Cutting out queen cells.

out cutting out queen cells on this gorgeous sunny day we had a nice little drop of rain last night and the clover that is left has been rejuvenated so that is now giving a little bit of nectar again i've just come to this april here where i'm going to be uh doing a lot of mating here next year because i've i'm to move a little bit but i want to show you this this is a teasel now when i streamed the ground here in front of this hedge i left this because i know my bees absolutely love it and i wanted to show you this because teasel is quite an extraordinary plant look at those bumble bees on that i've seen a lot of honey bees on this as well but obviously this has nearly finished this one but what i love about it is is obviously it's great for at bees and all the other wild bees around it's also great for birds in the autumn especially the sea details like the finches if you look at this top here inside there is where all the seeds are and you see gold finches on these and i absolutely love terra nice to shred so it's a fantastic food food giving plant family name is disbakus and it's actually from the group of plants known as the caprifoliaceae group um which is also the honeysuckle strangely enough but i absolutely adore this plant because architecturally it's lovely as well because you can stick these in of ours in the winter and they look amazing you know obviously you want to wait till the seeds have gone off and but they're just a great plant to leave it does knowing any harm the farmers don't particularly like them but you know it's such a great plant for nature look at these gorgeous bumble bees so while i'm here i'll also show you what i've got in my apiary i did this a couple of years ago but um now things are moved on a bit this apron is a bit bigger but you can see we've got slo which is from the common blackthorn which i forget the latin name now but uh that's all coming into full size now the berries you can see on everything um and also here's the blackberry which is obviously nearly finished flowering is a little bit of flour left and there's the berries that are coming into starting to ripen up some are nearly right about a couple of the day from another tree we here here we have a lot of rose bay willow herb which is just about finished as well it gets darn tall at the end of it all but uh it's just lovely to see how awesome these hedgerows are because you can see they give so much food for the birds you know absolutely packed full of berries look at that if you're one of these people that believe the signs of a full tree full of berries it's going to be a hard winter this coming year well we're in for a real snorter of a winter if that's the case because the trees are packed with them it's probably because we had a load of water in may which gave them the moisture they needed for the for the fruit to really ripen well this whole april i got here is absolutely surrounded by um by berries and look at all this and i think there'll be people in here trying to scrump this lot and i can't so i blame them it's absolutely full of berries so anyway now we're going to do some for the job in hand what i'm here for i'm going to cut on some queen cells from some nukes all these nukes you can see with the band around them there's one there one over there three here and i've got a load down the far side there which i'll show you after they're all been put here because basically i'm bringing them here for mating so let's get on with that so i finally got my smoke a little bit of problems today just the way it is of beekeeping always a challenge most things i love this hive tool by the way if you're ever doing a lot of nuke work these are made or i know they are supplied by logar uh they're not really a uk or europe sorry um an american hive tool they're more europe or european they've got a really awesome hook on it so you can basically lift out frames that i know there's other hive tools out that i punched out that have got the hook on that are really useful if you're doing lots of work with mini nukes you can just hook that frame straight out and it's really really handy and i love it because they really are kind of you you learn the geography of it pretty quickly when you hold it in your hand it's dead good so these are nukes i made up on the 17th a little bit late getting to them i'm worried that some of these queen cells may have started to hatch out if i have i'm on a virgin hunt but i've got cells coming out in two days this is not very pretty doing this you basically whiz through these take out any queen cells that was the frame of pollen and rubbish i put in pollen and honey some of them don't have queen cells some of them do but this is broods hatching out nicely they're fairly settled these bees actually you have to go through them all everyone shake all the bees off if there's loads of bees when i did pick the frames i tried to pick the frames that were basically complete slabs of brood and didn't have any um any larvae in them but obviously it's virtually impossible to get that in every colony but you do get to the point where sometimes the bees forget to make a queen sale when they should do and before they know it it's too late there's one look and that one is been damaged so that queen will never hatch luckily that's the only one i can see here and there's even there's no place where they torn any down so i presume this is now hopelessly queenless the whole idea is i don't want f3s and f4s in my my apiaries i want f1s because if they do go to f2s they're manageable if they go to f3s and f4s around here they can be atrocious what i'll show i'm going to do is what i'll get one to show you i have a feeder here a round top feeder okay they all get put on every single colony they might not need it right now but as soon as that queen starts to lay she's gonna want a flow of nectar coming in as soon as there's brood they're gonna need extra food because that food in there won't last and also the chances of a queen being accepted if the colony has a readily supplied to nectar are much better she will always be accepted generally if the hopelessly queen is now got nectar also i can lift up what i tend to do is what i want to give pollen sub i lift up one side of this i put a little bit of pollen sub there close that back down and there you are another case of bob's your uncle fannies you're on blah blah blah hey presto a nuke it's as simple as that but you have to get your timings right okay so i'll check these other ones here let's see what this one's like a few more bees in this one see if we can find some queen cells a lovely load of pollen here there's a queen cell there's a queen cell i'm going to shake the bees off this this is what i wanted to see more so on one side generally you won't have any on the other side this is the classic the absolute classic emergency cell these little stubby cells that they make there's the queen she's still white but not even pink eyes yet she's just falling on here perfectly formed should be hatching in two days here's another one the same state if you can see that there you go there's the queen so it's the little stubby cells that catch you out you can put a really nice queen in that's really mated thinking you'll make this hopeless acquaintance and you miss those tiny little stubby cells that are in the brood there because most of them most of the cell is actually up into the brew they they've drawn it out more they're not like being acorn sized cells that you often see that are more typical you know a bit like more swarm cells but they're the ones that will get your queen and we have a name for those but i can't repeat it because they are a little whatever you want to call them but the bees they're doing their job they are trying to renew their queen they've lost this is exactly what we want nice frames shake the bees off nice little bees there see i did pick a frame here with a bit of drone but i don't really mind because those drones from this colony actually quite nice you see the nurse bees there this is the difference in color if you don't know what nurse bees are they're they're referred to as nurse bees because when they're born they do the job of a nursery worker in in the colony they do all the cleaning they look after the queen they feed the larvae they move on to wax building later on as they get older for the first few days they do the duties inside the colony and that's what they look like when they're just born they kind of just white a little bit and they're just milling around that's just come out that'll start that be there she'll start work pretty quickly within a couple of hours she'll be doing little jobs around the colony if she's just a born worker and when you see a lot of those it's good news because that means your brood hatching out nicely and you've got a good percentage of nurse bees that are going to really get that colony going quickly and wear gloves when i do this because i haven't got time to mess around it's a bum bum bum that's the kind of sales i wanted to show you this is the absolute classic okay there you go emergency cells in a cluster and here's some these aren't on clothes but you can just see all that lovely raw jelly sometimes i do collect it but this year ain't happening there's these sales i'm talking emergency sales absolutely classic so they have to come off this colony is now hopelessly queenless and yes i do tend to throw a lot of the wax on the hedge but for me it gets it out the way i've watched people collect every little bit of wax all year and you know how much they have at the end of it there might be a fig lucky if they get quarter of a kilo of wax after collecting it the whole year the mice will eat it the insects will break it down whatever it's just you haven't got time in your beekeeper it's a natural product it breaks down in the environment it's not causing anyone any problems that's my frame of brood they haven't started drawing up yet so my frame of foundation they're all going to have we're all gonna have um feeders on everything will be fed i've got about 60 kilos of liquid feed in this inside the truck i'm going to move this camera and filming to the far side now and i'll do it on the time lapse you can see me doing them all but base that's what i'm doing i'm just going through taking out queen cells making them hopelessly queen this because my first virgin's going to hatch in two days which is i like would have liked to have them a day early but hey if as long as i've got virgins to hatch that's brilliant if they have to wait two or three or four days more it doesn't matter because those colonies now i hope it's the queenless but they still got some some brood to hatch and some larvae to finish developing because i chose frames that had a little bit more larvae on them so once you've got over that initial let's make a new queen cell they'll hold themselves to becoming laying workers they will not start laying drone larvae for a good couple of weeks yet so it means i can get that queen and as soon as that queen's in that's it anyway it doesn't it doesn't mean she's going to lay straight away obviously she's got to go off a mate but as soon as that queen is in it she's accepted won't make ever think about starting to lay laying workers it's just basically getting the mate to the forecast for the next few days is absolutely brilliant a few highs and lows and temperatures but that's fine it's not going to be raining much we're not going to have cold weather up to 26 tomorrow back to 21s 22s the next few days then up again at the end of the end of next week 28 29 for a few days so i'm very very happy with that it means that they all go off and start mating and typically they will all be mated by day five day six in an ideal world and with the best conditions sometimes they can take a week sometimes they'll take a little bit longer but in most cases it's on day five day six they'll start mating and they'll be done pretty quick it's surprising we had some we introduced themselves and some mini nukes and i i happened to look at one almost by mistake and it was a laying queen after four days so it just shows you how quickly that can happen you know so it's pretty good anyway let's get this one closed back up with the feeder on and get some feed in it and then i'll move the whole thing to the other side and we'll do it under of time-lapse these are the remaining nukes i made up last week and we're having their cells cut out now it's quite a few they're in the position where they're going to be mated as well because up that way is my house it's about 800 meters away we've got some good stocks and there's also my main apiary up here which has got some good stocks in but anyway the main thing is i feel that most of my queens mate in this valley here which actually extends well beyond those trees but it's a really good area so i'm going to put the camera down and just leave me get on with this and i'll see you after [Music] [Music] uh [Music] [Music] you here is what i really wanted to show you okay so there's some classic emergency sales in the top of this nice frame okay you can see there nice frame of brood this was obviously being kept over when i made it queenless and they decided to make sales but these these are the ones you really got to watch you see how tiny they are can you imagine if you have your bees all over that you are going to miss that so easily and what a lot of cells there is this is just one the first frame i picked out i imagine there's others but there you go such as life once you're aware of it you don't miss them but those are the ones especially that one there so really hard to see because it's almost the same color as the brood around it and it's not very big so last night i didn't make it back here i had to get the last graft in for the year which is what i did the weather was beautiful i nearly came down but i knew it didn't matter and the reason why it didn't matter because i'd done all this lot all the first lot here that were um that were the dates there's two lots here basically you could divide those into two roughly from the top to the bottom and cut them in half each day they were a day apart and the last lot here which i've just done just now as you've seen they are the final day of my current nukes i've made so um as you can see the bees are really pretty pissed they've had their queens cut out it's windy as hell but it's sheltered here but the bees can't forage because it's windy it's humid they want to be out finding food and there's not a lot around but you can see uh um i wanted to show you as well that this area is going to be an awesome mating site next year because all this area here that whole area over there just where the door my truck is right the way around to here i can basically use the whole of this for a mating yard and it's absolutely fantastic because the farmer doesn't cut it for hay someone used to use to live here in a units before but they all had to move on because it wasn't deemed a habitation area so there's like a bit hard standing but if i keep this area clear it means i can bring my my main mating operation to here which is actually even a better position than at home because at home i'm only got one a3 this is between the two exactly so it's really good and it means i will probably have better results because i'm gonna put um i've had mixed mating this year at home and a lot of the queens i did on the breeder program failed to mate so but we but it's still okay we did an awful lot extra and i'm bloody glad we did alicia and i worked our socks off to try and get all the mate to try and get all the queens um raised um produced in sales grafted into cells hatched in the incubator and we did a fantastic job we got really good release and then a lot of them didn't return from the meeting i don't know why it may be because the weather went down for those six days but anyway cut a long story short it was a great learning curve again because i learned a huge amount and this is what i'm i've realized i need a more designated mating area that um will allow the bees to come back to more geographical points but in full sunshine in full open open conditions so that the bees feel they can really um the queen bees can really go when they want and not feel like impeded i'm a little bit shaded at home in areas i had a lot of my nukes in the same line this year which i thought wouldn't be a problem because they were different colors and because i had little trees and this kind of thing in the way but i'm going to probably bite off the bullet and go for it this winter and invest in a bit more time and money and make her even better place so i can have better racks it means i can get a smoother turnover of of things you know [Music] so what i've done now is i've fed the top lot all these nukes are fed they've all had their queen cells cut out i've got queens hatching out the incubator in two days and this light i'm going to feed now but i wanted to show you one thing quickly that it's difficult to actually show you but what i'll show you is this when you're pouring syrup keep if you have a fault that's it that's empty now this bucket okay this bucket is now empty but when you have a full bucket tip half of it into the empty bucket or start off with one half empty no matter what funnel you've got no matter what contraption you've got you need to lose half of it so tip half into an empty box or start off with an empty with a half full tub then it allows you to tip it smoothly and cleanly and you'll be quick and you don't waste any syrup what you don't want here is to build up a load of bees in a frenzy of feeding while you're trying to work it is unbelievable the robbing now i can tell you now in stefan now the other day what do you say awkward hot sticky and stingy it's what we're all going for this time of year we're just trying to get to grips with the last of it everything's going on honey harvest making queens you know keeping everything fed keeping that momentum going because you know that in three weeks time it'll all be over and that's what we're doing you know it's just exhausting i am really tired i don't know what because it's the end of the season or whether because it's non-stop but i've got another day making nukes tomorrow that's tuesday another do another day making nukes wednesday and that is it i'm finished i physically need to just kick back a bit and get on with i've got some other work to do all next week anyway so all i'm going to be doing next week is putting queens into these babies and the queens and other places but i'm nearly there now so let's get this liquid feed on and then we're done for the day here which is great so right then we're done don't let anyone tell you that the value of a nuke is too high when you see them out work you have to do to make the nuke to get the queen in to get it mated to look after it to get it through the winter it's a gift for 160 pounds or 160 euros or higher it is a gift to have a good queen in a box that's going to give you enough money to make you 250 300 pounds or euros anyway i'm tired i need a break catch you again soon bye for now you

Channel: Richard Noel

Views: 5,022

Rating: 4.8793101 out of 5

Keywords: iMovie, Making Nucs, Nucs, Splits, Honey bee splits, bees, Save the bees, Making queens, richard Noel bees, Honey bees, Bees in brittany, queen rearing, richard Noel, cutting out queen cells, removing queen cells, Queen rearing, Virgin queens

Id: U_tZpue7Yuw

Length: 23min 25sec (1405 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 27 2020