2 years of beekeeping - honey production, queen breeding, splitting honeybee colonies and stings!

my name's Alex and I'm a beekeeper as you can see I have all my bees behind me I have five beehives currently and I actually started beekeeping two years ago I was not ready for the adventure it would lead me on on my first day of beekeeping I was scared I got stung and I just didn't have a clue what I was doing ah no I got stung on my finger but I wanted to learn as much as possible and hopefully Harvest some honey at the end of it over the next year I gained more experience learning about diseases honeybee behavior and also swarming one of the most exciting parts of last year was actually catching a swarm of bees out of this tree just here in August just over a year since I got my bees in the first place I finally got my first honey Harvest and it felt so good to cut the wax cappings off the frames and extract the honey and pour it into jars so last season we harvested a total of 12.5 kilograms of honey this was enough to sell to neighbors and give away to some friends and family but this year I've been working on getting a bigger honey Harvest so much goes into beekeeping and not a day goes past without me at least thinking about how my bees are getting on it's been a busy spring and summer so far and the bees have been starting to make some honey which is great Honey's coming in but I've also had some disasters so I found this dead queen bee in another one of my hives so that's not good anyway back in April I was attempting to expand my apiary and divide one of my hives I've got two beehives in the garden but I am greedy and I want more and there's something you can do in the spring and summer which is divide one Colony into two or even more than that and that is the plan we're going to take this Hive here I call it Hive number one because it was my original colony and we're going to do some manipulations within the hive move some of the frames about to encourage them to make a new Queen which in turn will mean a new Colony anyway I'm in the I'm in the flight path of all the bees I'm getting hit in the face we've got the smoker smoking foreign this is the sound of a bee trying to sting my microphone for some reason these bees were in a bad mood today anyway the first step was to find the queen luckily this wasn't too tricky as I had marked her with a yellow pen last year there we go I found the queen and this Frame is gonna go into this new box so we're taking the queen away from the original colony now we need to take a few other things out of this Hive I'm going to add a frame of food in there as well because they obviously need some food to eat but I will also feed them with some extra sugar syrup to help them out as well that's gonna go in here as well I'm also gonna add this whole frame of brood and bees once these these hatch which will be only a matter of days because they're already capped over there will be plenty of space for the queen to lay again because basically this colony is really small now and we want it to grow as quick as possible so that's gonna go in here and as well as three frames we're also going to shake some extra bees in because lots of these bees will fly back to this Hive so we need to add more than we think we need so that even once quite a lot of them have flown back home there'll still be some left in here and because we took three frames out of this Hive we got to replace it with some new frames with fresh Foundation that's just wax which hasn't been drawn out yet I had a couple of this side move these bees so we're done with this box for now what we've basically done is make this Colony queenless it doesn't have a queen which means the bees are going to start making Queen cells so they can raise a new Queen we're done with that for now now ideally you would move this Hive at least three miles away this is to stop the bees from returning back to the original colony but I don't have anywhere else to put the bees so I'm going to keep them in the garden but what I have done is change the direction of the entrance so it's facing that way rather than that way and I've moved it as far away from the other hives as I can to hopefully make them feel like they're in a new place I've also got some grass trimmings because I've heard that you can you can put this in the entrance to slow the bees down so they don't just go out and then back to the original place if you slow them down a bit they're more likely to reorientate to this new box I think I don't know I don't understand bees there we go stuffed some grass and to slow them down they'll be able to move that out over time these are very lucky bees they've got a brand new well we'll see if any of the stuff we did actually works I made notes of all the things that I did to keep track of everything because my memory is absolutely terrible I sometimes get messages from people saying thanks Alex for saving the bees thanks for helping the planet but really I do nothing compared to the guys at Planet wild who I'm partnering with in this video each month Planet wild go on New Missions such as restoring forests cleaning up oceans or bringing back endangered species and they post videos on their YouTube Channel showing the work that they're doing I'll tell you more about planet World a little bit later because there's a couple of really interesting videos that I want to share with you so right now Hive one has no Queen but the bees should start raising a new one over the next few days the new box which I made up doesn't need as much attention it already has everything it needs however because there are lots of empty frames in this new Hive I gave them some help in the form of sugar syrup this would help them draw out the new comb and ensure that they don't starve one week later I checked up on the queenless hive one they had made a load of Queen cells and it was my job now to remove all of them but one that would become the new Queen the new Queen is gonna hatch out of there today the bees were more aggressive I think it's because they don't have a queen currently well that was a bit stressful trying to go through the whole Hive and find just one Queen cell that I was gonna keep now it's a bit controversial some people say you should leave more than one other people say if you leave more than one there's a chance that they will swarm which I don't want them to do I've kept just one so one queen bee will hatch in about a week's time and then soon after it's born it will then go out and mate once it's come back from its mating flight then we have a fully functioning Colony ready for this year's honey production whilst inspecting one of my other hives I saw signs that they were planning on swarming soon the sign that you look for are queen cells along the edges of a frame as a beekeeper you don't want your bees to swarm as this means you're likely to lose many of them including your current Queen but you can split the colony up similar to the split I did with my other Hive to make them think that they have already sworn like before I took the queen away in another box along with a few other frames the original box could then make their new Queen and because the old Queen was now moved they wouldn't tried to fly off and swarm a week later I returned to the Colony that was trying to swarm and removed all but one Queen cell like I did before this beekeeping sure has taken up more of my time than I first expected it to I thought it was going to be a simple easy hobby but I was very wrong pretty much every day there's something to do and the bees have also been really busy with all the spring flowers appearing whilst driving around the countryside I was seeing loads of fields of oil seed rape flowers and whilst out on walks I was noticing flowers everywhere I'm on a roundabout and there's dandelions everywhere all of that is bee food I've never stood in the roundabout before but this is kind of fun it made me so happy to know that my bees had plenty of resources available after such a long wet winter there's another way of getting hold of more bees and it's by catching a swarm so naturally bees in the forest over there or a beekeeper down the road their colonies might swarm and they'll be looking for a new home and if I can create the ideal environment for them and set a few boxes beekeepers call them swarming traps those bees that are swarming can find these boxes and decide to call it a home and all you need to set a swarm trap is to have a box I've got two boxes here this is a slightly larger wooden one this one's a polystyrene one and I've heard a few drops of this Inside the Box can attract bees this is lemongrass oil and when I first heard about this I was like that is that's a gimmick surely that's that can't be true why would lemongrass oil attract bees anyway I looked into it and now it makes absolute sense because it says here in a honeybee the NASA nov pheromone is made up of a variety of components including citral citrile just so happens to be one of the main natural components found in lemongrass oil so bees communicate using this pheromone and lemongrass oil contains the same thing oh wow that smells amazing and now we can go in the garden and try and find a couple of places to put these boxes in hope to catch a swarm of bees wouldn't it be so cool if we can catch a swarm out of here I can smell the oil so that's going to be doing its job fingers crossed [Music] and the Swarm traps are set now all we've got to do is wait and Hope that some bees want to live there I'll keep you updated with how it goes most likely you will get nothing but there's always a chance on my next checkup I found a number of worrying things firstly a load of ants I've heard this isn't too much of a problem if you have a healthy Colony as they are strong enough to not let the ants take over this is cinnamon cinnamon bark and it just crumbles around the lid apparently ants don't like cinnamon we'll see about that I'll be honest the cinnamon trick didn't end up working not one bit so instead I just brushed all the ants off each time I checked up on the bees this seemed to work a lot better the next thing I found was much worse than some ants I found one of my queen bees dead I have just found and one of my hives a dead Queen being pulled around by work abuse so that's not good just when you think you've got things under control you realize that you really haven't I'm not sure why this had happened but I hope the colony would be able to make themselves a new Queen over the next few weeks since I made that split of the beehives 30 days ago a new Queen should have been born and then it should have mated with male bees and returned back to the hive and hopefully now be laying eggs but as I found out last year beekeeping doesn't always go to plan but what we're looking for today is a new Queen we don't have to spot the queen we just have to see eggs if we see eggs then we know that the queen is there and if we see the queen well that's a bonus and if we are lucky enough to find the queen she's gonna get a little dot of red pen on her thorax I think that's what it's called you don't need to do it but it helps find your queen when you want to do future manipulations within the hive and the reason for it being Red is because if the year number ends in a three uh red is the international color you use so you know how old your queen bee is there's Thunder in the distance so I'm going to try and get this done as quick as possible and to make things a little bit more tricky the higher that I'm working with is a bit angry the other day a bee came out of the hive and stung me on my belly button yes it was painful Larry this is so nerve-wracking because if there isn't a queen or no sign of a queen it means that the queen either hasn't mated successfully or that the whole thing failed way earlier on and the new Queen never even emerged quite heavy those boxes I looked really carefully for a sign of a new Queen but saw nothing not only have I not got a queen in this Hive these bees are ravenous and they're just destroying the frames look at that they're just taking it apart ah dear what are we gonna do we've got no Queen it all failed now I'm pretty sure there is no Queen in this Hive there's no eggs no sign of a queen and it's been 30 days since I did the split however there could be a queen in there which hasn't mated yet and I'm not finding any eggs because the queen hasn't mated the way to check whether this Hive has a queen in or not is to get some eggs from another Hive put them into this Hive and if they try to make a new Queen it means that they haven't got a queen in there if they don't try to make a new Queen from those eggs then it's because they've already got one I've got a frame of eggs in that Hive so we will see whether there's a queen in there well they may not have had a queen for the past month but they have been storing lots of honey look at that hopefully we're going to be able to harvest that in a few months time that's not great not a great day but we'll get the problem fixed I don't quite know what's happening with Hive one right now but I can confirm that this hype here Hive number four is doing brilliant it has a queen the colony is expanding really quick and I'm going to put on a queen excluder and a honey super now you can make some honey in here but there's already a B on the frame in here I've just got wax foundation and the bees can get busy now it's five days after I added this Frame of eggs and brewed from the other Hive and this has confirmed to me that there is not a queen in this Hive because they have been trying to make another queen they've drawn two queen cells up there another one here another one here at the bottom they've actually got one capped over there so that is the test that you do to see if you have a queen and it turns out that this Hive something happened to the queen there's a few things that we could do now we could leave that frame in there leave all those Queen cells let one of them hatch and then uh the queen can go out and mate and hopefully keep this Colony going however it's already been 30 days or 35 days so they haven't been laying any eggs for over a month which means no new bees are being born and I can actually see that this colony is is gradually getting smaller and smaller as the older bees die off and no bees are being born so because these bees have already been queenless for so long I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to buy a queen bee the other good thing about buying in a mated queen bee is that you can select the sort of genetics that you want to be in your Colony The buckfast Strain are known for being gentle and easy to work with and these bees have been getting quite angry recently so by putting in a queen with good genetics that should help in the long run as well it does cost a bit of money I'm going to have to pay for this newbie but I'm hoping it will be a good investment for these bees so that's the plan I'll still have to come back in a few days time and remove all the extra Queen cells that they've made because they will desperately try and make more Queen sales from the larvae that are in here but luckily we know that they're only going to be on this Frame back on this hive and buy a new Queen look at this mated buckfast Queen 40 quid for one of those I'm getting two of them because Hive one needs the queen and also the high which I found the dead Queen in needs the queen add the cart wait what have I got four two check out Queen rearing is another part of beekeeping and takes skill lots of patience and a little bit of luck but thanks to bee Farmers all over the world hobby beekeepers like me can easily get their hands on a new Queen I've actually been learning more about Queen rearing with my local beekeepers club and they have been working on trying to raise their own Queens for the members it's really nice weather today the bees are very active and it feels good there's so many flowers everywhere as well anyway the last few weeks my bees have been controlling my life I had all sorts of things going on swarming bees I've been splitting colonies up to try and expand my apiary and what the past few weeks have taught me is how important having mated queen bees are you need a queen in your colony to lay all the eggs if you don't have the queen The Colony just starts to fail and you're not going to get any honey and they're going to die so having a queen not only a queen but you need it to be mated you need it to be able to lay viable air that turn into worker bees and this week I'm going to be playing around with this this is a tiny little beehive the bees can go in through that entrance and uh in here is basically what is in one of the bigger boxes but it's just miniature and what this is for is just getting a queen mated so my local beekeeping Club have been doing a queen rearing operation it's quite a lengthy task so I won't go into detail in this video but this week I'm going to pick up a single queen cell from one of the Apiaries where they've been doing this queen rearing and I need a place for that Queen cell to emerge and get mated and you use these little boxes whilst talking about it to the camera I feel like you must be getting bored so in here it looks a bit like one of the other hives it's a polystyrene box and there's three frames I've got a strip of foundation so a strip of wax where the bees can start drawing their comb from I've then got a feeder on one side where I'm going to put some fondant which is what Bakers use as a type of sugar and to prepare this box for collecting my queen cell in a few days I'm going to head down to the hives and take out a cup full of bees next step is to shake some bees into the bucket we want 300 milliliters of bees so the best way would be to use a measuring jug and close it up I'm going to put these in a dark place for a few days and then we're going to introduce a queen cell into this little box I'm gonna go in the garage it's dark and cool in here listen to them apparently they do this when they've been separated from their Queen they're they're making a roaring sound I think I should probably tell my dad that there's bees in the garage otherwise he'll come in here and probably get a nasty shock I've also got a spray bottle of water so I'm going to spray the bees a couple of times a day to keep them cool we're going on an adventure hoping they don't get too hot in here it's time to collect my queen cell it feels so odd to be sat in the car driving my bees put your seat belt on I arrived at the club apiary and we looked in the hive housing the queen cells there were 14 drawn out Queen cells on the frame all of these have the potential to hatch into new Queens these cells were carefully removed and placed into their new homes and I was lucky enough to take one for my little box you can probably see why most people choose to buy a mated Queen so much time goes into raising Queens yourself oh gosh I just got stung on my head hopefully it doesn't swirl up too much I'm going to bring these Bees home and pop them in the garden I think I'm gonna put these in the shade down here all right we're gonna open this up and they're away they're just figuring out where they are and now we've got to wait for maybe three weeks for that new Queen to hatch and then once it's hatched it should go out and mate come back start laying eggs and then we will know whether this whole thing has worked these in the bushes I just received my queen bees in the post definitely the most unusual parcel I've ever had addressed to my name inside the package were these plastic boxes inside the plastic boxes is the queen with a pink dot on its head as well as a number of worker bees and there's this 1B here which is getting quite excited can probably sense the Queen's pheromones but this queen is going into this Hive because currently this Hive hasn't got a queen it's just mind-blowing that you can you can buy a mated honeybee Queen to put into your colony and this queen here has been bred for good genetics and hopefully it will help this Colony out it'll be a little bit calmer and it'll sting me less right you're getting a new Queen they've got a little bit of honey in there it is quite heavy now actually I've opened up these tabs which will allow the bees from the inside and outside to eat through and they meet in the middle and you want the bees in the colony to eat through slowly so that they get used to each other because I've heard sometimes if you introduce the queen too quickly they can actually kill the queen which isn't good so we want it to be a slow introduction I want to see how they react whoa they are really interested Queen cage is in there come back in a couple of days and see how they're getting on I've also got to put this queen in that one over there because that one the queen died over the next few weeks things started to look much more under control one of my hives which I split about 30 days ago now had a new mated Queen we have a mated Queen that be there with the Red Dot is now laying eggs so this Colony here Colony number two is all good I've just checked up on the new queen bees and they have been released from their cage we have a new Queen in here we have a new Queen in that one and a new Queen in that one oh yeah she is with the pink dot as our buckfast Queen although Hive one now had a new mated Queen these new eggs wouldn't hatch for another 20 days the worker bees in this Hive were getting old and I was seeing so many dead bees this colony was shrinking rapidly so I felt like I needed to do something I still had one queenless Colony so I decided to unite the two hives together this was done by placing newspaper between the boxes it's important to do this to stop them fighting when two colonies meet I made some small holes in the paper and over the next few days they should chew their way through and become one colony you can see the bees have chewed through the newspaper I just realized one of the pieces of paper I used it's got a load of honeybees on in a matter of days this Hive is going to be so strong because there's so many bees here which will hatch out very soon and now that they have a new Queen they can lay more eggs and hopefully going into the summer this should be a really strong Colony that can go out and forage loads of nectar it's two weeks since I put the queen cell inside this little polystyrene box and I'm going to do my first bit of beekeeping without a bee suit now this could go terribly wrong these bees in here they're such a small colony and they're mostly quite young bees so they should be quite chilled but what I'm looking for is a mated Queen so we want to see some eggs in there this is very exciting but also quite nerve-wracking because this whole thing could have failed the chance of me getting stung is very high you can see they've built out all the comb no way there's eggs there's eggs in here which means there's a queen and it's mated tiny little white they're like small grains of rice wow it's actually worked [Music] it is quite nice to not wear gloves or a whole suit especially on a hot day like today [Music] oh loads more eggs in there so beautiful like the comb is just so nice there's the queen God she's looking gorgeous [Music] has mated so I can put her into my colony which doesn't have a queen still well that's a great result I'm so happy this whole thing worked so it's the 10th of June and as things stand we have five beehives in the garden however not all of them are going to produce us honey this year I have two hives which are particularly strong those are going to be the honey production hives Hive number four has three honey boxes on top and Hive number two has two honey boxes on top and I'm really excited to see how the rest of this summer goes and fingers crossed the weather stays good and the bees can forage loads of nectar and produce us plenty of Honey by the end of this summer there's this really interesting YouTube channel that I want to recommend called Planet wild now they go on New Missions every month to help rewild the planet and as well as doing that they film videos about the projects that they're working on my favorite of their videos is this one is about the European bison I think it's the largest lamb mammal in Europe and they're using some really cool Tech technology to help this species come back and it's just really inspiring to see these videos of these people that are helping rewild our planet so click one of these videos to learn more about some of the really cool projects that planet world are working on thanks for watching this video I'll see you soon

Channel: Just Alex

Views: 157,290

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Id: F2CmbR24G-0

Length: 28min 59sec (1739 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 29 2023