When To Inspect Bee Hives - First Real Inspection of the Year

Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping and the first proper inspection of the year. So it's a really nice warm day here today. I've taken the opportunity to get out to look inside all of the nucs. I'm checking for queens, I'm checking for eggs, I'm checking for brood, I'm checking for food. I'm doing a full inspection, every single frame, and I'm going to talk you through what I do in this video. And give you some pointers for your own first inspections of the year. So we're going to cut straight into it then. I'm going to put my hood up. I'm going to give the bees a little bit of smoke. First inspection of the year, they might not know what's going on. They might be really nice, or they might not know what's going on and they might be really horrible. So always get plenty of smoke into them first time of the year. Nice new equipment, new gloves, new hive tool, everything nice and clean, and hopefully your bees have come over winter well. As you can see, the bees are piling the pollen in today. All of my nucs still have the mouse guards on, so they're queen excluders, and it's knocking off a lot of pollen. So if we had a continued spell of warm weather, I'd definitely be opening those now. We have got a very, very cold spell due to come in, so I'm just going to leave those on. I might lose a little bit of pollen where the bees are knocking that off through the queen excluder, but it just stops any late season clustering because it's due to get down to about 3 or 4 degrees overnight. I'm going to leave that excluder on, stops any rodents getting in. So let's get our hood on and we'll take a look inside the colony. Right, gloves on. You might have noticed I've moved over to a different type of glove this year. They're effectively a Marigold, but they come in an extra large size, nice and thin. Should give me a little bit more dexterity. It means I can change them out a bit more often. Gone for the Rouchboy today. Nice small smoker, only doing an hour or so of inspections. Keep it nice and small. Really nice action, lots of smoke. You know I've got a bit of a smoker fetish. So first thing we're going to do, first inspection of the year, is we're going to give them a puff of smoke. I might give them a little bit more than I normally would. They're not used to me coming in, messing around with them, so I just want to get them prepared, make sure they're nice and gentle. Always check your crown board, make sure there's no queen on there. Last thing you want to do this time of year, damage your queen. You need to be as careful at this time of the year as you are later on in the season. It's difficult to get queens at this time of year, even imported ones. Make sure your queen's not on that crown board before you set it aside. Right, once you got the crown board off, little bit of smoke over the frames. Don't need to go wild. And then we're going to take our hive tool out. I've got my hive tool connected in my top pocket today. It's not exactly where I wanted it to go on here, but it means that I can go in and out and it's always where I need it. Going to get it fitted later on down a little bit lower on the bee suit. So you want to start with an outside frame. Just be aware these frames are going to be really well propolised down. You're going to need to give them a little bit of force just to get them out. Beware of the queen. You don't want to crush the queen. So just checking to see if I can see the queen. I often find the 5th or the 2nd frame are a little bit easier to get out, a little bit safer to get out than going in on the 1st or the 6th on a 6-frame nuc. So I'll just leave her in, go for that 5th frame. And we are straight into beautiful brood. Brood in all stages, lots of pollen, excellent, excellent pattern, really nice pattern, especially so early in the season. Doesn't get much better than that for frame 5. So remember what we're looking for here. All I'm looking for is I want to see the queen, I'd like to see some brood in all stages, I'm checking they've got sufficient food, and I'm checking they've got enough space. And already I've ticked off loads of those, so I can feel there's good weight in this frame, I can feel from the box there's good weight, so they've got plenty of food. I've got some fondant on as well, so there's plenty of food for them. I've seen capped brood, I've seen larvae, I've seen eggs, so all I really need to see now from this colony is the queen, and that's what I'm going to go and try and find now. Do remember though, if you're seeing eggs and you've seen capped worker brood, you don't really need to see the queen. You can establish from that that the queen's there. I could close this colony back up now. And if I'm doing this on the rest of my nucs, that is all I really want to see. Check there's brood, check they've got space, check they've got food. I don't need to see the queen. But I'm going to go through this one frame by frame just to give you a snapshot of what these nucs are looking like at this point of the season. So this one here, this is frame 6. I've just checked, there's no queen on it. Reasonable amount of stores, nice amount of pollen. Bees with pollen baskets coming in. That is what I'd expect to see of a frame one or a frame six at this time of year. There's actually some fresh nectar coming into here as well. So the bees have been out today. They've they've collected something with a little bit of fresh nectar. Really, really good to see. Right, next frame. You can see got the queen cage in here. This was one of the two frame splits from September last year. Filling the box up now, so it shows you can really make good late. Season splits, if you get a good, healthy mated queen going in there, you've got the right genetics and you feed them well. Lots of brood, probably about 60, 70% full of brood. Little bit of drone brood on this one as well, which again is nice to see. Good ring of stores, good ring of pollen, really nice healthy frame for frame number 4. Right, frame 3 now, and it is so reassuring to find a queen. Like, I know, I understand, and I appreciate it from a beginner's point of view, from anybody's point of view, when you're doing your first inspection, It's lovely to see the queen, lovely to see that she's still marked, lovely to see that there's food and all of the good stuff that you're checking on the first inspection, but I just wanted to reiterate, you really don't need to see the queen. Don't break your back over it. You can probably do more damage by searching for that queen and damaging her than opening up, pulling out one frame, seeing eggs, seeing worker brood, and putting it back together again knowing that the queen was there within the last 24 hours. That is what I would propose. But frame 3, we found the queen. Beautiful marked purple queen. So the purple is the Murray-McGregor queens that we get from Gelanta. And it just goes to show, lovely temperament colony. Really, really nice. Have done very well to expand so much from September to get to a point where they're completely full. And I've got high hopes for these bees this coming season. Apart from the presence of the queen on this frame, you've got about 50% capped brood. Nice ring of eggs and larvae, nice ring of pollen, nice ring of stores as well. So again, a really good textbook frame for this time of year. Doesn't come much better than that. So all I'd say is when you get that frame back in, just be careful with that queen. Remember where she is, and if possible, make a little gap and get her in so you're not going to rub the frames up against each other. That's your most valuable asset at this time of year. You've identified she's there. Now protect her and make sure you don't squish her when you put everything back together. Right, frame 2. Again, beautiful frame. Lots of brood, probably 40 or 50% brood. Lots of capped worker brood, eggs, larva, lots of pollen, lots of stores around the edge. So there's nothing that I could improve about this nuc of bees. I've not cherry-picked this one. This is just the first one I've come to. Really, really nice to see. That's 4 frames of brood so far, and then just a little bit of space on the outer frame. So these nucs are primed and ready to go out to customers. We don't need to wait any longer for these. These are the checks that we do Before they go out to customers. So we're opening up the nucs, we're checking to see the queen's there. If she's there, we're checking to see if she's marked. If she's not marked, we'll just touch her up because we know what year all of our queens this year are, 2021, so they've come through the winter and they were requeened last year. We're checking to see eggs, we're checking to see that they're laying brood, and we're checking to see that the pattern of that brood is correct and in a really good pattern, not indicating any mating issues whatsoever. Of course, we're always checking for disease, foulbrood diseases. We're checking for varroa load. We're doing our standard disease and virus checks, and we're checking to see if they've got enough food to get them through. And then obviously for our own benefit, we're checking for space as well. So if they're really jam-packed, we're going to upgrade them. But for our customers who we're sending these nucs out for, we're just checking that they're covering all 6 frames and you're actually getting a full nuc of bees. Then onto the last frame, so frame 1. No brood, lots of pollen, lots of capped stores, and lots of open stores as well, and the presence of nectar. So really, really happy with this one. Sometimes we find the nucs in that condition where they're firing on all cylinders, but they're very, very low on feed. This one here has got a good frame of feed here, good amount of weight to it. The other frame on the other side, so frame 6, has got probably about 50% of the weight again. And then it's sunny, the bees are going out and foraging, so they're in a really good position in terms of a balance between Vacant space for the queen to go in and lay, a good amount of stores, a good amount of nectar, obviously brood in all stages, good healthy worker brood. Not a bad thing to see a little bit of drone brood at this time of the year. You'll know the drone layers if you see them. It's just there's nothing in them, full of drone brood, not good to see. And that's it. That's a really, really healthy looking nuc. So I'm going to put it all back together, talk to you a little bit more at the end. So there we go. That is the First inspection of the year, and it feels so good to be back out with the bees. I'm going to go now, check all of these nucs, check they've got what they need to have. But just to summarize what I'm doing on this first inspection again is I'm checking to see if there's eggs. That's my number one thing that I'm looking for at this time of year. I've done my checks previous to this in the few weeks upcoming to it to check that there's enough food there. I've been hefting them, I've been looking inside, looking to see what they're looking like through the crown board or just cracking the lid. Putting fondant on if they need it. So I'm confident that there's enough food in all of my colonies. What I'm checking for at this time of year, pre-checks to get the colonies and the nucs out to customers, is I'm checking for eggs. And I want to see eggs, I want to see larvae, and I want to see worker brood. I want to see capped worker brood, and I want that brood to be in a good pattern. The next thing obviously I'm always looking for is, is any diseases, any foulbroods, any viral loads, anything to do with varroa. And then we can isolate and treat that if needs be. But if you've got a good integrated pest management plan, you shouldn't be finding too much of an issue at this time of the year. Obviously, we're checking for food. You're going to give them a heft, you're going to look at the frames. Food is one of the biggest things to look out for at this time of year, and I know I mentioned it's not one of the things that I immediately look out for because I'm on top of it and I'm doing it regularly, so it's almost a given. You will be amazed at how quickly a colony will burn through its reserves. You need to make sure that they've got enough food, and you need to think ahead one week, two weeks. What's the weather like? Do they need fondant? Do they need syrup? Where are you trying to get that colony to? And give them sufficient amount of food to get them through. These guys here, they've got enough food, so I don't need to worry about that. The next thing I'm looking for is space, and you'll be surprised. You can really bring on swarming very, very early in the season if you don't give the bees enough space. If that was my nuc. And I wasn't sending that out in a couple of days to our customers, I'd be upgrading that straight away. It needs the space. You can put it into a hive, you can give it a little bit of a feed, you can get it going, and that's what I'd be looking for. So that's it for the video. I'm not going to dwell on it. First inspection of the year is a great momentous occasion for me. Nice that the bees are out flying, nice that they're so busy. Like, check out that nuc there. They are very, very interested in me, and they're just generally quite happy with the weather. Follow those key steps and think why are you going in to do that first inspection. You're checking for food, you're checking for brood, you want to see eggs, larvae, capped worker brood in a nice pattern, no disease, and if you see the queen it's a little bit of a bonus. And that's it, then you can pack the hive up, you can go and inspect them again next week or the week after. So I hope you found that video useful, I hope you found it enjoyable, I certainly enjoyed that. There's only so many products that you can review, and maybe they get a little bit tiresome. So I'm in my element here inspecting bees, talking to you about bees. That is what No-Nonsense Beekeeping is all about. So thanks for watching. As always, please hit the subscribe button, please hit the bell so you're notified of every video, and I'll see you next time.