👉 Well - Did It Work??

We are on to episode 5 of Zane's First Nook, and it is very good to have you back, Zane.

No, I miss being up here.

Yeah, it's nice, isn't it? The sun's come out.

Finally.

I've got another upgrade for you.

Okay.

I'm going to remove this lid. I got told off for giving you such a battered lid, so here we go. We've got a new deep Abello roof lid, and it's got the metal top on it as well. That is my favourite lid setup.

Much better.

It's cool, isn't it?

Much nicer.

There we go. So when we're tapping it, it won't be all rusty and corroded.

Cool.

Did you watch the video last week?

I did. I had to edit it, so I. Oh yeah. How fast that was. I edited the video.

Did you enjoy the video last?

Yeah, it was good to see you looking after the bees. Thank you very much. But I'm back now, so.

Should we get inside and have a look?

Let's do it. Veil up.

Straight up. Yeah, go on. Veil up for you.

Okay.

Right. So before we go any further, we are now on a two camera setup. So we've got one camera and we've got another camera over there because. I quite like the look of last week going around and like looking in and seeing stuff, and I thought it's good to have the 2 cameras.

Yeah, the video from last week where it was just a tripod on the phone.

Yeah.

It just wasn't quite—

Oh, it didn't move as much. We need to get in and see it. So I'm going to grab this camera over here. Right, so talk me through what you're seeing, Zeng.

They've took down some of the feed. There's still a bit left in there. Don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

I always like to see the action on the feeder. See, like the bees are there, aren't they? You can hear them as well.

Yeah. So, oh yeah, so they should just be nipping down there, grabbing the feed and going back in.

Yeah, it's just nice to see that they're taking down the feed, but nice to see that they're actively feeding as well, because it just makes things a lot easier overall.

Yeah.

Right, do you want to take the polyashphalt feeder off?

Yes. Obviously don't spill the syrup, I guess.

Don't spill the syrup. You can go and pop it like on one of the other hives over there if you want.

All right.

Okay, so what are you thinking, Zane?

I'm thinking they've definitely started spreading out to the outer frames.

Definitely spread a little bit more, and it's worth bearing in mind as well that it's been miserable this week, like it's only 11, 12 degrees. The bees really aren't, I would say they're probably not even flying today at all, but you can see it again, can't you? You can see they spread that way. So go on, starting on my side, Zane, count all the frames where there's bees on them.

1, 2, are they in? No, this one looks a bit quiet, so 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.

And would you say 8 and a half on that other one, or maybe not, but still 8?

Yeah, definitely 8, could be more.

Okay, so a good 8 frames looking from the top, so that's good, that's good expansion. And then look at that one in the middle, that checkerboarded frame there, that nice new clean one. We are going to try and get that frame out. So how would you get that one out?

Pull some of the frames back?

That's what I would do, yeah, pull some frames back and get yourself some space on that. So that was the one that we did the real aggressive checkerboarding on, You can't do that on a weak colony, and you shouldn't split the brood like that on a weak colony. But on a strong colony like this, a colony that's expanding, a colony that's taking down feed, and a colony that's in a very nice warm Abelo poly box, should be okay. But I'm not 100%, so we want to pull that frame out and see hopefully that it's all drawn out, or at least a bit drawn out, and then even better, we're going to have some eggs in there. What are you seeing there, Zeng?

I obviously want to pull this frame here, but they're just, they're all between the bars there. They don't really want to Smoker. Yeah, nice. Which on this nice new hive kit.

Isn't it handy?

What would you call it? Hive queue?

Caddy.

Hive caddy. Caddy.

We should have done all of this on episode one. It shows how organised I am, amazing.

Okay, so we've got a bit of smoke.

That's it, give it a few good puffs. Yeah, that's it.

Okay, there you go. Better.

Nice, better.

All right, let's get this for the— let's get you in. So this one we want, yeah? Yeah.

Okay, so remember that was 1 week ago, frame of foundation. What are you seeing?

They're definitely drawing it out this side. See if I can see any eggs.

Oh yeah, look at that, completely drawn out. So it's drawn out the other side as well, so that's worked. I had a comment on there saying you shouldn't do that, and I said, if I know people say you shouldn't do it, and you can see up in the corner where they've just got a tiny bit of foundation left, but in spring with a colony like that, with a good feed, there is no problem splitting the brood. And as you can see, we've bumped up an extra frame now, and Zane's colony is getting on its way.

Oh, there's a couple of eggs in here.

Yeah, okay, one sec. So there's eggs in there.

Well, I can see a lot— is it larvae or larva?

Yeah, larva, or like plural, but if there's So it was just— Nice, a bit of blowing.

There, you can see them all.

Yeah, yeah.

Or does that just mean—

No, no, fully laid up.

Okay.

That is—

Is that— see, that surprised me because—

If I go show that over here. So you can see completely laid up, tons of eggs, loads of larvae brooding, most of the uncapped stages at the moment, but will be shortly capped over. Is there any on that side as well? Again, same on that side. The bees are covering it, but that is fully laid up with eggs. So that's really good news, Zane. I said to you before, didn't I? I was like, I really hope they have drawn it out because it might look a little bit silly. It's one of the things they tell you to not do, and it's one of the things that if you get the conditions right, you can do it quite safely.

Yeah, well, it's definitely worked, hasn't it?

Yeah, we can do an inspection. We can go through. Should we do any inspections? But I'm just thinking from a super perspective. You've still got quite a lot of space. So although we did that checkerboard in there, if I just kind of get these 2 out over here. So we still got like one completely unused frame with a tiny bit of drawn comb on. If you grab that one, Zayn.

Yep.

And then we still got another one just like that. And then what did you say over here? Do you think they started to draw out?

I don't think they There was anything on this one from what I could see.

Okay, so we've got another one that's completely empty. So we've still got 3 frames that are essentially untouched. So you've got the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. But I would say now that's pretty much 8 full frames of bees.

Yep.

So if you were to leave this again for another week, there is a chance that you might just struggle with space a bit.

Is it right that I'm a bit impatient and I want to just get a super on now? Is that what— does everyone go through that?

This is where a lot of people get it wrong, yeah. With the supers, I would say this one here is ready for a super now.

Okay.

Yeah, but when I say it's ready for a super, it doesn't mean that you're going to come back next week and the super will be drawn out and full of honey and all those things. All it means is that they're going to be ready for a super in like 3 or 4 weeks' time.

Right.

So you might as well get it on 3 or 4 weeks early, because it's not going to do a huge amount of damage to the bees. Now, are they going to fill it out on week 1 and draw it all out and it's honey? Probably not, but maybe, like if you get the weather and you get the bees coming out, that can happen. Or if you get rubbish weather for a couple of weeks and the bees don't go up into it, and then all of a sudden you get nice weather, at least you've got it on.

Yeah.

So we've still got 3 frames of foundation like this, we've still got tons of space. If I had to bet, I would say we could put all the frames of foundation back in, close it back up, and they're not going to swarm. So we could get away with it for another week. But I also know that they don't need any more feeding. And it's not going to do any harm putting the super on.

I was going to say, yeah, when is it a bad time to add a super too early? Like, is that through winter?

Well, no, it's kind of early in the spring. If you add too much space above and all the heat goes up and then it gets cold overnight, you make the brood area really inefficient. But it's warming up a bit now. But then saying that, it has been quite cold this week, hasn't it?

It's on and off, isn't it?

Yeah, so I think I honestly would make a call with this one here depending on the weather for people. If you're seeing this in your colonies and the next week coming up is 21, 22 degrees, really nice and sunny, then definitely get the supers on. If you're like us in North Wales and it's a bit cold up until next week, I reckon we can gamble and get away with not putting them on.

All right.

Should we do it?

Yeah.

The only thing, all I would say is, I give so many people this advice, which is, oh yeah, I'd say yeah, put the supers on now, and then they come back in 3 weeks and they say the bees are not doing that much up in the supers. You said 3 weeks ago it was time. So I need to caveat it now and say, well, like, it's not exactly the time, but you can safely put it on now, and then anytime over the next 3 weeks they're going to go up. But they're expanding nicely, aren't they?

So we got 8 full frames, 3 spare.

3 spare, 80% rule. So you're not quite hit 80% of the bees yet, but you're not far off it. I reckon we can push it for one more week without swarming. But let's have a look in some of the frames and see if they're giving us any other clues.

I was going to say, what are we necessarily looking for then? Is it eggs?

Broodnal stages, like you're looking for swarm cells here. They've got enough food, haven't they? They've got enough space. So just a quick inspection for swarm cells.

It's got some weight to it, that one. Oh yeah, look at all that. So is that honey or nectar, or is that the same thing?

So, well, yeah, they bring in nectar, which is like really watery liquid, and then they fan it down and it becomes honey. There is some capped brood on there as well, so you're seeing tons of things on that frame.

Oh yeah, up here. So this is capped Ooh, sorry guys.

Here we go, first drop.

Sorry girls.

All right.

So that is capped stores.

Yeah.

Open stores, I guess.

Yeah, yeah.

And then capped brood here.

Capped brood, yeah, nice.

Okay. So it's nice to see that they've got some honey going on there.

So it's worth noting about dropping the frame there. Everyone drops frames and everyone feels a bit bad about dropping frames. Don't worry about it, but just be aware the risk of dropping a frame. So like the queen might have been on there. You might have dropped the queen. You don't know where the queen is now. So for me, I'm always thinking, oh, I hope the queen's okay if I drop the frame. So I wouldn't go looking for her on that frame. She's probably gonna be somewhere over here. But I always like to go away from this hive now and having seen the queen, being like, oh, I know she's okay.

Got you.

Yeah.

Question.

Yeah.

When I'm taking these out and putting them back in, I obviously have to keep them in some sort of order.

Yeah.

'Cause I was gonna push this one right here and then stack them all in that, but I've gotta keep an order, right?

Yeah, yeah, keep them all in order.

Yeah, really important. So if I keep that roughly there, I know there's a frame to go on this side of it.

You can, but what I would do is just give yourself a lot more space, bring that into there, and then it just, it gives you more room to work and you can slide it back at the end.

All right. So we've found the queen. Is it normal for her to be on such like an empty frame? Is that—

Yeah, she can be anywhere. Like, she looks, she looks in good nick and she's walking around. The bees are tending to her nicely.

Yeah, that's pretty cool. Yeah, and then what have they got on this side?

So you can see lots of nectar on that side. It's a very full frame.

It's nice to see. And then this here, is that— oh, that's capped brood, isn't it?

Capped brood, yep.

Okay, that's cool. Where's queen gone? See, whenever I get the queen out, I just want to put her back in as soon as possible.

You can get her in, that's fine. You've seen that frame, you just need the swarm cell.

She's in a decent position there where it's not going to—

yeah, she's nice and Safe there.

Yeah.

Yeah. So some people say to me, how do you do the inspection so quick? Like when you do the ones with Zane, it's like half an hour or something. But if I was doing this on my own, this is exactly what I would do, Zane. So I would've seen that first frame and then I've seen the queen and then I would say, well, okay, the next few frames, really all I'm looking for is swarm cells. And you can take the bees out like that and you can shake them off if you want. Might get the odd one buzzing around like that. But at this time of the year, you don't even really need to shake it. You can just quickly take the frame out, say, right, nope, there's no swarm cell there. Next one out. Like, all you're looking for is swarm cells. You don't need to see the eggs on every frame. You don't need to see the queen on every frame. Nice to see some eggs in the colony. It's nice to see the queen. But really all you're looking for is swarm cells like that. And by the time you get through the brood nest and you get to the frames where it's just honey, you know there's not going to be any swarm cells over there. But like, this is kind of the tempo that I would go through checking. And you can take your time, you don't need to do it in a rush. Look at that frame there, that is a real heavy frame of nectar, that one there. And that's it, that's kind of inspection finished. I know it's not as fun doing it like that, is it?

No.

All you really need to do. I've assessed for space, I've assessed for stores. They're not going to swarm because I've got loads of space and they've got tons of stores to get them through to the next one. Stung on the chin there. You see how I moved my hand over a little bit and they did not like it. But the main thing you're looking for early on in the year is swarm cells from them going prematurely. But this colony here, absolutely fine. So while Zane's sorting that out, a little tip. If you're getting stung or you get stung, like, smoker over it and get it out as soon as possible. It's one of those— have you ever heard the myth about— it's not a myth this one— have you ever heard anyone say about like scraping out a bee sting as opposed to squeezing it out?

Nope.

Never seen that? So the theory is that when the sting goes into your body, you've seen it pulsate, haven't you? It's pumping the venom in. The idea is that if you squeeze it out, like pinch it out like that, it pumps venom in. So what people say is get a credit card and like scrape it out and then it doesn't pump it in. That was the theory, but then what they're saying now is that Because when the bee stings you, and you've seen it, it's just pumping away, isn't it? Straight away from the beginning. You're actually better off just getting in, even squeezing it, just getting it out straight away.

Yeah.

As opposed to—

Running off and finding it.

Where's my credit card? Where's my bee-stinging credit card? And it's there just pumping it in the whole time. So that's all I do.

I can see it there.

Is it still there?

Yeah.

Okay, see if you can get it out. Go on.

Yeah, sorry, that's pulled. Oh yeah, you can see that.

Cool, innit?

Yeah.

Right, so if these were your bees, what would you do? Zane, I know I've kind of said what I think.

Knowing, knowing how impatient I am, yeah, definitely add a super.

Okay, so should we add a super? Because I said there's no harm, it's a useful thing for people to see what happens if you add a super a couple of weeks early, because it's nothing.

But do you know what it is for me? I feel like that's progress. I like to see things progress. I don't like to be stalemated. So yeah, I think add a super.

Let's add a super on this one.

I'm going to overrule.

You always have the power to overrule.

Yeah, let's go for it.

Right, I'm going to compress everything back up.

Queen is just on the edge of that frame, so see her there.

Okay, yeah, yeah, cool. Good spot, Zane.

That would be, that would be a sad day, wouldn't it?

Yeah, so the only thing that when you go to put the super on here, you lose the ability to feed, which is a bit of a— so you kind of want the feeder empty before you put the super on, otherwise They're going to get a bit confused and then they're going to struggle with the weather to draw this stuff out.

Okay.

So my advice, I know you're overruled, but my advice would be, I think, give them one more week here just to finish what's in the feeder.

Yeah.

Leave that nice and clean. They'll use it to draw out all of the foundation and stuff there, and then there's no issues with space and stuff, and then you'll be perfect for the super then.

That seems like a fair compromise.

Yeah, I only thought about that as I came back over here, but we've got the super here. I've got loads of drawn comb for you.

All right.

I've also got a bit of foundation in there so we can compare. The 2. But what I'll do is I'll set it back up and then I'll show you how to put it on. We can just store this on the hive until next week.

Yeah, okay. Yeah, so we're seeing some progress, but it's not actual progress, it's pretend progress.

You don't get into beekeeping if you want to see, uh, the kettle boil. You ever heard that, like, phrase?

A watched kettle never boils.

Never boils.

No, you're right. Have you ever tried running the bath and waiting for the bath to fill?

No, because I have very strange baths. I get— I turn the tap on and get in. What? Do you not do that?

No, nobody does that.

Get in and it's like filling up.

No, not with that.

What's crazy? Hey, what's the craziest thing? That's not weird. Is that weird?

Yeah, 100%.

Stick it in the comments if that's weird. Um, what's nice?

I've never heard something like that.

Surely everyone does that. Nobody does that. Here's the problem. Yeah, if you put the tap on, run yourself a nice hot bath.

Yeah.

You get in, you're like, oh, it's too hot.

You monitor it.

No, it's too hot, so then what's better is you get in, and as it's building up warmth, you're in it and you're like, yeah, bit more heat, bit more heat. Right, that is too hot. Perfect temperature.

No? I'd just feel like a bit of a wet wipe, just kind of sat there waiting for the water to go off.

It's nice, like a treat, just like sit down.

Not calling you a wet wipe, by the way, I'm just saying. No, but surely the satisfying part of getting into a nice warm bath—

It's too hot for me.

flipping in. No, that's—

I get in and I'm— I get in like a bit of a chore because it's too hot.

How did we get onto baths?

I don't know.

Kettles.

Yeah.

That's brilliant, that.

But it's true with beekeeping though, it's a very slow pursuit. Yeah, nothing happens when you sit there and watch it and just like, come on, do something. Whoa, like that. Do something. They'll probably sting you if you ask them to, but they won't.

Yeah.

And then it's just that iterative, like, compounding week after week, and then all of a sudden They move too quick and you didn't keep up. So the whole time, the whole time you're like, come on bees, come on bees, come on, catch up, come on. And then you miss it and they go ahead and they swarm and they're like, Zane, what's going on?

Thought you were ready. Yeah.

Okay, queen excluder. So queen excluder needs to go on to stop the queen getting up and laying in the supers. But we'll just put that there for now, even though we're not going to feed them. Because if you're going to get the feeder, you can put the feeder back on over the queen excluder. That's it. So no need to drizzle it down again. So what you can do with a super like that is just put it up there.

And they can't get into it yet because there's no way of getting through the feed.

And they can't get in from the top.

See, there you go. Ta-da! Yeah, done, bro. Pro supers on.

Okay, is that all you wanted? You just want the box to be a little bit higher?

I just wanted to, yeah, because you got to look at all the hives I'm surrounded by. They all look really cool and mine looks puny.

There we go. We could stick a couple of extra ones up there if you want. We get up here.

Well, wait till we come back next week. There'll be 10 supers.

So episode 5 done. I enjoyed that, Zane.

Yeah, good fun. It was good, and finally we've got a bit of progress on that.

A little bit of progress, a little bit higher. Another sting to the cheek. I'm looking forward to next week.

And the main thing for me is, because I was off last week, I kind of lost track of where they were up to. I thought, was it 6 frames or 7 frames? Now we know, 8 full frames.

8 full frames.

3 left.

Yeah.

And then hopefully add the super next week. What's the caveat? Is it when they filled one extra frame, or—

So I would have said you can add the super on there.

Yeah.

You could add the super today. The only reason I didn't is because you still got feed in the feeder, so you might as well just let them draw it out. If you were on, say you were on 10 frames there and there was only 1 frame spare, but they're still feeding the feeder, I'd say you just need to go pour that feed somewhere and put supers on because it's— but you've got that space, you should be good. But I'm excited to see how it goes.

Yeah, same here.

Playing ball, aren't they? I've only got 1 sting today.

No swarm cells. No swarm cells. Nothing that shouldn't be there. Queen's healthy, so.

Yeah, looking good.

Sweet.

See you all next week. Outtakes?

See you later. Yeah, let's do it.

Outtakes. Okay, let's do it.

Okay, how's the hair?

We are back with episode 5, and it is really nice to have you back. Episode 5 on Zoom, and it is very nice to have you laughing again.

Yeah.

Ready?

Okay. Yeah. Hold on, hold on, hold on.

Episode five, and Zane, we have to replace your. I think I tapped the hide a bit too much. Okay.

Oh, fuck's sake. Okay, yeah.