Visiting an Old Beekeeper’s Apiary – But One Hive Has Other Plans! 🐝🚨

I'm just going to pan over here at the moment because look what's going on in this corner, Carl, over there. Definitely something happening over there. It's a swarm trying to land in that box. Should we, should we go and have a look?

Yeah, can do.

Today you'll notice I'm at a completely different apiary site. I'm at Carl Lockyer's home apiary and he's very kindly offered to show me round. In this video, we're going to take a look through an absolute ton of different colonies, mating colonies, full colonies, nucs. Everything in Carl's apiary. Right, so the first colony we're going to have a look at, Carl put a mated queen in the other day, and we're going to take a look inside and see if she's been accepted.

She's been shut up altogether.

So why have you shut her up, Carl?

Just so she'll start laying and stay there. You know, once they've laid an egg or two in there, they'll stay. So you can tell they're shut up because they're buzzing around all over the place. You know, they're looking for a way out.

So how do you set your colonies up when you're introducing queens then?

Some I'll just put queens straight in. More often than not, I just put them straight in. I don't introduce them in cages.

Do you make the colony queenless, hopelessly queenless? Like, what's the makeup of the nuc?

They've nothing to make a queen with. So when you put a virgin queen in, like a sigh of relief, they want that queen. You just put it in the middle of the frame and you can see them licking it already.

So do you not put any frames of capped brood or anything like that in?

Just some remnants of emerging brood.

So just remnants of emerging brood. Okay, so effectively hopelessly queenless straight away. And then you don't put a cage in, you just drop the mated queen in. Okay, but she's laying elsewhere, wasn't she?

Yeah, she'd be laying I'll bring her from that hive and just chuck her straight in there.

So I've done a video on this previously, how to add a mated queen in 10 seconds. Carl uses the same technique, which is he takes a mated queen from another colony laying, adds it into a hopelessly queenless hive, and fingers crossed she doesn't get killed. Let's get inside, Carl, take a look. What are your first thoughts when you see that?

Yeah, they look pretty calm in here now they've been liberated.

And where's this queen come from?

I'll tell you when I— it's an NZ. It's an NZ queen.

Okay.

She should be marked red.

So not looking good?

No, no. It's— what has been happening is I've been putting queens in and shutting them up like this, and next time I've gone, they've not been present, and I just can't put my finger on why. Certainly no queen there.

Could she be dead at the bottom? There's quite a few dead ones at the bottom. Right, so we've not had much luck there at all, but as I said, I'm seeing this in some of my apiaries. I'm hearing it when I speak to other beekeepers as well. Very bad conditions for robbing. Very bad conditions for getting queens mated. There is so much more to this apiary to have a look at though. Let's go and find a box full of bees. Right, what have you got here, Carl?

I don't know because there's no ticky on this one.

Right, so this is going to be just indicative of Carl's bees in this apiary. And there we go. Nice to see some very good looking brood. So what do you reckon this would be? Just a nuc that's been upgraded to a box?

Yeah, it's a nuc that's been upgraded and she's just building on it now. She's coming good. There's larvae and everything in there and sealed brood.

There we go, that's what we want to see. Eggs, larvae, brood in all stages. Really nice looking frame of bees there, and we're not being hassled at all. We've got a few bees flying around here, but really not going for him, and the conditions couldn't be much worse to annoy bees if you wanted to annoy them, because there is no flow on whatsoever, it's not that warm, and the bees are trying to rob. You'll see it with this frame here, even though there's not a huge amount of stores on it, leaving it out there, that will attract them very, very quickly. What's happened to that frame there, Carl?

I've cut an old frame out and just left the remnants in the top.

Okay.

And they're drawing this out.

And interesting See what they're drawing it out. Are they putting drones in? Are they putting worker brood in?

No worker.

So there we go. We've done this before. If you put that in in April, guaranteed they're going to fill that up completely with drones. You put it in pretty much any time in July and after, they start doing it mostly with worker brood.

Here's this queen here. She's a kangaroo. She's a kangaroo queen.

Very nice. She is beautiful. So she's open mated.

She's open mated.

So very nice F1 kangaroo daughter. Open mated in this apiary?

Yeah.

Open mated in this apiary. She's beautiful. Lovely long queen, beautiful golden colour. Bet she'll do big things next year.

She's laid and she's got brood in here.

Yeah, full frame of brood there, loads of eggs. That one should come good. Right, so there we go. First box full of bees. Really nice F1 kangaroo queen. Lots of brood in there as well. Carl's getting that box there ready to winter. Soon be doing his varroa treatments and feeding them up, ready to get them through the winter. Where are we going next, Carl? What are we going to look at? So look around this apiary, look how many colonies Carl's got here. Amazing to see all the bees in flight. You can see we're going to take a look at all of these colonies, go through, see the best of the best and all of the rest as well. Let's go over to the beginning of the line.

Set this hive up to detect 5 frames of bees and brood and the queen, and she'll overwinter in one of these compartments with a another box of food on the top of here, which will feed the 4, and they'll go through the winter no bother.

It's a really nice setup there. Like Carl says, he makes these frames himself, makes the boxes himself, and you effectively get a 10-frame colony through the winter. 5 frames at the bottom with the queen and the brood, and then he puts 5 frames on the top, but all it looks like is a stack of 2 supers from the outside. Really nice piece of design, and it means that you can put these boxes onto your national equipment to get the frames drawn, to get the stores into them, to use within the apiary, a very sustainable method.

I've not been in this one at all for a while. I don't know what it's doing. It's last year's queen, I do know that.

But this is a similar setup here, your little quadrant system. Yeah, but this one's just as a 2-bar, is that right?

No, just the 4.

Oh yeah, no, you've got it over the 4. Okay, okay, so exactly, yep, same as before, 4-bar system, and you're just building this up, getting some feed into them, is that right, Carl?

What have I done here? What have I done here? I've took this center division out and I've made it into 11 frames just for food collection.

Okay, yeah, so that's what I thought I could see there. Yeah, so you got, so you got it as a 2-frame system or a 2-split system, 11 frames on each side. And before in Carl's apiary as well, he showed me some of these where the boxes were split like that as well. So you can have a 2 5-frame split box added up together, if that makes any sense. But a very versatile system.

Yeah, if I wanted to make another small colony, We'll say that this is a small box, you know, one of these little mini mating boxes. You can put a frame of food in either side, 3 empty frames, and some nurse bees and a queen, and that will go out and get mated, and that's that one done. But if we're setting it up for the winter, we would put a queen in each compartment and then a full box of food on here, and that would sustain them through the winter.

Yeah, it's a great way of doing it, really nice time-saving method as well, being able to feed all 4 mini colonies at once just by putting one box I mean, these are not bad bees really, but they're a bit more flighty than what are at home. So Carl's just said that the bees are a bit more flighty than what he would like, but I have to say I think they're really calm. You get really used to your own bees and you think that you always want to improve them and get them a little bit better, but believe me, Carl, the bees in this apiary are very nice. I've not been stung yet, I've had none of them pinging my head at all, and the bees are about as grumpy as they're ever going to be because of the lack of any nectar flow going on. So I'm really impressed. So I'm having so much fun in Carl's apiary. It's really nice to see the different frames and the different boxes that he uses, the different stages, whether you've got virgin queens or mated queens or inseminated queens. Always nice to see the failures as well, because, you know, things go wrong in beekeeping. They're wild creatures. You're not in control of the colony, you're not in control of the weather. Stuff happens, and it's good to see the bad stuff as well as seeing the good stuff. I'm really impressed in these little quadrant form mini box hives. I love the fact that Carl's kind of designed them himself and makes the frames himself. He's got a little box jig at home to make all of those frames, and it's just a really efficient way to be able to build up those frames, get them drawn out, get stores inside on your national footprint. Right, let's go and see what else Carl has for us in his apiary. So I love it. I speak to some beekeepers and you say, what's in this colony? And they know every single queen cell or queen from 3 or 4 years ago. And I speak to Carl and he doesn't know, which is exactly the same as me. I really struggle with remembering exactly where I've put stuff. I'm just going to pan over here at the moment because look what's going on in this corner, Carl, over there. Definitely something happening over there. It's a swarm trying to land in that box. Should we go and have a look?

Yeah, can do.

Right, so just spotted that as I was walking over and I think Carl was alerted to that when he came in as well. He was wondering what was what was going on. Is it a little mini mating swarm? Is it something trying to take over the box? What do you think, Carl?

I think it's a swarm, but I can't see a queen.

Do you think it's a swarm trying to go into that box?

Yeah.

What do you think about little mini mating swarms? Do you see that a lot?

Uh, not very often down here. We usually get big ones, you know, really big.

And what are your thoughts about a little swarm accompanying a queen on her mating flight?

Uh, well, if I get a swarm, I don't keep the queen.

Because you don't like it?

I kill the queen straight away. Yeah, because it's bringing bad traits into your apiary, and I would advise anybody who catches a swarm to collect the queen the next morning, kill it, yeah, and get another queen, and they're bringing some good genetics into the apiary, and it's a win-win situation all around. The bee gets— the beekeeper gets the bees, and he gets a good colony because he's got a good queen.

Yeah, see, you hear some people saying that they want the that queen because that's the queen that can survive. I don't buy into that at all. I'm really not a fan of wild feral genetics. And also, like, just highlighting the risk of foulbrood, I'm just not a massive fan of swarms at all. If you are going to catch swarms, make sure you put them on foundation, all brand new kit or freshly scorched kit, and make sure you don't feed them for as long as possible. Really, just try and not feed them at all, but at least give it a good 3 or 4 days for them to empty their stomach to make sure there's no bacteria Well, we could have a look in this box because it's a mated queen that's in this one. Yeah, let's have a look.

And I've had it shut down, but we'll move the box. We'll move it here to have a look.

Okay, let's do it. So this is exciting. So you say this is a closed box?

No, it's open, just bee space.

Okay, sorry, right, so it's a single bee space box, but the queen can't get out.

Yeah.

Is that right? Is it on the queen excluder function?

So there should be a queen in this box.

Right, so fingers crossed we've got a queen in this one. Don't know what these bees are doing here though. Lots of bees. Doesn't look to me like robbing. You don't really tend to get a huge amount of clustering when the bees rob like that. You get them hawking a little bit in front.

Look at the bees in here, they're quite fine, you know, they're—

So here's the box there that all those bees were clustered up around, and maybe they're just kind of clustering up because they're saying there's a good queen inside. Fingers crossed we can have a bit of success, Carl.

Yeah, should do.

Lovely frame of stores. Wow, beautiful. But no queen again. So do you think possibly the queen somehow managed to get out of that hole and then this is the entourage that's gone out with her on a mating flight and she's trying to get back in now?

Well, she were already laying.

She was already laying.

It were already laying.

So for me, this is the beauty of beekeeping. It's not straightforward, it's not simple. You get differences of opinion. No one truly knows what's going on here. Like, I've got my own opinion, but I don't know. Carl's saying that the queen here was a laying queen. So maybe they've absconded, and maybe they've absconded and they've decided to come back. Something's definitely going on down there. I reckon if we were to get all of those bees and knock them onto a mat, we might find a mated queen. You got anything we can do that to, Karl?

Not really, no.

Even just like a box?

Oh, here she is.

You are?

Yeah, she's here on the last frame.

So there we go. Just as I was surmising and kind of trying to come up with a method to find a queen that was maybe down here, Carl's proved me completely wrong and he's found the queen. So there we go, she's on there.

She's here.

And she's looking very nice. Any eggs?

There's no eggs on that one.

Let's get it closed up, 'cause I do think the bees are gonna start robbing this one, 'cause it's quite a small little nuc, isn't it? And they're already starting it on there. But that's good to see though, mated queen in there.

With the disruption of the robbing and that, it might be that they just do strange things.

So that was pretty fun. We just had to dart over to that to see what was going on. We've not really worked it out though. There was just a big cluster of bees. Either a little mini swarm has absconded from somewhere and then decided to cluster up down there, or there's some robbing going on, or a mixture of the two. Luckily in that box though, we found a queen. Not sure if she's mated yet though, can't see any eggs in there. It's a real conundrum as to what's gone on.

Right, what I'm going to do is I'm moving this over here.

And what was the reason for doing that?

Well, the bees will go into an empty hive and not this one.

Oh, is it empty, that one?

Yeah.

Right, so what Carl's done there is he's put a brand new little mini mating box in that position where all those bees are trying to get into. And you can see already, look at them going in immediately, making a beeline for it, excuse the pun. Give it 5 or 10 minutes and I reckon that will be completely full.

And we might find why they want to be in here, whether they've got a queen.

Yeah.

An unmarked queen somewhere.

I have to say, I'm pretty confident that that is a little mini swarm that's absconded from somewhere. Yeah, probably got a queen in there. You can see them walking in. That's not robbing behaviour, is it, where they slowly march in like that? No, that's a swarm.

That is a swarm. Try and see a queen.

We'll stay with it for a little bit. This is nice. It's nice and warm now in the apiary. We're going to sit down. We'll film this for a little bit, see if we can see a queen marching in. How cool would that be?

See, with swarms as well, they're all very nice.

Yeah? Yeah.

Until they've got eggs down, and then they're a different ball game. So that's why I like to— I'll get the queen in the morning. Yeah, you'll not be able to get her today because she'll not be settled on a frame. Tomorrow morning she'll be settled on a frame, and as soon as you clock her, kill her, another one in straight away.

Looking at the colour of these bees though, do you reckon this is one of your swarms?

I don't think so. No, my bees, I don't have them big enough to swarm. I always put plenty of boxes on them because I need the food for later on in the year.

Yeah.

But you can see they're all marching in there.

Yeah, really going for it, aren't they?

No, trying to see if I could see a queen in any of these. See, it is a swarm because a swarm brings loads of drones in. There you are, she's a marked queen.

Where is she?

She's there, she's one of mine. It might have been that one that flew out the box, you know, over there.

There you go, if you've not seen her, there you go, you've got your marked queen. Queen on there.

She's a kangaroo queen. I know what she is. Look, and they're hanging on to her, so then maybe it's not their queen.

So I do see it a fair bit with little mini mating nucs like this. They do abscond. They get hot and they just go. So she could be mated. She might be mated.

She'll be mated. Yeah, she's big enough. But they don't seem to like her. No, they don't seem to like her. They seem to be trying to ball her.

No, you're all right. That's not the nicest behaviour, is it?

No, no. Keep an eye on her there. She'll be alright in the dark.

Where is she?

She's just underneath the glove there. I always have one of these in my pocket.

Yeah, well, that's a good move. So Carl's not liking the look of the behaviour to that queen, so he is going to protect it, and he's picking her up and he's going to pop her in a cage that he's got in his pocket. Very well prepared, Carl. I like that. So what will you do with that caged queen now? Do you think that's going to go in with her?

I might leave this in between the frames because they'll not kill it.

No.

Because there'll be food in there. And if this is a swarm, they'll have brought food anyway. That's no problem. So tomorrow morning I can have a look around to see if there's another queen in here.

Yeah.

And if there is, kill it and then let them release this one. Because this is— I know this is a mated queen. Yeah.

Karl just said that at least we've got a bit of action today. Plenty of action indeed. So there was a queen in that swarm. Karl didn't like the way the bees were treating her. He's taken that queen, popped it into a cage, He said he's going to go back into that swarm tomorrow, check to see if there's another queen in there. If there is, squish it and then add that queen back in. I have to say, I think that's going to be the queen that was with that swarm, and then he's going to introduce it back in and they'll have a mini nuc ready to go. And hopefully that queen is mated.

Right.

So Carl's putting it back in there now. It's caged. Whatever happens, the colony can't kill that queen through the cage. And then he'll come back in tomorrow. Sadly, I won't be here.

He'll come back in tomorrow to check A little hive I set up a few weeks ago. The queen's got out and got mated. There's a little patch of brood here.

Is this an open-mated queen?

This is an open-mated queen, but it's an NZ.

NZ standing for New Zealand.

Yeah.

And did you add her in as a mated queen or add her in as a virgin?

Virgin.

Okay, so you're always adding in virgins to the mini ones. And then how do you upgrade from your minis to bigger ones?

I have a board which I can put onto a— on top of here, see, with a square cut out of it like this. And I can put that hive, take the bottom off it, put that hive On the square, mated queen, some emerging brood in the bottom, and bees. No queen, obviously. And these bees will go automatically down into this box and populate that box.

Okay, cool.

These are some early nucs. I usually have just 3, 4-frame nucs on each stand, and as they get mated and as they get lost, then I'll double them up. So this will be 2 nucs. One survived and the other one's not. No queen. We just club them together. This one's just progressing.

Lovely frame of brood.

Look at that beauty.

Do you know what line this is?

Not until I clock the queen, but I surmise it's a kangaroo. I've done a lot of kangaroos this year. It might be a 125, but I suspect it's a kangaroo. You'll soon tell with the size of her and the colouration, very light.

So what are you doing there, Carl?

I'm just looking for the queen, but I'm moving these frames around. I don't like what they do here. They, you know, this plastic, they'll build off the plastic and leave cavities underneath.

So why do you use plastic foundation?

Because you can just scrape it after the wax moths have been messing around with it.

That's a lovely frame on the back though. Go on, show that up to the camera. Lovely frame, really nice frame of brood, very well-mated queen. You can see there, good patches, solid brood. She's not missing many cells at all.

And she's got an egg in every part there. Egg in every part in the middle where they've emerged.

She is lovely. So you sell these queens, Carl, yeah?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And how much does one of those kangaroos set you back?

Uh, 40 quid, and then your postage on the top, unless you want to pick them up.

Right, so, so 40 quid. I'll have that one there. Yeah, yeah, go on, cage that one up for me if you've got a cage.

I ain't got a cage.

I know you just used your last cage, didn't you?

Spare cage.

Oh dear, are we going to do this then?

Yeah, we'll have a look. You might see something better, who knows.

You've not got a cage though.

Uh, don't worry, I can improvise. There'll be Something somewhere, you know, that I can improvise.

I'm having so much fun up here. I'm buying things, I'm buying queens, I'm buying wiring looms, artificially inseminated queens, open-mated queens. It's like a beekeeping bazaar here. Everything is up for sale, and if I see a nice queen, I've got to have it, I've got to take it back. So we're keeping a tab, and I'll pay Carl at the end of the day. Right, so as you're taking the lid off that one, you've got to tell me the story of this roof. How cool is that?

It belonged to my neighbor over the road. He bought some bees off me 8 years ago, and since then he's died. Oh, and his son gave me all the stuff back for a bargain price, so I took it. I love that roof. That roof used to be the front of a, you know, a coal fire.

Oh right, yeah, and he's just kind of beat it down and shaped it. Really nicely done. So what size boxes is— oh wait, that's the roof on top that's come off there. I was thinking you've got a mismatch in terms of boxes, so that's a deep roof with like an outer cover on it.

Yeah.

Amazing, love it.

This one's even doing better than that one. Look at this, it's a full box right across.

So we've opened this one up, it's clearly the copper roof and the deep outer cover. I'm only winding you up, Carl. So what do you reckon, uh, kangaroo queen in this one as well? What Carl was doing there, in case anyone was wondering, is he was testing the temperament. So he taps the top frames to see if the bees are coming up.

These, these should be the temperament of the bees next year.

You can see there are not many bees flying up at And that's a whole brood box full, not just a little mini plus box.

Well laid, that.

Yeah, really nicely laid up. Look at all that lovely brood in the middle, really nice.

Same that side as well, and it's laid up where they're missing on the sides. Yeah, right, we need to find the queen, and she'll not be far away from here, will she? And the other thing is that these bees don't produce a lot of propolis.

Look at that brood on that beautiful frame of brood there, only missing out where the wires are. But that is a proper frame of brood. Even better that side. Wow, I think that's probably my frame of the day so far, Carl.

This is my old age pensioner's box.

What have you got there?

My 3-frame stool where I can move around and put stuff in and sit on it while I'm leisurely looking through the bees.

I loved it. I'm just getting Carl to pose for a thumbnail there, and I've asked him just to bend down a little bit, and he's, he's pulled out his 3-frame stool that he uses, which is amazing.

Look at this baby.

Now that is a Proper frame of brood. Very, very nice indeed. Gotta be happy with that, Carl.

Other side is the same.

Very nice. Right, so you can put that in my list as well. I'll have this queen as well.

I mean, this is again towards the end of the box. As you can see, she's still buzzing.

Yeah, really nice. Lovely to see.

And you still haven't found the queen?

No, still not found her.

No.

Right, so don't worry about finding this one, Carl. Put that one back and we'll just stick a pin in both of those and I'll take those queens back with me. Or you can just send them to me if you want.

I'm just checking the food stocks here as well. I mean, there's a bit of food on that. That's a full frame of food.

And what are the bees foraging on here at the moment? I can see like a bit of rosebay willowherb, both types. I see a bit of Himalayan balsam out here before.

Just anything they can get the little proboscis into.

You've got a bit of open stores over there. It's good to see.

I always usually leave them at this end, any stores, and it saves breaking up the brood nest. But I've not been in these hives. This is another one full of food.

Let's, let's close this one up and do another one, Carl. Right, so this really is the most fun thing in the world. I have to do none of the work. I just get to talk and Carl does all of the work. But we found the queen, so I'm going to take hold of this frame. So I'm going to show it to this camera there. There we go. Another F1 kangaroo queen open mated in this apiary. And you can see how nice and calm these bees are. Lovely temperament. Just give you another close-up there. Hopefully you can see the queen over on this side here, marked pink. She's coming home with me as well. You can see, did all of that there. No hands, no stings. Very nice, gentle bees. So there she is, you can see her, kangaroo queen, beautiful markings, very orange indeed. I'm gonna have to get some cages, go and find some cages, Carl, and we'll take this one as well. Right, so we've had a couple of failures, a couple of successes, a couple of things that we weren't expecting with swarms. We're gonna go and find something else now in this apiary to have a look at. So what's this, a little nuc?

Yeah, this is a 5-framer, probably been on the go about 6 weeks.

So a little nuc that Carl's building up here. Mated queen was introduced. Let's get inside, see what we're doing.

Oh, she seems to be doing all right.

It's always interesting, isn't it? As soon as you open up a colony, I don't know if you're the same, Carl, you can tell whether they're queen right or not.

Yeah, you can tell the calm bees are just walking around, they're not bothered.

Just calm, very intent. If you open up a colony and there's not many bees in between the frames and they immediately fly up, generally something's gone wrong and you've not got a mated queen.

Queen, kangaroo straight away, kangaroo.

There we go, another kangaroo queen. Add that onto my list if you want, Carl.

More than happy. That's doing well. There's eggs and larvae. There's not a tremendous amount of bees, but once these emerge, then she'll be off to the races.

So when they get to about this size, you say you combine them with one that's failed, or do you just—

Yeah, if I sold you a queen, I'd combine it with something else. And they'll not kill a mated queen. You can just take that queen out of that box, you could put it in your pocket, and I could put this box on the top of that and walk away, and they'll be there tomorrow.

It's funny, when they are mating, they do do that. As soon as you cage them and stop them mating for a while, they get a little bit more angry, don't they?

Yeah.

Right, should we go to the next one?

Yeah, I mean, all these are very much the same time. The bigger ones are obviously the ones that had a better start, more bees probably.

Right, let's do one more.

Oh, this is an inseminated queen.

Okay, here we go. So here's the difference between an artificially inseminated, the one next door was an open-mated.

Yeah, this is a New Zealand kangaroo cross.

Okay.

So she'll be a darker queen, and she's not doing as well because I've only, I've not long done her.

I was going to say, just a little cluster of bees there, They're clearly content clustering up. I reckon we're going to see brood on these first couple of frames, maybe not on the outer frames so much.

Ah, superseding.

Superseding, yeah. Might find 2 queens in here at once then, what do you think?

You never know, you never know.

And this is the problem that you have when you introduce artificially inseminated queens and they've not got the proper pheromone. They try and supersede, don't they?

Yeah, and these are eggs that she's laid. Yeah, you know, this is a What she's laid.

So let's persevere with this one.

Let's have a look at this one.

So you can see there are a couple of supersedure cells that were taken down.

There's a queen there, look, she's there.

So that's the supersedure queen.

That's the supersedure queen.

She does not look mated to me.

No, she's giddy.

She looks a very healthy queen though, a good size, but definitely not mated. You can see that she's a virgin. Let's continue through, Carl, and see if we can find the artificially inseminated queen as well, because you do find it very often.

Yeah, there's nothing wrong with the queen because the queen, she was inseminated with 12 Microlitres of stuff, so I know it were well inseminated.

I introduced about 80 artificially inseminated queens to colonies last year at the back end of the year, and they tried to supersede pretty much all of them.

Yeah.

And I kept on taking them down, and after a couple of rounds, they just gave up. And they're some of the best queens I've ever had. There's nothing to do with the quality of the queens. It is just a nuance of introducing artificially inseminated queens that can mean that they sometimes supersede. Now, obviously, what's happened here is that the supersedure cell has emerged and looking like the supersedure Queen has won and killed off the artificially inseminated queen, which is a bit gutting because I was going to add this onto my tab card. But you know, I'm sure we can find more queens to add onto the tab.

Yeah, but most of them are for a program for next year.

Oh right, okay. And can't take your best breeding stock.

Without the stuff, I can't do what I'd like to do. No, there's definitely no queen in there. That virgin queen, wherever she is— there she is— she can go back in. The weather's Good, she'll get mated.

So a little bit frustrating, that one. We were going to see an artificially inseminated queen, and unfortunately the bees have tried to supersede her. Nothing wrong with her, it is just something that happens when you're introducing artificially inseminated queens. They don't have the same pheromone as a normally mated queen. It develops over time. The bees that are in the colony think that there's something wrong when there isn't, so they try and supersede. And in that colony there now, there is a superseded queen that will go out and mate. I think we've got something else interesting to see behind though, so I'll put my veil back up.

This is an artificially inseminated queen from this year, brother Adam and kangaroo drone. So, but they look okay. So we're looking for number 15. There she is, number 15, laying a good pattern.

So there we go, very nice pattern indeed.

That's a cross, it's a kangaroo mother and a mixed drone selection.

So is this part of your breeding program?

This one, uh, no, this one ain't.

So how much for one of your artificially inseminated queens that aren't part of your breeder programme?

£110.

Cool, and then should we add that to the list?

If you want.

Yep, let's do it.

She's number 15.

Okay.

So you'll know.

Now you might be thinking, why am I adding queens to my list? I've got good breeding stock, I've got good drones to raise good queens with. I always think it's an iterative process of adding new selected stock in. These queens here, that pure queen, I can raise some F1 daughters from her, flood the apiary, test the daughters and see what she's like. The F1 kangaroos, I can use them as drone mothers, get a nice area up with maybe 8, 9, 10 of them in that location, and then flood the area and see what the crosses come out like. I'm not one for trying to breed anything true. I leave it to the professionals for doing stuff like that, but I like to have lots of diversity in my apiaries to make sure that I get the very best genetics and the best mixes available for the F1 crosses. Now that doesn't mean that all of the F1 crosses are going to come out and they're going to be perfect. You're going to get some that are probably quite violent. You're going to get some that are really, really nice as well. But without doing that little trial and error, you never get any improvement. And I just find it so interesting seeing all of the mixtures of different genetics in the apiaries. That's what's happening in this apiary here. You can see I've taken my veil down. The bees are flying everywhere, not bothered in the slightest about me being here. I know by buying these queens and bringing them home, I'm bringing back very good genetics. for me to work with in my own apiaries. Right, so I said to Carl, show me something new. We're going into this box here and he has no idea what's inside it, so it's a little bit of a joker draw, this one. Let's take a look, see what we're doing.

Oh, there's plenty of bees in it anyway. I don't know what it is, there's no ticket on it. I can tell with a— we're looking at the queen what it is when I see it, because they all have their own colorations and the size.

So again, this is a box that's just been opened and you can see it's a box full of bees, but they're really not flying up Very nice, calm, gentle bees.

Well, she's been on this frame just recently because there's eggs in here, so she's not far away. There certainly are better bees this year than what they were last year. You know, we're changing. It's annoying when you have to go through the box a couple of times to find a queen. There she is.

So it's not just me that loses queens. They are pretty quick sometimes, aren't they? They probably— she probably just nipped back down when Carl wasn't looking there. But we saw an F1 open mated. Is that one, Carl?

Yes, she is.

She's on the floor.

Yeah.

Oh, even better. Carl dropped her on the floor. I love it.

There she is. I see you putting her back in there.

Wait there, don't release her yet, don't release her yet. So there you go, you just saw her go off there. I love that Carl dropped her on the floor. It's exactly the thing that I do, and I bet Carl is really happy that he mowed the lawn before so she didn't fall into the long grass.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, these, I can work these with no gloves on and probably no veil on, but you know why? Because they, you know, they are a bit flighty. But they are naturally mated down here, so I don't know what they're getting mated with. Yeah, so I don't chuck nothing to chance and just wear the veil. But you can see they're not all around me, they're not killing me.

No, very true. You can see there's just a couple flying, but they're just— it's a flying apiary of bees, of course you're going to have bees flying. None attacking at all, really nice calm bees.

And there's no bees coming near us.

Really nice calm bees, and you can definitely add this one to the tab as well. Right, some lovely open-mated queens in here. We're just going to take a look at a couple of artificially inseminated ones, a self-crossed inseminated queen. Let's take a look now. So when you say self-crossed, exactly what do you mean, Carl?

Well, I use the mother for the queen line, and then I use the drones from the mother for the drone line.

So it's effectively like you're inbreeding.

I mean, inbreeding, but for a purpose.

Inbreeding for a purpose. And what do you find in terms of the offspring there? Are they— because I get it a bit, they're a bit dopey when you get a really pure Buckfast queen. And dopey in like a good sense, but it's not— you're not testing the dopiness of the F0, or the pure queen I should say, but it's the offspring that you're going to get that are really where the test comes, aren't they?

It's these bees that I'm interested in. If these bees are nice and calm, I can make— this is a 125, is a Peter Little creation before he died, the poor man.

Okay.

Yeah, and I'm trying to keep the drone line going, So next year I can use this one, and what I'll do is let one go out and get naturally mated.

Yeah.

And then I'll use this for the drone donations for them ones.

Okay.

And then I'll have all the genetics that's in this one already, but slightly different genetic that's crept in from the natural mating.

Okay, yeah. I was going to say, like, I'm not going to challenge you because it really is beyond me, bee breeding. Yeah, not too bad at rearing some queens, but I leave it to the professionals to do the selection and the breeding efforts.

I mean, this, for what bees it's got in, this, this is another box I put on God knows when, maybe 2 weeks ago.

Well, I'm going to get in and take this one, Karl.

Yeah, I suspect the queen, although she's been up here, she'll be in the bottom box.

Very, very nice calm bees. Look at that, you can get them there right across your face. This is what I mean when we talk about calm genetics. All of the bees looking very, very similar there, and they're just not interested in stinging me whatsoever. Let's go a little bit further, see if we can find this queen.

Yeah, she'll be in the bottom box, so I can safely put this one back in there and lift this one off. Just have a look under that lid, see if there's a ticket underneath there, Laurence. Yeah, number 3, Kangaroo. There's another inseminated one.

Right, so we've got another inseminated queen right next to this one as well. We're going to find both of these queens. I'm going to try and get one of them at least onto my tab, We're going to call it a day.

I mean, she's even laying drone eggs in the corner there.

Very nice.

You'll see her, she'll be like a beacon. Sometimes get down the sides here. I haven't been in this one for a long time, Laurence, so I don't know whether she's present or whether this one's been superseded, because as we know, they just get superseded. No queen there, no queen in the box. Nice.

We were thinking we might be looking at another superseder there, but no, she's still in the box. Really nice light.

One sec. Yeah, she was number one this year. First one I did.

Beautiful queen.

She's a kangaroo. No, she ain't.

No, 125.

She's a 125. I mean, Peter did some nice queens, you know, so I'll keep this line going.

How did you get hold of this queen from Peter?

I bought it from his missus just before they buried him.

Oh dear.

Because I used to frequent, you know, not all the time, but I've been down a couple of times to buy queens and to visit, and I bought other stuff off him like a honey spinner and that.

Right, we're going to take one last look in an artificially inseminated kangaroo line. Let's get inside, see what we're doing.

That's full of eggs and larvae, eggs and very, very young, you know, they're hardly noticeable, but the queen's on here as well. Look, there she is, number 3.

Isn't it nice when you find the queen on the first frame? Saves you so much time. She is beautiful, very, very orange and very, very long. Is she part of a breeding program?

Yeah, let me have a look at the ticket. Yeah, she's, because I need it for the drones.

Yeah, and have you chosen that there? I saw on the card it said light Drones. Have you chosen that because of the light color of the drones?

Usually if you get an inseminated queen or you've took grafts off an inseminated queen, invariably you'll find that the drones are 2 distinctively different colors.

Really?

I don't know why. This is another beekeeper that told me this. I said to him, which one do you prefer, the light one or the dark one? He says, I just want them mixed.

Right.

He says, because there's really no difference other than the color.

That's really interesting. Right, can't get that one on the tab then. Tried my best, but she is a beautiful queen. So there we go, a look inside Carl Lockyer's home apiary. Some lovely open-mated queens there, some lovely artificially inseminated queens there. I've bagged myself a good few to take home. I'm going to stick his website link at the bottom of this video if you're interested in his queens. Definitely go down there, take a look. They're good queens, good genetics, and Carl is a really good guy. Hope you enjoyed that video. If you want to see more videos like this, definitely stick a comment below and please hit the subscribe button.