In this YouTube video Laurence Edwards announces the inaugural 2022 Beekeeping Awards, a home‑based competition he co‑hosts with Damien from Abelo. He outlines the event’s timeline (entries open now, awards video released in September), the ten award categories (Best Pollinator Garden, Best Hive Modification, Best DIY Hive, Tallest Hive, Best Swarm Capture, Best Association Apiary, Most Swarm Cells on a Single Frame, Best Frame of Brood, Best Looking Queen, Best Apiary), and the detailed entry rules: submissions must be portrait‑oriented videos no longer than 30 seconds, include the entrant’s name, a statement of entry, and the category, with no overlays, music, or external footage. Entries are sent exclusively via WeTransfer to blackmountainhoney@gmail.com, with one entry per category per participant. The judging panel consists of Laurence and Damien, whose decisions are final. He describes the prize pool exceeding £1,000, listing items such as an Apisolis Bee Vaporizer, various Abelo poly hives, Buckfast queens, bee entrances, a stainless‑steel smoker, and assorted frames and queen cages, though he does not assign specific prizes to categories. Laurence offers strategic tips—be creative, use editing to maximize content, and ensure bees are shown filling a tall hive—to improve chances of winning. The video concludes with a call for submissions and an invitation for questions in the comments.
Chapters
I'm very proud to announce that in 2022 I'm going to be hosting the Beekeeping Awards. Now I say that like the Beekeeping Awards is even a thing. Definitely not a thing. I teamed up with Damien from Abelo. We are going to run a beekeeping awards ceremony from my living room and we're going to give away prizes worth over £1,000. So in this video I'll cover all the details, everything you need to know if you want to enter the 2022 Beekeeping Awards. I'll talk about the categories that you could enter, some of the prizes that you can win, how to enter, what the rules are, and how to stand the best chance of winning one of these awards. So first off, time and place. We're going to run this sometime in September. Wait until the season's finished, wait until everything's quietened down a little bit, wait until I've glamorized and made my living room look a little bit acceptable for an awards ceremony, and wait until people have actually submitted some entries for the awards. But in terms of entering the competition, you can enter as soon as this video goes live on YouTube. Let's talk about the categories then. I have picked 10 challenging categories to try and test you as a beekeeper and just to try and make it a little bit fun as well. So the categories are as follows. Category number 1, best pollinator garden. Category number 2 is best hive modification. Number 3 is best do-it-yourself Number 4 is tallest hive. Number 5 is best swarm capture. Number 6 is best association apiary. Number 7, my personal favorite, most swarm cells on a single frame. Number 8 is the best frame of brood. Number 9 is the best looking queen. And number 10 is the best apiary. So how about that? They are the 10 categories that you can enter. I'm gonna go through each of those now just in a little bit more detail to tell you what we're looking for in terms of the awards. Before we go into detail on each of the categories though, I'm just going to go into some of the rules to make sure that you don't get caught out. So the first rule, really important this one, everything needs to be shot in video. No pictures allowed. You need to take a video. You need to make sure that your video is in the portrait orientation. So if you don't know what that is, that means like you would film on a phone, not landscape but portrait like that. The video can be no longer than 30 seconds. That's going to be challenging for some people, but I just want to condense it down, get the very best bits in. You can edit the video as much you like to bring it down into the 30 seconds, but I don't want any overlays, no music, no glamour, no glitz, just a real straightforward video giving you the best shot at winning that category. In terms of what you need to say, just so you can't bring in anybody else's videos from elsewhere on the internet, you need to say your name and you need to say this is your entry for the 2022 Beekeeping Awards and say the category as well. So for example, if you're entering the Best Queen competition You get your phone, you film a 30-second video. Doesn't have to be 30 seconds. You get your queen on the camera and you say, hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. This is my entry to the 2022 Beekeeping Awards, and I'm entering this video for the Best Queen category. Simple as that. Really nice and simple. What I will do when you bring those videos to me, and I'll tell you how to enter them at the end, I will post some of those on my YouTube platform throughout the year. So you might send me a video, you might see it come up on YouTube, you might see your name on there as well. And then what we'll do at the end of the year is we'll combine all of those videos together, and in the Beekeeping Awards video that will be published in September, we will identify the winners and we'll identify the top 3 in each category as well. So in terms of sending the videos to me, the only way that I will accept videos to be sent in is through WeTransfer. That's the only way. You can't email me, you can't WhatsApp me, you can't phone me, you can't send it in the post. It's the only way that we can accept big, good quality files is WeTransfer. So you wanna send them over to blackmountainhoney@gmail.com and I'll download them and stick them onto my hard drive. As I said before, as soon as this video goes live on YouTube, that's it, the competition begins and you can send me the video straight away. You can enter each and every category, but you can only enter each category once. So you can't send me 5 swarm capture videos, you can only enter each category once. What I would say with the videos as well is be a little bit imaginative. Try and think outside the box a little bit. A little bit of video editing does help bring stuff together. You can get more shots in, you can show your queens doing something different, maybe a few different angles. The more creative you can be, the more information you can cram into that 30 seconds, the better chance you've got of impressing people with your videos and the content that you're going to provide. Now, that's not to say that's the be-all and end-all. If you've got the best queen, you just need to take a video of that queen and say, this is the best queen and she's going to win. And then the judges can take a look at it and make a decision on that. In terms of the judges, it's me, I'm the judge. Also Damian from Abello, he's going to be a judge as well. Judges' decision is obviously final, and I literally cannot wait to see some of the entries. So let's go through some of the categories, give you a little bit more detail in terms of what we're looking for. So number 1, Best Pollinator Garden. You've got 30 seconds to convince me why your garden is the best for all types of pollinators. That's it, simple as that. Show me the different plants you've got, show me the different trees you've got, show me the different habitats you've got, show me the different pollinators in your garden. Cram it down, condense it into 30 seconds, show me why your garden is the best. Next one, best hive modification. You might be thinking, I've not got 30 seconds to show you my hive modification, but that's the challenge here. You need to condense it down. Hive modification can be anything, absolutely anything. It can be simple, it can be complex. The only rule for this one is that it can't be something that you can go out and buy on the market. It needs to be something that you've modded at home, and if it's something that's unique, Next one is best do-it-yourself beehive. And again, with this one, the only stipulation is that you have done everything at home. Doesn't matter if you can go and buy it elsewhere. I wanna see something that's made completely at home. Could be a hive made out of pallet wood, could be a freezer that you've turned into a beehive. I'm not gonna give away all my ideas, but you know, use your imagination. Best do-it-yourself beehive. Ah! Ah! You little git. Right, I do believe there is a rule that every single sting needs to remain on film, so there we go. Didn't get me in the eye, but just there. Not even doing anything. Can't believe that one. Right, next one, number 4, tallest hive. Now do not just stack up 30 supers and send me a video of it saying this is the tallest hive. You need to prove to me that the bees are filling from the top to the bottom. You've got 30 seconds to do that. So tallest hive comes with a caveat, comes with a precondition that you need to show me that the bees are filling from the very bottom to the very top. Number 5, best swarm capture. Again, put in as much detail as you can possibly get for 30 seconds. It can be you just going out and catching a swarm and saying, wow, this is a really big swarm, or you can try and stitch it together and show some of the different processes. Use your imagination, but number 5 is the best swarm capture. Number 6 is my second favourite. I know I said number 7's my favourite, but best association apiary is gonna be so much fun. And I wanna get people competitive with this one, 'cause I look at some of the association apiaries and I think, wow, they are really, really good. Tell me some of the stuff you do. Show me some of the bees you keep. Tell me why your association apiary is the best association apiary in the UK. But remember, you've only got 30 seconds to do it. Needs to be filmed in portrait and you need to send it to me via WeTransfer. Number 7 is most swarm cells on a single frame. The caveat with this one is not only do you need to film it, say your name, say the competition that you're entering, you also need to tell me how many cells are on that frame. If you can identify them with clever arrows on the video as well, that's definitely going to get you bonus points and make it easier for you. I can't wait to see how many swarm cells we're going to get on some of these frames though. Number 8 is the best frame of brood, and as with all of these, they're completely subjective. Your best frame of brood might not be my best frame of brood. But what I'm looking for here is a perfect laying pattern, as close to perfect as you can possibly get. Let's see what you've got. Number 9, best looking queen. The caveat with this one is you don't need to have mated the queen yourself, so it doesn't need to be a graft, it doesn't need to be your own queen. The only condition on this one is how good does the queen look. If you want to put her on a frame of her brood and show the brood that she's laid, maybe you'll get extra bonus points for that. If you want to show it next to a colony that's perfectly calm as well, Maybe you'll get bonus points. The competition though is best looking queen. I'm not going to say any more on that one. And then the final one is best apiary, and I've purposely not put that down as best looking apiary. I just want to see the best apiary out there. Might be the most colonies, might be the most amount of honey produced, might be the most picturesque apiary. I don't know. I'm going to leave that one completely open. All I want to see is 30-second videos showing me your best apiary. So I don't know about you, I am so, so excited for this. £1,000 worth of prizes. But here's the fun bit, I'm not going to tell you which prizes go for which category. I'm not going to say, right, this category here is the big bumper £200 prize, because then everyone's just going to enter that category. So I'm going to tell you some of the prizes now. You know the prize pool is over £1,000. I'm going to tell you some of the prizes that are on offer, but I'm not going to tell you which category they fall in. So up for grabs, we've got one Apisolis Bee Vaporizer, We've got a 12-frame poly hive from Abello. We've got a normal poly hive from Abello. We've got a poly nuc from Abello. We've got 4 Buckfast queens on offer from Black Mountain Honey. We've got a set of upstairs-downstairs bee entrances. We've got a stainless steel bee smoker from Abello. We've got some frames, some foundations, some boxes, and some queen cages as well. Total prize pool is over £1,000. So I think that's it. I've covered everything. I've told you the rules. I've told you how to enter. I've told you when the event will be taking place. I've given you my best tips for how do well in the categories. All that's left now is for you to send me over your entries for the 2022 Beekeeping Awards. I hope you think this is a good idea. I hope you send in lots of your videos. Any questions, stick them below. I'll try and get back to the comments. Good luck with your entries though, and I wish you all the best of luck for the 2022 season.
