I think that goes for kind of not only this conference where people might get the message a bit late, but kind of future conferences, come and buy your stuff early, reserve it before someone else comes and buys it, and then you can keep it here. You haven't got to lug it around with you for the whole day, and then you can just enjoy the day.

Some things we definitely only have one of, so get here early, guys.

What's the biggest disappointment from last year from like someone? Because I can imagine someone coming down saying, right, I want to buy like a 30-frame extractor, and they turn up at the end and there's not one there. Have you ever had like a bad experience like that?

Yeah, people generally, but we'll— we're happy to do, if you get to that point and you want something desperately, we're happy to do the show price and ship that out just for the cost of the shipping. So you'll still get a good show price deal, but you'll just pay the cost of the shipping.

So that's, that's really good to know. Like, Abello, at every single conference they go, they bring everything here. Like, there is a huge, huge amount.

We've got everything, everything you could possibly want.

It's a— I love coming here as well. Like, you know, I'm a beekeeper. I'm a little boy. I get so enthusiastic about stuff. But the thing that always catches my eye The most boring thing here is the warmers. You know, the honey warmers.

They're the best seller.

They literally— we said literally, jinx.

Literally, they are the best sellers.

They transformed my beekeeping because I had like a self-made, rubbish self-made, I'm shocking at DIY, a warming cabinet. And then I just thought, you know what, I'm gonna have to buy one. They're not cheap, but I thought I'm gonna put my money where— into something that's a bit of a difficulty, and it's by far and away The most kind of useful thing that I own.

Everybody that owns one says it's by far the best thing that they've bought, definitely.

They just plug and play. You press one button, it turns it on, you come back and your honey's liquid, and it's liquid every time. It's just really, really good. What's your favourite product? You can't say the 12-frame, you can't say the honey warmer.

Now you're gonna have to cut it out because I need to think of something. Can you stop?

Because I can't think of anything. We got her, we finally got her. She crumbled 5 minutes in, she's crumbled.

I've crumbled, that's it. Probably the Meliflow. It's a good all-rounder.

Yeah, it is good. It's one of those ones, it's kind of like the workhorse, isn't it? It's not like anything fancy, but you can't— there's nothing else that can kind of do the job of the Meliflow.

Nothing that can do that job. However, at the moment, this year's bestseller is creamers.

Creamers?

Absolutely. Everybody that's— everybody's had a creamer already this year.

Yeah, I love a creamer. Do you know, I know it's not— I know licensed—

It must be your video, Laurence.

Maybe.

It must be.

I do, I love soft-set honey, creamed honey, but the one thing that I'd love for Lysen to go back and do— I've got a 200-litre settling tank and it's conical bottom. I just love the conical bottom. I wish there was a way, and it'd be a difficult design, that you could integrate a conical bottom into the creaming machine. It'd be really good. It's not, it's not a massive issue because all I do is I just kind of decant all the honey off, I leave 10% at the bottom, and then that's my seed for next time. So it's not, it's not the end of the the world. world, but I'm always one for tinkering.

Maybe we'll pass that back to Lyson, maybe for 2025, maybe even for 2024 later in the year.

Brilliant.

Well, Kerry, thank you so much. Yeah, Damien didn't want to come on here, didn't want to be the face of Abello.

We'll get him next time.

Kerry is the face of Abello, so she's done an absolutely brilliant job. Just jump off your box for a sec, Kerry, so people can see how— yes, she's not as tall as me. There we go. She's quite small. But thank you so much for being here.

Thanks, Laurence.

Right, next up on the pre-tour for the Beekeeping Show, we've got Angie Sheriff BJ Sherif, thanks for coming on. Tell us about your bee suits.

Right, well, our company was established in 1968 when there was a desperate need for a bee suit on the market that was washable, that had a hood connected that you wouldn't lose like the other garments that were on the market. It was just like a net veil that fitted on a hat or something. And the amount of times that we as beekeepers, when we ran our honey farm, we left them out in the field and never found them again. So we wanted something that would attach to a garment and that was detachable so that you could wash the garment as well, because the ultimate end of what you're dealing with is honey, foodstuff. So you want it to look clean and presentable.

So how old is the company then? You say it goes back a few generations. When was it?

About 56 years old now.

Oh wow, so it's really getting on a little bit.

Yes, started by my, my parents. Their ancestors, or my father's ancestors, bought a factory in about 1860, which was a corset factory, and it went down through the generations, got to my dad. My dad was making bras for Marks& Spencer's, and technically they kind of put him out of business because they ordered about 1,000 or so bikinis, and it was a very, very poor summer, like the weather we're having now.

Yeah, not much changed.

They reneged on the, on the order, and in those days you could do that sort of thing. And technically it helped put my parents' business into liquidation. But my, my mum and dad went to the Royal Cornwall Show and they saw a beehive, and my Dad just gravitated towards a beehive.

As you do.

Yep, and spoke to everybody to do with beekeeping, came away having ordered 2 beehives and a load of bees. And he didn't have a bee suit at that time, but he did— he bought a grotty one, came from, I don't know, America or somewhere.

Yeah.

And just decided that, you know, the veil kept falling forwards, it was heavy and cumbersome. and everything, and he couldn't see through the black mesh. So, um, they created the hooded hood-type veil that you see loads of copies of today.

So they were the first ones who did that, weren't they?

Yes. Oh wow, very first ones in 1968.

Well, a fair old time ago.

Yeah.

Isn't it interesting how, like, when, like, a company fails or something goes wrong, like, it drives you into another area?

Definitely.

And you kind of think, like, if that never happened, you just wouldn't, wouldn't be here today, would you? You'd probably be selling Fancy bikinis or bras or something else.

Yeah.

So what— so tell me, what's your most popular product that you've got here? I know you do like these suits, but you've got different types.

We've got the Apiaris suit, which is a standard suit with nice roomy pockets here, breast pockets which have Velcro. It's a very, very fine weave of fabric, so it doesn't fluff up like wool or Or the cottons, and the bees can come and go. They don't get their, their feet caught in the fibres of the fabric, and that's been our bestseller over the years.

So I'm finishing off with this on. I'm going to buy this now. It's really, really nice. My wife will like this, and she'll see the video of it as well. Thanks for coming on and showing me around. I hope you have a really, really good show. Thanks very much, Lawrence. Right, next up on the pre-show tour for the Beekeeping Show 2024, we've got Roger from Payne's Beehives.

I hear you got here quite early this It was, yeah, 10 o'clock or half 10, I think we got here.

So yeah.

I was just saying to Roger before, like everybody else who I kind of get on to do these little chats, we've either had to like adjust the camera or do something crazy or get them a box like Kerry. And for the first time I need the box. How tall are you?

You must be a good 6'4, 6'5.

6'4, 6'5. That's pretty big.

I'm getting to the age now where I'm going to start decreasing in height though, I think.

My uncle was that, he was 6'6 and now we're like, we look each other eye to eye. He lies about his foot size as well.

What size?

You must have massive feet.

Size 14. 14.

Yeah, what can you say? It's supposed to be about bees, we're talking about height and feet sizes, right? So I've had loads of dealings with Roger this year. 680 nucs I bought from you.

Is that what it was?

And Richard has got them stacked up. I said to Richard, put aside a little bit of space, you know, because there's gonna be quite a lot of nucs coming. And, uh, I think he's a bit, uh, shocked as to how much space there was. There's like 23 pallets of nucs sitting there ready to go. So if you've ordered a nuc from Black Mountain Honey 2024. We bought the nucs from Payne's because we love how they're put together and we love the way that they travel in the post. I think they're by far the best for traveling in the post. So for you, what are you excited about for the beekeeping show?

Just seeing everybody. It's always a good opportunity just to go around and just say hi. You know, beekeeping, the industry itself is actually quite small, so it's, you know, everybody knows everybody. And yeah, just a good opportunity just to say hi and yeah, just to catch up on the season, what the weather's been like and what the winter's been like. Gossip.

Yeah, gossip. We love a bit of gossip, don't we? One of the things that I love about Payne's Polyhives, and not all companies do this, but you get iterative design change. So like for you, I think you changed from 100 grams per litre to 120 grams per litre.

120. We changed the entry So the original one was a little cutout, and now it's got a disc on it and a hole. And then the lid, more recently last year, the lid has doubled in size as well.

Yeah, so that was one of the things that I picked up on the design. You'd ever so occasionally, you'd get like condensation on there because maybe the top wasn't well insulated, but you picked up on it straight away, didn't you? Doubled the size of it. When I order my nucs from Roger, I always get, I get like a special order. He might curse me for saying this, but we don't get the solid lids. Because we're sending them out, we don't want to have to pay for the individual ventilated screens, so all of them come, 680 come with individual ventilated screens. And I said to Richard, because they're getting delivered at Richard's house, do a count up and double-check. And Richard rang me up, and Roger will know this, he rang me up and said, they've sent the wrong lids, they've sent me solid lids. And I said, oh no, because it's difficult, you have to unpack them all, do everything. But anyway, they hadn't sent the wrong lids.

Oh, thank You goodness.

just made me panic, didn't you?

You panicked, I panicked, Richard panicked, and what Richard hadn't done is he hadn't checked properly. He just opened them up and seen the thick lid and thought, oh, there's no way they would have upgraded the ventilated screen. But you did. That was the issue, wasn't it?

It's all part of the same moulding, so yeah, you upgrade one, it does the whole thing.

So if they're being sent out, you will see this year if you're getting a nuc, you'll get the Payne's poly nuc with the thicker 120 grams per litre poly, and you'll get the thicker roof as well with the ventilated screen. And what we suggest if you're getting that is you could just put a piece of Correx over it, a piece of insulation board, piece of plywood, anything to stop the rain getting in, and then you can just use that as a perfect nuc. What do you think your best seller is going to be tomorrow?

Oh, probably the poly nuc still. Okay, it's best seller every year for us, so yeah, it's going to be up there.

What's going on with the poly prices still? I know it's like taboo subject, isn't it? But like, you've got like— someone's got a stranglehold somewhere, haven't they? going on.

It is, yeah, it's— they seem to be going up. It's all— they say it's to do with the oil prices. Hopefully things have settled down, but yeah, who knows what with Brexit and everything else that they complain about, you know. Prices have risen, but hopefully things are more stable now.

Yeah, inflation is going down. It's not stopped rising yet, but it stopped rising at such a rapid rate, hasn't it? Roger, thank you so much for Going on. I want you the best for the beekeeping show. Thank you. Good. Right, so next stop of the beekeeping show pre-tour is Dan from BS Honeybees. Are you excited for the show, Dan?

Yeah, I think we're prepared and ready.

Yeah, hopefully.

How long did it take to get here?

Uh, it's only about an hour and a half.

Okay.

Yeah, it's all right for us.

It's— I see you at every show, and what I love about your products here, or like your stand, is it's like we just do a really good nuc. We don't mess about with anything else. We're not bringing kind of like hive tools.

We just bring basic Yeah, we tend to stick to what we know and what we're best at rather than trying to branch.

I was already speaking to Roger about poly hive price wars, so it would be unfair for me not to say it to you as well. What's going on with the price?

The price went up, so we've had to put our prices up. I think Maysmore did a big jump on their prices last year, but I'm not sure what their plan is this year. And Roger doesn't seem to put his prices up, but We just had 3 Arctic in.

Wow.

Um, because last year we had supply chain issues, so we want to make sure we're stocked ready to take us through until our next Arctic in May.

Okay.

Um, so yeah, big price jump. Worry— we had to put the price up just before this, and the worry was we were trying to do a show special price when the price just went up on these anyway. Um, but we can't absorb the costs, and it's not just the boxes themselves, it's the components. So like next week, Perispecs goes up 6%.

Oh wow.

But it's too late now, the Perispecs has gone up.

Yeah.

But we did buy— we bought a lot of the components like the silicone plugs, the entrance discs, this Perispecs, all in advance to try and hold that price for as long as we can.

So everyone's kind of at the mercy of the, the powers and the pricing and stuff. So I think we're all in it together. Obviously not me, I don't sell it. But what I love about your Nuke, and I think this is where, where everyone's Subject to the same price increases, all you can do is try and make your nuc kind of better than everybody else's. And what I love about the BS Honeybees nuc is like there's nothing else close to it on the market. Is it that 2-way design with the metal divider? Like, is that your most popular seller?

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Without a doubt. And the upgrade packs, they do do well, and it would be nice to include them as standard, but the way that they're made is— we ordered 200 for this show, um, 6 weeks ago and we've just got them, whereas the Correx, they come on pallets of 1,700 and we get them a week. Yeah, and we normally buy 2 pallets. Um, so it would be nice to have them as standard. Yeah, they're a good seller and the box themselves, they sell really well just without them anyway.

Yeah, I, I think the strategy is spot on. Like, if you put it in as a standard for the metal, the people who just want a 6-frame box, exactly, they're paying more for it, aren't they? So I think it's— I think you've got it spot on.

And we come from— like, we generally do use them as a 6-frame box to breed the overwintered nucs to breathe the nukes up, and we don't generally put the Correx dividing, so we don't need it there. And we thought from that point of view that, yeah, it gives you the 2 options. You don't want to include it as standard, and people pay the price for that.

So tell me about your new facility. Like, I watch from afar, like, I'm well jealous. If you don't know, they bought— you bought some land. Go on, tell me about your new facility.

Yeah, so we bought a 13.2-acre plot back in '21, I think, and then we got planning permission. to put up a 6,000 square foot barn. The plans I'd done in 2018, 2019, I was— we've been looking for 7 years, about 7 years, and we kept losing plots. And we think, yeah, we could buy a plot of land, £60 grand.

Nowhere near.

Not near Cheltenham. So we managed to get the plot at an extortionate price that I won't mention. But all the money that we'd saved from our— all from bees, Yeah, built that building. So that was all built from savings from, from what we've earned here. Yeah, and we had a small mortgage on the land that we still have to pay for the next 24 years. And yeah, 6,000 square foot building. It's got all one side down is a— it's all made out of refrigeration panels.

Nice.

So 100mm refrigeration panels. You've got reception office, massive extraction facility that gets used twice a year. Yeah, it's a killer, like such a huge amount of space. I mean, the floor alone, the PU floor cost like £8,000 or something ridiculous, but it's worth it. It's a really good setup. We've got that, we open the door and we can use it. Before, we had to move 50 pallets just to get to there.

It's not efficient, isn't it, moving stuff around?

No, efficiency since we had this building is just unreal. Yeah, the amount of time we save. And we're not moving stuff around and we can order 3 Arctics and we can put them in there.

And you get the economies of scale, I guess, being able to order like in such a huge quantity.

Yeah, you'd think so.

Well, not with this manufacturer. So let's talk a little bit about the honey price, bulk honey price. See any issues with it? Are you shifting all your honey?

No, we are shy. We've still got about only a tonne and a half for sale. Normally it's gone by now. It's not a huge issue because again, honey isn't our thing. Yeah. So we're relying on the sale of the bees and the queens. And if it doesn't sell, it's not a huge issue, but it would be nice if it did.

I know it's a strange one, the honey market. Like, if people are watching outside of the UK, like, it's died a bit of a death, isn't it? And there were loads of stuff about fake honey and like all this imported stuff, and I feel like it's damaged the UK market a bit as well, isn't it?

Yeah. I think the issue was they did the sample on that English honey, and I don't know who it was. And that's put off— everyone's opinion is that all honey is now fake. Yeah.

Well, Dan, it's been great chatting. I love watching kind of like your company grow, that absolutely massive company that I've followed for 10 years. I actually got my first ever Buckfast queen from Dan. He definitely won't remember because I just rocked up when I had one colony, and I never forget it. I drove down because We— I lived in Birmingham at the time, drove down, got a queen because I needed a queen, really excited, got back home, put it in the colony, left it for about an hour. I was like, come on, do your business, do your— ah, it's not doing the business right. I'll go in, I'll open it up, and it flew off. And then I came back down the next day and got another one, which is just like— that's standard. That's what you do with buying queens, isn't it? You put them in, get impatient, they fly off, and then you buy another one.

Is that right?

In your case, yeah.

But we learn, don't we? We kind of make mistakes and we learn a little bit. The other thing I was going to say, I drove past the other day, so about 2 weeks ago. My mum lives in Gloucester and I was driving down to my mum like that, just kind of happily going along, and I looked to the left like that and I saw your place just completely randomly. It's huge, isn't it?

It's a big old barn, yeah. You can't grasp even from the photos and everything, even with the trailer, people are like, your trailer's huge. Yeah, but yeah, we wanted to sort of try and future-proof ourselves. However, we're now looking that we need a mezzanine for a bit of It's always the way, isn't it?

Whatever you get, you fill.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, we, um, come from a 1,600 square foot before, and we were renting a bit for like some super storage. So it's, it's a massive increase for us in size, but we superfilled it, definitely. But the good thing is we've got the 13 acres as well, so we can use that.

Keep the bees on there.

Yeah, yeah. We've got— there's 100 and— nearly 160 nucs down the bottom of the field, and just Just having that convenience. Yeah, before we had to get up at like 4 in the morning, go around, pick up all these nucs. There's 150 down the bottom, we just drive down the field.

Yeah, having like the holding station, I guess.

Yeah, yeah, there's still another like 3 nuc apiaries, but that is like one of the major ones.

Okay, yeah, cool. Well, just wait there one sec, we're done. We're just getting told to get out of the way. Dan, I wish you all the best. Good luck, and I'll see you soon. Cool. So everyone's closing up now for the beekeeping show, packing away, ready for the main event tomorrow. And I've just been in the lecture hall here doing a little bit of a sound test, something that is brand new to the Beekeeping Show in 2024, which is a live demo theatre. Now we're changing it up a little bit, we're going to livestream it to the YouTube audience at exactly the same time. There's going to be like a 10-minute transfer in between each of the lectures, which I've just been speaking to Alex, the director, going to be carnage, but it's going to be really, really good fun. I'm so excited to get up there, meet all of the people that are coming in, And answer some really, really challenging questions. I'm with Rob from Frames and Feeders. This is a proper whistle-stop tour of the pre-Beekeeping Show. I'm going through absolutely every single person and getting them on camera. So Rob, good to see you again.

Good to see you, Laurence.

How are you?

I'm very good, thank you.

Great stuff.

Are you excited for the show?

Yep, we're all ready. Yep, it's exciting times to kick off this season.

Very nice.

Yes, we're looking forward to it.

So how long did it take you to get up here?

We're about 5 and a half hours away, so a bit of a trek.

Traffic good?

Yeah, really good. Yeah, smooth journey. So ready for a beer and something to eat to finish off the evening.

Cool. So your company's a relatively new company, isn't it? Do you want to tell us a little bit about how it started, where it's going, and what it's seen like?

Yeah, of course.

So yeah, second year of business now. So our full first year last year, finding our feet, a lot of R&D, a lot of tooling, a lot of getting it right from the start. wanted it to be the best quality product that we can, we can offer. Uh, we stayed out of China, we had all our tooling made here in the UK, and we have all the production done in the UK as well. So we're really trying to boost the UK economy as well by having them made in the UK.

Very good.

Um, yep, so we've got all 3 sizes now. We've got the 14x12s, the jumbos.

You know I love to touch and feel stuff at the same time, so go on, these are 14x12s?

14x12s, yep, all one piece moulded. Foundation frame all in one, ready to go.

So we spoke previously, didn't we, about like the moulding costs. I'm not sure, like in the US, yeah, these are pretty standard, aren't they, in terms of like a single moulded unit with the foundation?

In the Langstroth size, definitely, yeah. But nobody's making them in the British standard size, so we saw that gap in the market. Yeah, we are indeed it. I developed them. We've done a lot of 3D printing to make sure that they would work and that they were successful. All our trials went really well, so we upscaled it to full production.

So go on, tell everyone at home, how much does it cost? Give me the full moulding cost for all of this.

So the tool just to make this one frame, you're looking at about £39,500 plus VAT.

£39,500 plus VAT?

Plus VAT, yeah.

Oh my goodness, for one frame size?

One frame size. So we've got 3 tools which make all 3 sizes. The, um, The supers are made 2 at a time, but the brood and the jumbo are made 1 at a time, and the cycle time is about 45 to 50 seconds. They can press them off, but obviously the tooling costs are extortionate.

It's amazing, isn't it? I'm going to put these close up to the camera like that. When people say, oh, it's £4, it's £5, it's £6 a frame, it's £130,000. Hi, Murray McGregor over there giving us a wave. Murray, we will be over to you next to have a chat.

Yeah, the competition right next to us.

Yeah, okay, he's on there.

So yeah, we've got about £120,000 invested in tooling, so we've tried to keep the prices competitive to timber, as close as we can, but obviously the profit margins are small, so we're going to try and do volume sales.

That's where we're at.

Excellent.

So I've tried these, I've got a lot of these, I bought a lot of these from Rob last year, and I have to say, like, I really, really like them. They are, once they're in the hive and the bees have drawn them out, like, they're brilliant. You get a huge density of worker brood, far higher proportion of worker brood compared to any drone brood, which was surprising. I wasn't really kind of like ready for that.

Yeah, we tried to get the cell size spacing just about right in the middle so that they would be accepted for brood. I have seen drone on these combs where they just build them out just a little bit deeper and you start to see some drone on them. So a lot of people ask me about drone, but they do build them out for drone as well.

Yeah, so on mine I've seen a bit of drone coming up on them, but nowhere near as much as if I put the wax in. But I do think a lot of that's come to do with the timing as well of when you put them in. Like, we put them in— if you put them in in April, you'll get loads of drone. If you put them in in August, you won't get anywhere near as much drone. One thing that I did notice though, even with mine that came pre-waxed, it's a little bit slower to get them drawn out compared to wax, isn't it? It's not quite as quick.

Yeah, I think the waxing is just a sort of a personal preference for the bees. We've had some beekeepers say they've had to recoat them in their own wax. for the bees to be interested in them. We put them out as a waxed product so that people didn't put them into their hives and they fail. That was the last thing we needed as a new business, so we had to make sure that they would be successful. That's why we offered them up with a waxing service. We still offer a waxing service.

Okay, that was going to be my next question. Do you want a waxing service? And I would recommend the waxing service because although you kind of think, oh, it's just like rubbing some wax on or painting it on, like, it's still quite time-consuming. time-consuming, isn't it, putting the wax on. So to have— be able to buy from Rob Frames and Feeders like a fully functioning, fully waxed frame that is literally ready just to put into your beehive there, absolutely brilliant.

No more foundation sheets year after year. You can just scrape that back and you're ready to go for the next season.

And that's one of the things that I really do like, you know, that you don't have to mess around re-waxing things. Like, a scraping back is just so, so quick, isn't it? Tell me about the recyclability of them.

Yep, so we worked with the manufacturer down in New Haven We've made these from an ABS material, which is a highly recyclable plastic. We print the recycling logo up here on the top of every frame to show that they are fully recyclable, and we're going to offer a buyback service as well. So if after 5 or 10 years you're finding that the frames do need replacing, we'll buy them back at the cost value of the plastic. We can then recycle that, turn it into new product. You know, that's not the end of that that plastic's life. It has got more life in it. We can turn it into new product once it reaches the end of life.

Can you turn them back into new frames?

Does it work like that?

We can turn them back into new frames. These are all virgin. These are 100% virgin plastic, just so that we can guarantee that they're 100% food safe. But then we could turn them into seconds products. We've got some other products lined up in the pipeline which we're working on, some new ideas.

I love that. Like, the number one thing that I hear when I talk about plastic friends is people saying it's not good for the environment, but if you've got like a recyclable chain for them and a company that's willing to accept them back and they're going to kind of clean them and grind them down and put them back into something else, the more you recycle a product, kind of like the lower the carbon emissions and the lower the impact on the environment is. So it's really good that you do that. I hear you've got something very special lined up for 2024 though as well.

Yeah, we've got 2 products. I've got the prototypes here. I'm not going to reveal them just yet, but, uh, we're going to have a chat with a few people and get some ideas. And, uh, if all systems look good, then we're going to launch them into the, into the product market. They've never been seen before. Like with our frames, they're brand new products to the market and, uh, just adds a little twist on how you, uh, collect your honey for the year.

And of course, like, I've pre-spoken to Rob about this, we will get an exclusive look at Black Mountain Honey. So if you're interested in that and Rob's whetted your appetite, Definitely hit the subscribe button because we will get the first peek on the UK and the worldwide market for that product that Bob was just talking about.

They will be for Langstroth and for National. We're going to launch it for both size hives.

And then there's one final bit of really good news, expansion for your company. Do you want to tell us about the boxes behind you?

Yep.

So we've got some Abelo boxes just behind me here. Pleased to say that we're going to go in with Damien at Abelo and he's going to be retailing our frames through his store. And then we're going to be showing them off in his boxes here on our stall as well. So a little bit of a partnership deal with Abello for this year.

Excellent. There's nothing I love more than 2 beekeeping companies getting together, especially a great company like Friends and Feeders and another great company like Abello, to put everything together to provide a really good product to the end consumer. Really, really excited about that one. Thanks, Rob. I really appreciate it. Hope you have a great show. Yep.

Enjoy the show.

Thank you.

Right, next stop on the pre-tour of the Beekeeping Show, we've got Duncan Simmons from Simmons Apiaries. Duncan is where I get the vast majority of my breeder queens. Not allowed to call them breeder queens, am I? Pure Buckfast queens, some of the very, very best pedigree queens that you can get. Duncan, good to see you.

Nice to see you again.

As always.

Yeah, what have you got at the beekeeping show then?

Well, we've brought up— we're actually introducing— I'll show you this one first. This is the new Instant Vap, the compact. This is the first time it's been shown, so it's been introduced here at the show. They've just been introduced. And they're very quick. A lot of people will be used to the original one, which is great, but this is a lot quicker. I like this one. And everything, where on the old one where you used to have everything on the back that told you when it was ready, this one does it with one flashing light. So with the light, as soon as you turn it on, it will flash, and then you'll see it flashing as it heats up. When it's ready to use, you get a constant light. You then put your oxalic acid into the chamber, it releases, and then basically it just tells you when it's finished and you can start again. So it basically does everything for you and it's a lot quicker.

Brilliant. So I'm a bit gutted because I've got the old one, I want the new one now. So for people who've literally got no experience of bees whatsoever, what is it for?

It's basically what the unit does, it releases oxalic acid vapour. The vapour goes into the hive, It covers the whole— because it goes in so quickly and so much, it covers the whole of the hive, gets in contact with all the bees, and that vapour will kill the mites.

Okay, I'm going to be horribly controversial here, and if you want me to cut this bit out, we can. What do you use for it, oxalic acid or apibioxal?

In a lot of places around the world, you're allowed to use just straight oxalic acid, but because of regulations here, We are supposed to be using the, um, apibioxal. The only thing I would say about apibioxal and using it with this, it does tend to caramelise inside the boiler because there is a little bit of glucose in it. But what you'd have to do is just keep washing and washing and washing it out, which we have special cleaning caps for, and that will clear it.

It's, it's a real pain, and Duncan's right, like, you need to use apibioxal. That's the only thing that's legal to use to kill varroa mites by using oxalic acid. Any products, but it does— like, the reason that they licensed it in that way is to kind of get protection on a unique product, and they added glucose in. They could have added in anything, couldn't they? Could have added in something that was—

Yeah, it would have been better without the glucose. Yeah, but hopefully they might work on something and do a different formula, which would be much better.

It would be good. I've used pretty much every single vaporization or sublimation device. I started off with a gas fat, I then had like a Varox, like the Pan sublimator, then I had a Sublimox, and each and every one of those I had issues with. Like the Gasvap, I just— it just didn't work very well, got too hot. The Varox, it just took too long and you had so much setup at the beginning. The Sublimox was okay-ish, but it just kept on getting blocked, the tube, and I spent all my time like holding the lid on and it would pop off. Yeah, I had real issues. And obviously you had to carry around like a generator to use that one as well. So I got one of these last I got one of these 2 years ago, but I only used it for the first time last year, and it's absolutely transformed the way that I treat my bees. It's just so quick. I mean, it's so, so quick.

I used to spend hours and hours treating, and then this came along, and you don't put it off, you know. Even if you had a rainy day, you still do it.

Yeah.

And, you know, you do it as you should on those days that you do it, because it's just quick and easy.

It's really quick and easy. One of the things that I love about it— there's 2 things I particularly like about it. One is that Because it's so well heated, like you've got the battery connection so you can use any battery on it, but because it's so well heated you get this real like firing effect. Because a lot of people say to me, oh, it's like a, it's a brass nozzle, is it not going to damage my poly hives? And yeah, if you stick it like right next to some poly, it will probably melt it. But because you get that projection of the sublimates straight out so much, you just hold it by the entrance. Literally, I just hold it there.

A lot of people say, you know, do, does it have to go in, do I need to extend it? And I said no, That it will come out of there so fast, it just goes, you know, you can hold it that far away and it'll just go straight into the door.

Exactly.

So you just have the hive there. I'll kind of hold it up a bit. You just have the hive there, put it right by the entrance, and you just fire it in, just go straight in. But then the other thing that I absolutely loved, and I got Duncan's advice for this one, is that when you come to clean it out, you take that bit off, don't you? And you put it up and you invert it. Yeah, I forget it. And it just goes bang and just fires all this water moisture out. And like, it's squeaks, and you can hear how clean it is inside. So it just means it's going to last forever. And then obviously made like really good quality, nice kind of stainless steel all the way around. I love the new model though.

And with this one as well, and the same as the, the new model, you've got your silicone on the front as well. You've got your silicone protectors, so if you put it up next to your poly, they're not going to get burnt.

It's, it's a brilliant innovation. Duncan's selling a huge amount of these, and I think that you'll continue to sell a huge amount of these. Are you looking forward to the show tomorrow?

I am, yeah. I think it's going to be really big. I mean, last year was really good, but I think there's going to be so much, so many more people coming. And just come to the stand and pick one up and try it and see what you think.

Definitely do. Duncan's a great guy. I get my Buckfast Queens from him, but unfortunately he is an Everton fan, which, you know, might knock you down a little bit.

Yeah, I know. We want our points back.

Did you get— oh, you want—

We don't know.

He wants his points. No one in America will get that reference. but it's a very big team in Liverpool, let's say it that way.

Yeah, one of the oldest.

One of the oldest, excellent. Okay, well, thanks very much.

Brilliant, nice to see you. Thank you very much.

So, absolute special guest here today, we have got Murray McGregor, the UK's biggest bee farmer. Is that the right term? I know you'll be shy.

Yeah, it's to do with food.

To do with food. You keep bees on a monstrous scale, don't you?

Absolutely Absolutely crazy.

Yeah.

How many colonies have you got?

Uh, about 5,000 working colonies and about 1,200 nucs.

Amazing, that is brilliant. But you've started coming to these trade shows now, haven't you? So, so tell me about what you're doing at the trade shows.

Oh, we, we just try— it's a couple of things. It's about a profile and presence, but also we import a range of items, hive parts, frames, pre-wired, made-up frames, wax from a small cooperative abroad, and we get them at really good prices, so we like to pass it on to other people as well.

Yeah, Murray does a brilliant job of that. Like, I've had huge amount of Murray's frames and they're excellent, excellent quality, but they come fully assembled and ready to go. And remind me, they come with the foundation in again, don't they?

So you have the choice, eh? You have the choice. You can get them with or without the foundation.

Yeah.

Uh, and, uh, so, and you get a choice of the grades of foundation, either our Scottish heather wax or our imported wax. And, uh, they're just, as you say, good to go. Some people like to wax them themselves, some people like to put their own foundation in them. And also, uh, later this season we're going to be launching, uh, flat pack frames as well. Not traditional style flat pack frames for people too, and because a lot of people are asking for it.

Okay, cool. I, I very much sit in the camp which is I like the frames to come with the foundation in. It's so useful, isn't it, throughout the season? You can just have like— I bought a couple of pallets and I left them up undercover, and every time I needed some frames, like, I didn't have to make up the frames, but I didn't have to whack— like, waxing frames can take quite a while, can't it, as well?

There's one of, one of our customers in the northeast of England, he, uh, I put a bit on Twitter just this week. He'd just had a delivery from us, and I just put it down that these are a complete game changer for the single-handed bee farmer. It's not that he doesn't have to do the work making them up, because it's done and it's cheaper than buying the components and making them up yourself anyway. But also it releases him to do so many other things when he could have been spending weeks in the shed nailing up and waxing frames.

And, and it's, it's for that exact reason that I love buying them. Like, if they were way more expensive than kind of putting them together yourself, then you'd still argue that they're probably good value doing it because you're saving all that time. But the fact that they're like the same price as buying, buying it from like another beekeeping manufacturer, like not assembled, it really is a game changer. So do you sell— I know it changes, but do you sell just trade only now, or do you sell—

Well, essentially trade only.

Trade only.

Uh, We'll sell a few things to the public at events like this, but we essentially are looking— we're a business-to-business supplier. And the Bee Farmers Association collective orders and people like yourselves that want to, to sell them on, because we don't have the, the structure nor the time nor the manning to be a full-on retail supplier.

Okay.

That's a specialist job for folk like you.

It certainly is.

It's a time-consuming job, but a good job. So I obviously don't sell any equipment because I've got a small garage, that's all I've got, and I've got nothing in there. If people at home are watching this and they want to buy some of these frames, give a shout out to some of the people who are stocking them.

Yes, yeah, I mean, you have a compatriot that stocks them, so, uh, and he's doing a wee fine with them.

Yeah, he's doing good. So, so for anyone who doesn't know, I know I speak a little bit different to Griff, but Gwynedd Griffith, he stocks them, doesn't he? He's doing a huge amount. Is there anyone else?

Well, there's a few folk taking them, but mostly because of the nature of what we're doing, and they're not your bog-standard BBKA pattern frame because they're pre-wired, the foundation's a slightly different size. Yeah, it's essentially the professionals that are adopting them rather than the amateurs.

Okay, it's, uh, it's an interesting take because they are like, they're really, really good frames, and I just think The people at home who want to buy them, you know, I'll plug Griff again. You can buy them direct. I know he had a huge amount of stock go in last year, and I think he's probably like quadrupled his order this year, hasn't he?

He's got an order in. There's a few folk got orders in that we're preparing. We've actually, uh, had a few problems with the Houthi rebels.

I really hope not.

So, uh, our, uh—

You're not stuck in the sea, the ones that you've got?

No, we have a container that is going to be like 3 weeks late getting here because it's got to come around by South Africa.

Yeah, at least it'll be a bit quicker than, than the one that got delayed last year.

Oh, that was terrible. That was caused by, that was caused by the Port Health at Felixstowe being a bunch of pedantic beeped.

Yeah, Murray is the absolute coalface of kind of like import regulations post-Brexit, aren't you? So you're navigating it all.

Trying to, yes.

Trying to navigate it, yeah. So it's not just about boxes and frames. Tell me about some of the other stuff you do. We've got your lanta in the background.

This is your lanta, but for person away in the back. Give them a wave, please.

Hello.

So I get, I get told off so much. I started off calling her Jolanta, and then someone said, no, you have to say Yolanta. Yeah, clear it up. Yolanta, Jolanta, how do we say it? Is it Jolanta or Yolanta? It's like, it's Yolanta.

Pull this G, it's a Y.

So it's a Y.

Okay, cool. And that's her, her assistant and sidekick. Hello. Yeah, so they work together in the Queen Unit all the time.

Oh brilliant.

So Murray has said very kindly that I can go up and visit everyone here kind of in the summer, so we'll do maybe a bit of queen rearing and definitely going to come and see some of your heather.

Yeah, come and see the heather site and bring this thing with you. You'll absolutely adore it.

So final mention then, maximum crop from a single heather colony last year in pounds, what did you get?

The good places, probably about 60. The bad places, about 3.

Was it a bad year last year?

It was, it was a poor year overall. The good places were average and the bad places were catastrophic.

And what do you put that down to? Weather?

It's entirely weather. There was no— we had no good weather in July or August, so the bell heather missed and then the ling heather missed. Yeah, so we were, we were down by 40 tonnes. Now, if you know the value of heather honey, That's a £360,000 hole in your turnover.

Oh wow, yeah, that's not good. So what's your target for this year? Go on, tonnage of heather honey for 2024 is?

About 100 to 120.

100 to 120 tonnes?

Tonnes, yes.

And go on, how would people buy that then? I know you don't sell it by the jar, but how does it work? If you've got that much honey, how do you get rid of it?

Our honey all goes in steel drums, or we sometimes do— we do actually several tonnes a Oh wow. And we've got a big client that takes the entire crop of cut comb and then sells it on to other beekeepers.

Amazing.

And you often see other beekeepers with a very distinctive box for the cut comb. We know where it came from, it was ours. Excellent.

Well, you're a very busy man. Thanks for coming on, Murray. I'll see you around.

Right, it is the day of the 2024 Beekeeping Show, and my first stop is with Luke and Susan from the Northumberland Honey Company. So thanks for being on. Are you excited for the show?

Oh yeah, always excited.

Yeah, we're trying not to be, but it was a late night last night.

So this is the most challenging one I've done yet because I've only got 2 mics, so I have to wear a mic and then we're sharing a mic over there as well. So hopefully it's all good.

Sorry, it's a bit amateur, but we'll cope.

The more we use, the better. Yeah, definitely.

So what do you think the best seller is going to be here today for you guys?

It'll be the mead because people know it already and people come back for the mead.

We've got tasters of the sparkling. We've got a new distilled spirit.

Yeah, that'll be popular as well. And we also do a mead-making kit now, so that's a new product that we're launching. But not only that, we speak to a lot of our queen customers here as well, so it's great to catch up with them and get some really good feedback.

We see a lot of bee farmers for the instrumental insemination. and breeding queens and that sort of thing.

Yeah.

Amazing. So you make all of your kind of spirits and mead and everything yourself?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Is it good fun?

Yeah.

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

You should come up.

I definitely want to come up. I've been, I've been trying to find someone online, you know. So what I've done, when we jar our honey, you'll have the same. You jar the honey and you might do, I don't know, a couple of hundred jars, and then say the last 2 jars that come through, like, they go in the quality control box because they've got like a bit of wax or a bit of froth or something like that. I've been keeping up this box for about six years now. Yeah, I've got about 500 jars of honey that's absolutely fine, but just needs a filter. I would love to turn it into a meat. Yeah, and then like do it for charity or something.

You know, cover all of your costs and then bring it up and stick it in the upper melton and away we go.

Could be fun, couldn't it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'd definitely like to come and film there because you're not that far away. I had someone contact me who lived really close to. I think they had like a—

what was it, like a guest house or something?

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But I was going to come up then, but it was, it was a bit— yeah, it was right in the middle of the school holiday session.

Yeah, nightmare.

So what are you most excited about for the beekeeping season, or are you just dreading it?

Like winter?

Winter, yeah, yeah, yeah.

We've got—

yeah, we've got a lot going on this year, um, a lot more instrumental insemination, which we did not last year.

We've got a new queen lab going in.

Yeah, so doing a lot with that, um, with the breeding work. So that's going to be really fun. Yeah, we've got all our production colonies as well. We produce honey, but our passion definitely lies in the breeding, doesn't it?

So we're looking forward to it being a better year than last year.

Just in terms of the weather?

Yeah.

It was so bad, wasn't it?

Yeah.

Anything that's easier than last year will be a bonus.

And are you all set up? Like, I don't know if anything like me, like you kind of get to March and you think, I've done nothing that I was going to do in the winter, like frames, boxes. Are you on target?

I've done all my social media stuff.

And social media as well.

Yeah.

We need to employ somebody to do that for us.

But it's, uh, it's hard work. We, we, we've started to work a lot more efficient. Everything's palletized, you know, we're, we're, we've done it for enough years now to just get it all mapped out.

We kind of know roughly when we need to have stuff done by, so yeah, we just—

You just take, take the stress out of beekeeping by organizing it. Yeah, it's like a military operation, like.

Yeah, yeah.

I wish mine was like a military operation. It's so far from that. It's just like panic throughout, literally panic for 12 months of the year. Yeah, um, thank you so much for being on. I hope you have an excellent beekeeping show. So I just filmed maybe, what, like a 5 or 10 minute video with Belinda from BB Wear, and I filmed it in 120K slow motion. So it wasn't a very good one, was it?

It wasn't.

So we'll start that one again. I'm really sorry, really sorry about that. We are at the BB Wear stand at the Beekeeping Show 2024, and I am with Belinda, the owner of BB Wear. So Thanks for coming on. Are you excited for the show?

I'm very excited. It's lovely to be back after what seems like a very long time.

I know, it goes around quite quickly though, doesn't it?

Yeah.

So you've got some new products here today. Do you want to tell us about your new products?

We are launching our TruView Veil, which is quite revolutionary. It gives you a clear Perspex screen to look through, which is easily removable and replaceable should it get Scratched. And currently we are a bit overwhelmed with the interest in it.

Oh, amazing, because yeah, because I'm not aware of kind of how it's progressed after I did the video. Like, you kept me in the stages through the various iterations of design that we can talk about in a bit, but you're saying it's doing well.

So you've got some pre-orders in?

Plenty of pre-orders, and I'm quite excited to see what people make of it here. I think it will make beekeeping A lot easier if you're looking into a hive, like, to check the eggs.

Yeah, I think it's going to be really exciting in terms of people coming in and actually seeing it in here.

It's a shame that it's a bit cold in here today, isn't it?

Like, it's a bit— it's freezing. So the issue that was raised with the issue of condensation, it's a shame that it's a little bit cold in here today. When you're in like a cold environment, like, you will get a tiny bit of condensation on it, but when I have it like in my warm house, there's absolutely no condensation whatsoever, especially not at eye level. But to get that that clear view, like that true view of the brood is really invaluable. Like the feedback that I've got from people, especially people who wear glasses, is that you had issues like looking through the veil and the glasses would kind of like focus on the veil. So I do think it'll make a massive difference to people like looking for disease, looking for, trying to look for eggs or larvae or anything like that. It really is like, in my view, a massive game changer.

Yeah.

So what's your best-selling products here? Like what do you think you're gonna sell the most of today?

Well, the Ultra is still the market leader from our company. It is very popular all over the world. We've just got a big order going to Europe. And yes, across all the markets really— commercial, hobby beekeepers, and of course the interest with the Asian hornets.

Yeah.

It's very, very well received because we can't guarantee it as being sting-proof, but it's As close as.

And this is the reason that I love it, and this is the reason I think it's so popular as well. It ticks all of the boxes. So the reason that I bought it was, but I was kind of at the time, I had really angry bees and they just used to sting me through my other bee suit.

So even though I had a bee suit on, I'd get stung through it.

So then I bought the, the Ultra Suit to try and kind of give me that additional sting protection. But then what you also get with it as well is this like ability to stay cool. Like it's, it just transforms beekeeping in hot weather, doesn't it?

Oh, it does, yes, totally. I mean, you really just wear it and the air blows right through it, and you've also got the confidence that the fabric is 5mm thick, so it's a little bit deeper than a bee sting.

Yeah.

Um, and yes, it is by far the most popular suit at the moment. Don't know what this season will hold, but we have got, uh, a lot of interest in it already for the season.

Yeah, it is a very, very good I can say that kind of my own experience. What I like to do on a really hot day is like a water spray bottle, take a water spray bottle with me, and then when it gets hot, I just kind of like spray it all over myself. And you go out and you're almost a bit too cold, and it's like 25 degrees outside, so it's like you just get this air conditioning effect kind of completely over you, don't you? But anyway, I know you're very busy and I know you've got loads to get on with. Thank you so much for coming on, and I wish you very good luck for the show.

Cheers.

So, so this is brilliant, and this is totally for carry this one that I managed to convince Damien to come on.

So hi Damien, how you doing?

Hiya, how are you?

He's brilliant.

We're looking at the 3-in-1 extractor and uncapper. So I was just having a look over here and I just wanted to bring it on just to kind of let Damien talk to you about this really, really good space-saving machine. So go on Damien, tell us about this machine.

Hiya, we've got a new extractor on the market. Actually, it's back again after 10 years and it's 3-in-1. So you have 20 frames radial extractor, uncapping tray and is the strainer on the bottom. So it's doing— you put in the frame here, uncapping straight to the extractor, and it's all done. So it's like 3-in-1 at the same time, and it's saving space and everything.

So it's quite cool.

Like, I'm looking at that and just thinking, what a nice neat solution. Like, as opposed to getting like, I don't know, like a 12—

you say it's a 12-frame extractor?

It's 20 frames.

Right, so it's a 20-frame extractor.

So instead of getting a 20-frame extractor and an uncapping And somewhere to kind of like take all of your cappings off. You've got this little really small, like neat space.

Yeah, yeah, can I maybe show inside the shed? Yeah, yeah.

So it is a really lovely space-saving design.

So you get your little rack there, you put your frame on, you uncap, the wax cappings are held up here, all the honey drips through, and then you put it into the extractor, it spins it out, but then the honey from the extractor feeds back down to where the uncapping tank drippings go. And then I guess at the The other side, you've just got a tap.

Yes, yeah, it's just, yeah, it's standard steel tap. Yes, yeah, you can put another strainer, or the future maybe you add like heated bottom and some maybe more, some more things to keep that smooth.

Excellent. And this is one thing I do love about Abello, is they're constantly looking to improve the products there. So like Damien said, maybe look to improve it, maybe look to add like a heating element, make it flow, look at the different filtration. But like the system as it works is really, really good. at the moment. But what a bargain though, it's a 3-in-1 extractor and uncapper with a 20-frame extractor, and it's, it's normally £179.95 including the VAT, and then at the show it's £152.50 including the VAT. These are becoming like a real bestseller because not only keeps the cost down, but it does it in a really neat shape as well. So the doors have opened and the 2024 Beekeeping Show is now live. I've got myself a coffee, which is nice, but unfortunately I Kind of. Well, I say I had to pay for my own coffee. I didn't. Abello bought me a coffee, but the coffee isn't free here. Um, bit gutted because it was nice in America having like free tea and coffee all day, but I filled up my water bottle and I'm good to go. But the 2024 Beekeeping Show is live and open. Everyone's piling in, and I really look forward to meeting everyone.

So for me, this was the absolute best part of the Beekeeping Show.

From the second that the doors opened and people started streaming in, I was talking to people from like 9:00 AM in the morning all the way through to half before. When I went home at night, I had the sorest throat at the end of the day. But you know what, I wouldn't swap it for the world. I absolutely love talking to kind of all of my customers and people who watch the videos. Like, this is for me the highlight of the beekeeping season, highlight of my year, which is coming back to a beekeeping show like this and being able to connect with people who have given me the platform to kind of share my beekeeping videos on YouTube. It's incredibly humbling. It's very, very surreal. It's a really strange experience because, you know, I don't have that in my normal life. But then you go to a beekeeping show and people know who you are. The rest of the day turned into an absolute blur, to be honest, because it was just talking to people non-stop. And then before I know it, the day was finished. So although there was more stuff going on in the beekeeping show and more stuff that I wanted to show you on this video, unfortunately I just couldn't get around and film because I was talking to people the whole time. The only one thing that I want to mention on here that I did manage to get around and take a video of, but I didn't get to chat to the Was this new national uncapping machine. So it's like a manual uncapping machine where you push the capped frames of honey in and these rollers kind of compress the cappings and slice through them. The idea being that you can take the honey then and put it into your extractor. And with this kind of manual uncapping process, it's enough to let the honey come out. So I've got no experience of this whatsoever, and I did want to speak to the guy and kind of have a little bit of a go and have a chat about it, but I just didn't get the time. So I'm just adding this bit here onto the end of the video just to give you an idea of what it was like. But there were, there There are a few more bits like this in the beekeeping show that I really wanted to go over. I wanted to have a look at, but just didn't have the time to get round.

So there we go, that is the end of the 2024 Beekeeping Show. Everybody's running home with their bargains. I've not stopped talking for 9 hours straight, I think, today, and a good 7 hours straight yesterday.

But I absolutely love it. Like, you'll never hear me moaning about talking about beekeeping.

But even better than that, people coming up to me and saying, you know, they love watching the videos, they They love the channel.

They've got nucs on order.

It's absolutely brilliant. Massive thanks to Alex and Rob for having me at the Beekeeping Show again this year. I really, really have enjoyed it, and I can't wait to do the same thing again next year.