Would You Keep Bees Like This In Your Apiary?

We're back at the abandoned apiary. The landowner let us keep the hives here until April, and in this video we're going through every single hive that's in this apiary to check first to see if they've made it through the winter, and then we're going to do a quick brood inspection to make sure that there's no foul brood before we move them off into a different apiary. So if you rewind to last time, there were 5 hives here in total. We went in, we checked all of them, there were bees in all of them. Some of them were strong, some of them were a little bit weak, some Some of them are completely wild. We're going to go through each and every single one of those colonies here today. Hopefully we're still going to have 2 or 3 of them that have made it through. But as we said before, we don't know how long they've been abandoned in this apiary. Could be up to 5 years. So we just have to see what comes through the winter. The main concern here, and luckily the landowner has let us keep them here until the brood is actually present, is that there's going to be some form of foulbrood here. So the weather's been really, really good. I'd be very, very surprised to see any colonies now that don't have any brood within them. Means that we can get in there, do an inspection, confirm there's no foulbrood before we move them away. We're doing this a little bit last minute. It's about 13 or 14 degrees at the moment, and tomorrow is forecast for like 5 or 6 degrees, and then there's a little bit of a cold snap on the way. So we're doing it at the very last minute just to confirm that foulbrood status, and then we can move them while we're into that little cold snap. So I'll get my bee suit on, we'll go and have a look at the colonies, see how they're getting on. So this is the first hive we looked at last time. Thinking back, it was actually a reasonably strong hive. This one, we can see there's a little bit of activity at the entrance—not much—but it has got a little bit cold for the day now. So we'll get inside, see what the bees are looking like. So just as I'm lifting up that lid there, I can hear that there's bees in there. So I know this one's going to be good. Maybe they're going to go crazy. Maybe they're going to go all over me. Just have to wait and see. So the configuration of this hive here: we've got two supers, and then it looks like an extended. Extended brood box. There's bees all the way up to the top as well. I'm going to take a couple of the boxes off and we'll go down a bit lower, see if we can get to that brood nest. Well, I'm just going to take off a couple of the top boxes, see if we can get down to that brood nest. Very big solid super of honey there. So that is one super completely full, and that is another super completely full. So not the biggest colony at all, maybe looks like they're over, say, 3 or 4 frames. Hopefully we're going to find some brood. As we said last time, don't go in at the lugs there, you'll break them. See if you can lever them up like that. Always a bit concerning when I see a little plague cup like that, means that the bees are kind of not happy with what's going on. Could be left over from last year though. Another one on this side here, very, very old comb, so difficult to see any eggs. No eggs, no brood on that one. All right, it's not looking good. 2 frames in, no brood. You can see they're kind of drawing these cells out here. Which is always like a last gasp attempt to try and raise a queen, even if they've not got an actual queen in there. No eggs, no larvae. So again, no brood, no eggs, no larvae. Can't see a queen. The numbers look like they've dwindled from when we saw it earlier on in the year. I'd be very, very surprised to see any colonies at this point of the year that don't have eggs and larvae in. We've had a week, 10 days of really, really good weather, 18, 19 degrees. If there was a queen in here, she should be laying right now. Nothing to see on here either. There definitely weren't these play cups last time, so they're pulling those out in response to try and get themselves some sort of emergency queen. They're not going to get it without any eggs being laid. So unfortunately, it looks like the first one is a dud. Sorry, John, I can't see any queen, I can't see any eggs, I can't see any larva, no brood at all. Looks like they're trying to draw out some form of emergency cell. Still can't safely say that there's no foul brood in here either. What would I suggest doing at this time of the year? Not a huge amount you can do really. The bees are really drastically dwindling in numbers. If this was me, I would say abandon the colony, take the honey, melt down all of the frames, take the equipment and start again. Right, first colony complete dud. Let's get into the second one that we'd already earmarked that we thought was going to be a dud. Hopefully that one will surprise us a bit. Right, we'll open up the second one then. Signs of bees, which is good. This one looks a lot better than it did previously, or at least Pretty similar, still a very small amount. Just going in there for a bit of a smell, got a really strong smell off that, and it's one of the real clear indicators of foulbrood is when you get this smell. But I think it's just really strong propolis. Again, not that many bees covering only kind of 3 or 4 frames, no obvious cluster, bees kind of in a bit of disarray, never a good sign unfortunately. Heavily propolised frames again. Very, very dark combs. We showed this one before, didn't we, in terms of what that was? Clearly just some form of stored, maybe ivy honey, something that's granulated in the comb. Nothing sinister on there at all, that is just stores. Hate to say it, it looks a little bit droney. So you can see these ones here, they're a bit more rounded. See these ones up here, they're flat. So the ones up here, the flat ones, that's worker brood. These ones down here, that is drone brood. That is a sign of a queen that's turning drone laying. Sometimes early on in the season she just misfires a little bit. If you're seeing that everywhere else, it's a drone laying queen and it's a dud. But I reckon these will be all right. That's quite a decent amount of worker brood there. Nothing suspect on it either. You look inside down to the larva, really nice shaped larva, pearly white, nothing sunken. Nothing off-colour, no strange smells, very nice pollen frame on here as well. So that, that's a healthy colony, nothing wrong with that at all. Only thing that's a little bit suspect is the drone brood at the bottom there. Hopefully next frame will kind of eliminate that. It's interesting when you pick the frames up, I've not even seen this frame, but it's so much lighter, so you can tell they've worked the stores and there'll be brood on it. There we go. You just kind of get that feeling. And that is good-looking brood. Little hole there, so holes in the cappings on that bit there is indicating it's going to be a reasonably high varroa level. So that's a real sure sign that they're going to be struggling from varroa. I can only see one hole, so it's not too bad. Got another little hole up there. Again, nothing to worry about at all. Brood looks in a nice pattern though, obviously a bit spotty in the middle, but nothing suspect at all on that frame. Things you're looking out for here is you don't want anything that's twisted. You want your larva to look like a perfect little C-shape. You want them to be a nice pearly white, nice bright white. There's the queen. Do you want me to mark the queen for you? Absolutely, yes, sir. So I have no idea what year she is, so I'm going to mark her blue. So there we go, there's the queen. And you look at the queen there, and I think I got told off the last time I did this on YouTube in terms of like analysing her for her body length, but she looks quite a nice-sized queen. And the fact that you've got the presence of this good amount of worker brood, I would say she's well mated. Same on the other side as well, not a perfect pattern, but no drone brood on there whatsoever. So I'm confident that these aren't diseased. You've got a viable colony with a viable queen who's now marked. I'm going to be really careful putting that frame back in. And again, relatively light, hopefully a little bit of brood. And there goes to show that I know nothing, but there is actually a bit of brood in the middle there. So this is just a frame of eggs and larvae. So it just goes to show with beekeeping, we looked at these 2 colonies here, we thought one was going to be big and strong, The other one was going to be a failure, and it turns out the one we thought was going to be a failure is a nice-sized, healthy colony with a good mated queen, with eggs, larvae, worker brood, no diseases. And the other one, we can't rule out any diseases, but there's definitely no eggs, no larvae, can't find the queen. Highly likely that colony is going to fail. Right, so I'm reliably informed by John that this one actually had bees in it as well and was active. Little bit going on in the entrance there, which I'm standing in front of. We'll get inside this one, see how the bees are getting on. So these bees here, they're on a national deep With a national shallow on top, and this is the top of the stack. And as you can see, we've got bees all the way up in the super. I'm going to have a little guess on this one because that looks very, very healthy indeed, and my guess is that we're going to find some form of brood sitting in that shallow super. So these seem a little bit more feisty, only a little bit more. I'm actually quite surprised at how gentle most of these colonies have been, not being too bad at all. Sometimes with the ones that are just left on their own, they do go very, very defensive. And they're not used to beekeepers going in messing around with them as well. This one here though, as you can see, look at that cluster there. I think that's going to be mostly brood, but we're covering over about nine frames of bees there. This is much more what I would expect to see at this time of year. Big strong colony covering most of the box. I reckon it's going to go down into the brood box as well. Let's open these ones up, see how they're getting on. I have to completely adjust my forecast there because there is a queen excluder in place. So this box here is just gonna be a big box full of honey. Really good that the bees are so high up though. And again, not quite as heavy as the other one, but a decent weight, probably about half full of stores. And then on top of that queen excluder there, you can see that is not honey, that is kind of fresh stores that have come in. So they've been busy bees. Bees. So there we go, first frame, pretty much textbook. Found the queen, marks the queen. That's just something from a tree. Really, really nice frame there of brood. Just going to pop that queen back in there. I don't want to squish her on the way back in. Couple of things to note on here. So again, really nice pearly white larva, that's good. And you've got larva up this side here, couple of cells with some ball brood on, and that's probably going to be a sign again of a hive varroa load. Holes in the cappings there, hive varroa load. Good young bees though, very, very nice pattern. Like, that is a textbook frame for this point of the year. Lots of worker brood, lots of eggs in the middle, Really nice ring of pollen, good ring of stores. This is a very nice colony indeed. Big 14 by 12 frames, these ones, taking up all of that brood space there. You can see in the middle there, got no issues at all with that larva. Really nice shape, really good colour, nothing sunken, nothing twisted. Can't see any signs of foulbrood in here. Other side of the frame, nice big frame of brood. So last frame we're going to look at on this one. That is a lovely pattern, really nice. Not many gaps. She's laid it up all the way around there. This is the best colony yet by a long way. Turbocharged queen could well be a late season supersedure. So last season you've got a nice young queen in there. You're never going to know, but the bees are relatively friendly as well. This is a big strong colony and they're not flying up at all, so maybe really nice genetics. Have to see how they grow throughout the season, but it's a healthy colony, big strong healthy colony, and they're looking like what they should look like at this point in the year. So I'm very happy with this colony here, definitely the best one yet. Really good-looking queen, really good-looking brood, no disease at all. We'll move on to the next one. Right, so the 4th colony was the one that was completely wild, where we think they maybe swarmed or it had eclipsed queen and it was living underneath the actual beehive. We put it into the beehive to try and give it some form of protection. This one was always going to be a bit of a risk though. I'm intrigued to see what we're going to find when we open up this box. Mouse! So we've just seen a mouse jump out of here, and unfortunately this colony here has been attacked by a colony of mice. It's been completely obliterated, no bees left. They've eaten all the stores, and that's what happens when you get wild colonies that don't have the means to defend themselves. Bit of a shame, but this is the one we always thought was gonna be a little bit of a struggle to try and get it through. Nothing we could do about this one though. You've got the box there, you've got the equipment, you can melt everything down, start again. Some nice propolis on there as well, make some tincture. This one was always gonna be a gamble. And there we go, that's the 5 colonies inspected. The ones that we thought were gonna survive are either dead or the queen's not laying, and the ones that we thought were definitely gonna be dead are monstrous or they've survived an entire winter without a roof. I cannot get over how hardy these bees are. Jon's going to take these ones off now. All of the ones where we've seen the brood, we've confirmed there's no brood present, he'll take them off, put them in his beehives. All of the rest of them, he'll melt them down, reclaim the equipment, and then he can make splits from the good healthy colonies later on in the season. If you missed the first part of this video, check out this video here where we have a full in-depth look into each of these colonies in the middle of the winter.