👉 Why Aren’t My Bees Filling the Hive Yet?

Welcome back to Zane's First Nuc. Before we jump into it, I'm going to move this beehive because we set it up in the wrong place, and we spoke a little bit before about the 3-foot or 3-mile rule. If you set your beehive up wrong, you can move it 3 feet in any direction, and although a few bees will hover around there, they'll work it out really, really quickly, and they'll all just come back into this beehive. The reason we've done that is that we've got a bit more space to show you what's going on, show you the makeup of the hive. Should be much, much easier that way around. Zane, I think it's about time that I took the I'll take the camera from you. So before the bees stop doing it, all the bees are coming out of the beehive and coming back into the position where the beehive originally was, and they're thinking, what's going on? Where's all the bees? And they're trying to get into there, but they can't get in. And then they'll just make a decision. They'll say, well, where's the closest place to go? And then hopefully they're going to work it out that the old beehive is over here. And I know they'll work it out. It'll take them 10, 15 minutes, and that buzzing will stop, and they'll all be over here. So, Zane, should we get on with it and open them up?

Let's do it.

Let's do it. So what does this make you feel like here, Xane? Because there's quite a lot of bees down there.

It makes me want to put my veil up.

So feel free to put your veil up. Yeah, you will get that if you ever move a beehive. They can't work out where the home is, so they're just going to buzz around a little bit and it can annoy them. So should we get our veils on? I'm going to try and keep it on for as long as possible, but I may join you at some point, Xane.

Well, once a sting comes along, it'll be right veil time.

I will. I find it much easier to communicate with the camera without the veil on, and I think it's easier for people.

Same.

Especially, I got hearing aids, people don't know, so I'm a lip reader. And then if I got the veil up, people can't lip read.

No, I agree.

So there we go. I'm going to leave you to do it, Zane.

All right.

I came in and did a check midweek. I just came in and did a little sneak peek check on the feeder, and there was about like 10 millimeters of syrup left.

Okay.

So pretty much perfect. So hopefully it's all gone now.

All right, give me one second.

How nice is the weather?

It's lovely. I'd much prefer to not be in a bee suit and maybe next to a swimming pool.

I see, really? You get used to it as a beekeeper. You just come to embrace the heat.

Yeah, much better than the winter though, when you're stood here and it's freezing cold. This is far better.

Yeah, I like the sunshine.

Okay, so roof off.

Roof off.

Feeder. So I can take the lid off.

That's it.

This, can't I?

Yep, go on, have a take lid off that. And what are you seeing?

No syrup at all.

So no syrup in the feeder. What would you be thinking, Zane? What are you thinking?

They need more syrup, surely.

Right, yeah. So this is where a lot of people go down that avenue because it makes sense, doesn't it? They need more food and they might need more food, but I wouldn't make that decision just yet. So let's have a look. Empty feeder. Which I always have to say is a very, very good sign. There's something else that's nice to see in that feeder as well that isn't the best news but shows a healthy colony. Can you spot what it is, Zane?

Is it the burr comb in the middle?

Yeah, so they're starting to build like wild comb up in the centre of that, which comb going upwards indicates space generally. Okay, we'll see what we see when we open it up. But there's one thing that I want to do before we get any further. I want to upgrade your multi-purpose crown board and give you an Abello poly Ashworth feeder. Should we go and do that now?

I like the sound of an upgrade. Yeah, let's do it.

Okay, so this multi-purpose crown board, I don't normally use this. I've got a big stack of them and I was waiting on some Ashworth feeders to turn up. It's done its job, it's kept the bees fed. Yeah, but these are much nicer, Zane. They're completely insulated.

This looks very swanky, I will say. Yeah, it looks proper.

Yeah, so it's a big 10-litre poly Ashworth feeder, really nice and insulative on the top, and the bees, the bees just love it. It means you don't need to have a crown board. You can feed syrup, you can feed fondant, you I keep on jumping in as if I'm doing it. Go on, Zane, so you get in.

That's all right. What do you want me to do?

So we're going in for an inspection.

Okay.

So you just take it off. So it's not that fixed, you can get it off of that crown board. So you just lift it off.

Okay, can I put that there or is it gonna mess up those bees?

No, no, that's fine there.

Okay.

Yep.

See, if I seen burr comb there going up, I would say like they need more space, so they're trying to like build anywhere, or is that not the case?

So that is the case, yeah, but they will exhaust that space That horizontal space before they really need anything going up.

Okay.

Could just be there, a spacing issue with the feeder. I think it's more that there's just a little bit of extra space and they thought, yeah, it's close to the feeder. But when we change over to the poly Ashworth feeder, we'll clear that up. So we're gonna smoke the bees down and we'll clear all of that up, get it nice and flat, and then you won't see that again once you've got the Ashworth feeder on, which is nice.

'Cause the bee space will be correct.

Zane has got the skills.

I'm learning, I'm learning.

So if you leave space bigger than a bee space, which is about 8 to 9 millimetres, so if you leave like a 20 millimetre gap, all they're going to do is just fill it with wild comb like that. But if you leave just 8 millimetre spaces everywhere, then the bees need somewhere to get through, and that space is called a bee space.

Well, you can see there's no burr comb anywhere else, only where the feeders have been put.

Exactly, only where they've given them the extra space.

Gotcha. Should we take some frames out?

Take some frames out. What are you thinking just in terms of looking at it before any frames come out though? Think it's grown since last week?

I'd say it's grown. The outer frames look a bit busier, but the outer frames of the original sort of nuc. The newer frames, the fresh frames of fondant don't seem to be doing much at the moment.

Okay, the foundation frames on the outer one, yeah, nothing in them, okay.

But we've just done a video on a foundation wall.

Okay, got to tell me about that foundation wall.

Have we encountered the foundation wall?

Possibly. Shall we have a look?

I think we should. Shall I just get maybe this one here?

You tell me what you're doing as you do it.

I'm gonna go for— I don't know why I've just decided to go for this red one, probably because it looks the easiest to get out. So yeah, there's nothing on that.

Okay, that's cool. Let's put that off to one side. And then you can see down that gap. Is there anything on the bees on the other side of that frame?

On this one?

Yeah. Sorry, not the black one, the one— yeah.

This one here? Yeah, there's definitely bees on this side of it.

Okay, so that's fine. So then I would flip over to the other side then, the other side of the 6-frame nuc.

Yeah.

Yeah, and see if you can get something out over there. Probably get another frame of foundation out.

Yeah, same again.

Nice, okay, this is all good. This is what it should be looking like, so don't feel disheartened if they're doing this. Okay, so then how many frames have you got there?

What, left?

In the middle sections, that's what you would say frames of bees there.

I'd say there's 6 frames of bees.

6 frames of bees, okay, and then what have they done on the next frame next to it then? Just count them up again, those frames.

They've drawn this one out here.

Count up the 6 for me.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, oh sorry, 7 there.

Yeah.

Oh yeah, that's been drawn out here.

Okay. So that is now, I'll tell you there, that is now 7 frames of bees.

Got you, okay.

So we've gone up from 6 frames of bees to 7 frames of bees. So it's a handy way of telling, just kind of identifying the limits of the brood nest.

Yes.

So show me the one frame that wasn't part of the original nuc. Okay, let's have a look at that, see what the bees have done on that, because that will tell you about the foundation wall. So for anyone who doesn't know about the foundation wall, sometimes bees can perceive foundation to be a wall and swarm as a result of it. But if you ever put in a frame of foundation next to a colony, next to a nuc, and it looks anything like that, then you do not have a foundation wall. The fix for it is doing a little bit of checkerboarding. So we can show them that as well, Zane. I'm going to put the camera back up here and I'll show them some checkerboarding. Right, so let's say, Zane, let's just put— that's the 7th frame, yeah?

That one you've got there, yeah.

So these 6 here, they're the original 6. If you had both sides of these, after a couple of weeks where you just had like a frame of foundation and a frame of foundation like that, the likelihood is the bees have perceived that foundation to be some sort of wall, Which means they're not going to draw it out and do what they're supposed to do, they're just going to go ahead and swarm. And the way that you'll see that is that you might start seeing lots of nectar in the middle of the frames, and we'll have a look at that in a little bit. But if you're seeing them being drawn out like that one there, then there is no problem at all, and that is exactly what it should be looking like.

Even if it was only on that one, this one on this side of the brood nest was like, was just pure foundation, whereas that side they started drawing out, is that Yeah, I would say it's not an issue.

They sometimes kind of spread outwards like that. Sometimes they just move one way.

As long as they go one way, then it's fine.

Sometimes, and in colder climates, they'll put the 6-frame nuc up against the wall and then fill all the foundation on one side because it's much warmer for the bees. So it's kind of a thermally inefficient way of doing it here, but the UK's pretty easy conditions. So one of the things we did last week was looking at the amount of bees per frame. So we can look down and say, right, it's 6 frames of bees.

Yeah.

But each one of those frames might only be like half a frame or something like that. So remember we looked and we looked at like the dead space and—

Okay.

So I think we should just do our inspection. We've got like 6 frames or 7 frames, sorry, there to inspect now. Let's go through them one by one, start at that side and we'll look at every single one. I'm gonna put my veil up and I'll get the camera on.

All right, am I good to go?

You tell me what you're doing.

So I'm taking out one of the frames. This one feels really heavy.

Nice.

Yeah, that's, um, so yeah, you can see the low— is that pollen where it looks super wet?

No, so that is nectar going in. So that there is a really nice frame. That'll be fully capped over honey in a matter of days. See that top bit where it's white?

Yeah.

That's capped over honey.

Got you.

So you could go in there and you could eat that, it'd be lovely. Might be a bit of stores left in, so we'll save that for the supers, but then all the rest of it, yeah, is open nectar.

And then this side.

So that one there, bit of empty space again. We saw a lot of empty space last week, and the space is fine. It's not an issue to see that. There's definitely less space, isn't there?

Yeah, I can't believe the weight of it.

I know. What would you say it weighs like, Zane, if you had to compare it to a household object?

Like a bag of sugar or a bag of flour.

Okay.

It's pretty heavy.

Yeah, so when they're fully capped over, a brood frame like that is about 4 pounds of honey.

Wow.

Which is 4 bags of sugar.

Yeah, okay. Yeah, that's a lot.

Yeah.

Okay, looks like brood on this side. Lots of, like, just down here in the sort of centre, looks like eggs.

Okay, cool. Little Tic Tacs.

Yeah, and then this side, is that brood there where it's—

Yeah, nice brood pattern.

That there?

Yeah, capped over brood.

So when you can see eggs, they've just not capped it over yet?

So it's just that cycle. The queen will lay an egg, and then after 3 days it hatches out into a larva, and then after a certain amount of days, depending on whether it's a worker bee or a drone bee, it's capped over and then it goes into that pupation period.

Okay, yeah, so I mean that one, would you say that's sort of 80% full?

Yeah.

Bit of space.

Again, much fuller than it was last week, maybe 10 or 20% extra, I would say.

Yeah, same on this side.

So just asked Zane there to move the crown board off the edge there. You can see all the bees were clustering up on that 'cause it was a really easy object for them to see and identify as something that was close to their home. And already you can see, look at all those bees clustering up there, Zane.

Yeah.

They've got nowhere to go now. And they will eventually find their way into the hive, which is literally just there. Okay, do you wanna pull the next frame out?

This one looks ram-packed. I still haven't seen the queen yet.

Okay, you've seen eggs though.

Yeah.

So I would say always, if you're seeing eggs and no swarm cells, then everything is fine. You don't need to see the queen. Nice to see her though, isn't it?

I was gonna say, yeah, it's just, it is nice to just see her roaming about. Okay, I'd say this one is similar to the last frame. You've got like capped-over brood, you can see some larvae in there. I should start my own bee channel, shouldn't I?

Do it!

I sound really professional there. I'm just basically repeating anything that you've said to me.

So I moved that hive there and already the activity is quite a lot better. They were getting a bit frantic there. It is nicely warm, don't worry, I wet my hair because it's quite warm. I'm not just sweating, I'm not really sweating.

It looks like it, right. So this is frame number 1, 2, 3, this is the 4th one. And nice and busy.

Nice and busy. Yeah. See how that would have probably been eggs or something last week and now it's been turned into larva and now it's capped over.

I think in general you can just tell there's definitely more bees.

Yeah, more bees.

Just in general.

Yeah, even with all the extra ones that we're losing over there, so it will condense down again.

All right.

So what I would say, I'll give you one tip. So one little tip when you're handling stuff here, so you're moving things away nicely and breaking them up even without a hive tool.

Yeah.

But when you come to pull it up, I always think pull it up really slowly. Yeah, so instead of kind of going up like that, you want to kind of break the seal and come in and almost those first just few millimeters there, you're just pulling up at about that speed, maybe out to about there. And what it— the reason that you do it is that if you go back down again, sometimes it can snag and you don't realize it's snagged until you're kind of halfway up, so if you just pull it really quick, you can yank something and kill a lot, whereas if you just get used to doing a really kind of like slow one like that, you feel it before you move.

Right, got you.

So yeah, good, good habit to get into.

So yeah, I'm gonna need a bit of smoke for those ones.

A bit of smoke will do them ones, definitely.

Okay, so about that speed?

Perfect.

I didn't know if I was being a bit overcautious, but I'm glad you said that.

Overcautious is good, yeah, I like overcautious. The way you are around the bees does dictate kind of how they are with you as well.

And they seem, they still seem very relaxed, don't they?

They will do, it's the right time of the year, small colony, lots of nectar coming in, like nice flying weather. The older foragers are probably over there.

Oh, there she is, sorry to interrupt you.

It's alright, no worries. Okay, we found the queen. Good job.

I wonder, I don't know if you can see that.

You have to tell everyone what you did first.

Right, so first of all, I was about to show you the Queen.

Wait, identify yourself. My name is Zane and I'm a cameraman.

My name is Zane and I'm an idiot is what I am. We had the camera set on the wrong focus mode, so we're doing a take 2. There's the Queen. Oh my god, wow, look, I found her.

Let's get the sun on it.

Okay.

Sorry, I'm getting the shadow on. There we go. It's alright. You see the amateur behind the camera now. Okay, nice queen. She looking good? Doing her job?

Well, I've lost her, so yeah. No, yeah, she's there. She's good. Okay, and we got again loads of brood there. They stores where it's like sort of white caps.

Yeah, cap stores.

So cap stores and that side same again.

See how on the frames those ain't though? Yeah. You've seen some of the other colonies like the big colonies and they're full of bees, aren't they, when you pull them out?

Yeah.

It's still, I would say, they're only like 50 or 60% full of bees. So although we talked about there being 6 frames of bees there, there's a lot of growth left on a lot of those frames, which is good. And it's just something to be aware of. And kind of as you see those frames getting busier over the weeks, that's where the expansion is, as opposed to going up into the super or anything like that.

So would you look at it and say, well, it's not quite 6 frames, would you say 4 full frames? Or would you say, no, there's 6 frames of bees?

I still think it's 6 frames of bees, but this here, I've given you a deliberately undersized one.

Okay.

Because it means that we can go through all the process of the smallest ones. But generally our nucs come with a little bit more brood than that, a little bit more stores.

Alright.

So this would probably be what it would be, the queen there on the edge. Like, we'd be sending them out maybe about like this, maybe 1 week post this. That would be what average that we'd be sending out to customers.

Got you. Okay, so last one. No, it's not. This is number 6.

Number 6.

Jeez, this feels heavy.

Okay, nice.

So if it feels heavy, does that mean there's— it's probably full of pollen? Not pollen, what do you call it? Nectar.

Nectar, yeah. Or if they've capped it over and dehydrated it down into honey.

Okay, yeah, there's a bit of capped up here. Still a lot of nectar there. And then same again, this side, there's a lot, most of it's nectar, I think.

Okay, I'm gonna put that one back in. Right, go on, do you want to show the last one to that camera then? So this is the 7th frame, isn't it? So this is the expansion in terms of frames of bees.

Okay, so yeah, there's number 7. That side is completely empty.

Yeah.

But you can see that side obviously Starting to draw it out. You can see the original foundation there, and then, yeah, so they're on their way, aren't they?

Yeah, it's great progress. If you're seeing that, the bees are heading in the right direction. So Zane, what do we need to do? We've got loads of jobs to do.

I was going to say, yeah, so they need feeding. No, we haven't discussed that. Do they need feeding?

So do they need feeding? How many frames are they on now?

So 7 in total.

7 in total. What's the rule for adding on the next box?

80%.

80%. So I would carry on feeding until you reach 80%, but that rule is based on full frames as well. I've got tons of empty space, so 100% carry on feeding a nuc if it looks like this. Yeah, got you. What other jobs you got?

Move the burr comb.

Move the burr comb. How are we going to do that?

With a hive tool and smoke.

Hive tool and smoke. So we get a smoker lit and we'll puff it down. We should have had the smoker lit really, shouldn't we?

Yeah, what are we doing?

But they're quite chilled out. I don't often use a smoker, so okay, it's a puff Puff the smoke to get the bees off this burr comb and then use the hive tool to clean all of that up. What else do we need to do?

Add our fancy new polyash floor.

Something before that.

Something before that?

It is a simple one that I'm kind of lining you up for.

Oh, I mean like push the frames back together?

Push all the frames back together in the same order that they're in now?

No.

Go on.

I mean, are we going to do any checkerboarding?

Are we going to do any checkerboarding? That's right. So it's a really good thing to understand here. A lot of people won't go this deep in. Zane, if you grab the camera, can I just show you this configuration a bit?

Yeah.

Right, so let's have a look at some of the resources that we've got here now. I've split it up. These are the original 6 frames, so 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. This is the 7th frame, but these 2 frames here are the frames that Zane identified as being really heavy, really full of stores, and they are. There's not that much space in there at all. A bit of space on that side, and the same applies over here. Loads of pollen, loads of stores, not that much space if the colony wants to expand. So think about it from the queen and the colony's point of view. All of the brood is in the middle there and all of the stores is on the outer side, which is how they naturally like to present themselves. But if these frames get capped over with stores, the queen will have to go over a honey frame to get to any additional space, and it can trigger swarming. Much easier for you just to reconfigure things around a little bit, and there's loads of different ways of doing it. I wouldn't recommend doing all of these at once, but I would recommend in this situation here doing at least one of them. So here's one thing you can do. You've got a frame of stores here, it's pretty much capped over at the top there, but the rest of it is full. But what's on that side, Zane?

Um, nothing.

Like nothing, just empty space, yeah?

Yep.

So instead of having it that way, I can just turn this frame around And I've given the queen access to half a frame more space there. Not really done that much, all I've done is just turned the frame around, but that configuration is much, much better for both me and the bees. I've increased the brood space, so when we come back next week we're going to check that frame and I guarantee it'll be fully laid up with eggs. But then the other way of doing it is you can checkerboard. A checkerboard just means taking one of these outer foundation frames and bringing it into the brood nest. But the easiest and kind of softest way of doing a checkerboard is, see this 7th frame where they started on its own?

Mm-hmm.

We're just going to take that and we're going to move this big heavy honey frame out, and we're just going to place that in exactly the same orientation and place that in there. Now look at the configuration again now, yeah. Before we had 4 frames that were kind of full of bees and stuff, there was a bit of space on the frames, and 2 outer heavy frames here full of honey. Now we've got 5 frames for the queen to go and lay on, and we've even got an extra half a frame over there, so it's 5 and a half frames of almost available space for that queen. It's a much better configuration for that brood nest and for that queen to stop early season swarming, and all I have to do now is just push it all back together again. Want me to hold the camera?

Yeah, go for it.

Go on.

Okay, so I'm going to just pop this one back in.

Cool, right, so should we get the— we'll get the smoker lit and we'll get that burr comb off, yeah?

Yeah, let's do it.

I'm not going to get the smoker lit.

No?

No, I'm just going to blow them off.

Okay.

Okay?

Yeah.

Does work, the stupid way of doing it. Okay, right, so everything back together again, Zane. We're going to put the Pauline Ashworth feeder on, but what would you say in terms of supers? Do you think we need supers yet?

No, because of the 80% rule.

Okay, 80%.

So is it— am I right in saying 80%?

Yeah, yeah.

So for me— It just feels forced because I know you know the answer sometimes because I say it all the time. 7, 8, 9, 10. Is it 11 frames or 10?

It's 11 frames, this one here.

So I was gonna say if it's 10 frames, then that's easy, because if you've got 8 frames, then that's 80%.

Yeah, so it's kind of 8 or 9 in this one. Yeah, I would say something like that. Yeah, it's those ones. Exclude the 2 outer frames. As soon as they're covering all of the rest of the frames, we'll go on to supers.

So what, do you think maybe an extra frame full? Yeah, let's say, because this is— this one, no, that's not the flipped one, is it? That's the empty one. So yeah, I mean, once we've got another extra frame or 2 full, then it's time to think about supers.

Frame or 2 full and a bit of expansion on the frames.

Yes.

I'm pretty sure we're a couple of weeks away.

All right, cool.

Yeah, which is nice because it gets you just to kind of the difficult part of the season. and then hopefully we'll finish the year up here.

All right.

Okay, so feeder going on. It is worth noting the bee space on the bottom here. So bee space, Sam, we spoke about it, didn't we? 8mm gap. The Suyenti version of this doesn't have the gap, so it doesn't work with bottom bee space. So don't buy it because it will squish all of the bees on there. So you can see that kind of makes sense, doesn't it? You've got the rim there and that's flush.

Yeah, so that should be 8mm.

Yeah, so bottom bee space means Really strangely, that the space for the bees is at the bottom of the frames, which when you stack them on top of each other gives the impression that the bees walk on the tops. Couldn't be clearer, could it?

Makes total sense.

Makes total sense. Right, there you go.

Is there a right way, wrong way? Is it just—

with the National, no, because it's square. All I would say is keep that closed.

Okay.

And the benefit of that, we spoke about being able to feed the syrup and the fondant and how nice and insulated it is.

I was gonna say, yeah, it's just the giant piece of polystyrene, so it's, it's going to be warm as well, isn't it?

But also what's brilliant is it will never leave that hive now.

Yeah.

They're just permanently attached, which really does reduce any of that disease transmission.

Syrup?

Syrup, yeah, go on, we'll grab— I think I left it over there. So I don't know if we spoke about syrup concentration last week, but we're using just invert there. You can use, at this time of the year, you can use anything. 1:1 is probably the best, but it's a faff making it and it goes off quite quickly. That there is just invert.

So how much am I putting in?

I don't think that much now, yeah, because they're doing a lot of work. There's a good flow on, so maybe about an inch, maybe just under an inch. You're talking a couple of litres, I would say. Yeah, I'd say that's about right there. Yeah, nice. Right, so stop that. And then what do you have to do? Do you remember?

Um, drip some down.

Where?

The hole?

Yeah, go on.

Okay.

So tell me about the hole. It's like a test for Zayn, isn't it?

Tell you about the hole. So this is where the bees will come up to get the— no, they won't. They— oh God.

It's the emergency hole, yeah. So at the end of the year, I like to put all the straw in there.

Right.

And then the bees will come up through that hole and they'll clear it all out.

Okay.

But it's also a great way of just dribbling a little bit of syrup down to tell the bees where it is.

Alright.

So you can do that by sticking your finger in it. you want, and then just dribbling that down into the hole. That's it. Do that 2 or 3 times. Nothing worse than feeding the bees and not coming and taking it, and then you open up the box and they're dead. This solves it, I would say, 99% of the time. And then you can just close that lid. Okay, happy with that, Zane?

Yeah, I'm pretty happy with that.

Good inspection?

Yeah, we're When you first said, oh, you're gonna have a beehive, yeah, I thought it was just gonna be for the video and we're just gonna do a couple of, you know, inspections or whatever. But I actually start— I'm starting to feel like this is actually my hive.

Oh, that's nice.

Which is cool.

Yeah, you're gonna give it a name. Some people name their queen.

Name the queen.

You can name the queen, you can name the hive.

Queen Zara.

Queen Zara?

Zain Zara.

Zain Zara, okay.

Zabu.

Oh, Zabu.

Queen Zabu.

There we go, right.

Zabu.

Shout out to Zabu. And it needs like a sponsor. Your dog came here today, didn't he?

Yeah, Ronnie.

You and Chrissie's dog. We've got our own sponsor. Oh no, it's not a sponsor, like a mascot.

Yeah, a little mascot.

Blackman's Honey mascot. What's his name? Ronnie, yeah.

Ronnie. He's acing it.

He quite liked it up here, didn't he?

He needs to come up here weekly, I think.

Yeah.

He loves it.

Yeah, it was good fun. But anyway, episode 3 done. Are you enjoying it?

Yeah, I am actually. I'm starting to get into it. And at the start it was just a bit sort of, not say overwhelming, but Didn't really know what was going on. It was just a load of bees and it all looked pretty cool. But now I'm learning on brood and water stores and how to checkerboard and that sort of thing. So yeah.

It's nice, there's time to learn. And this is where I think a lot of people get it wrong. They get the nuc and they get scared and they panic. And they don't enjoy the really nice easy bit, which is the first like 6 weeks of just the bees building up slowly. They get panicked that they're not building up quick enough. They want to do everything to speed it up, but really there's no speeding it up.

Just let them take their time and just go with it.

Yeah, and how good would this be? Imagine we get to 20 episodes of this, which I think we probably will do. Imagine the outtakes by then. But imagine there's a 20-episode series of this, and then before you were due to get your bees in April or May, you could watch it throughout Christmas. It'd be useful, wouldn't it?

Yeah.

And you kind of saw like the separation of the brood.

Oh, I know for a fact I go into hobbies headfirst, and I want to buy everything there is to buy and learn everything there is to learn. If I seen this as a series, I'd be I'd be all over it. Yeah, yeah.

I think it'd be a useful one, and it is very fun to film as well. So should we roll the outtakes?

Awesome. Let's go. I've got a good little bit for the outro in my head as well.

Yeah, okay.

No, nothing nothing groundbreaking. Where is the missing frame?

Okay, so I try to talk to the camera.

One's on his way up already. Yeah. His.

Oh, hers.

Okay, let's start getting to that.

Jane's got an idea for the outro.

No, no, don't, because now you're going to build it up into a huge—

Okay, cool. So let's— what are we doing?

Yeah, right, let me— I'm gonna have to say it to you.

Okay.

So what it was going to be—

Right, is that on automatic focus there?

It won't be, will it? We've changed it.

Outtakes. Right.

And I'm meant to be the cameraman.