Expanding my Beekeeping Operation - building hives and treating for disease

my name's Alex and I've been a beekeeper since the summer of 2021 I'm a bit nervous I'm not gonna lie I am scared oh my God look at that and over the past few years I've realized that bees are incredible animals and this year I've challenged myself to another year of beekeeping with the aim to harvest honey and wax at the end of this summer last year I managed to harvest 12.5 kilograms of honey so that is the number we need to beat today is going to be the last day of the year where I'm going to look inside my beehive and have an inspection and see how the bees are getting on but there's one main reason I need to look inside the Beehive today and that is because there is something called a varroa Destructor might which parasites on honeybees now originally the varroa destructor might was only present on the Eastern honeybee which is another species of honeybee apis what's the Latin apis Serana but when the varroa might came in contact with the Western honeybee the Western honeybee wasn't ready for it it hadn't evolved with the varroa Mite so it caused a lot more damage and I've heard that as a beekeeper you should really do something about it now it's a little bit controversial because some beekeepers say don't treat your bees let the bees adapt become more immune to the varroa mites other beekeepers say You must treat them you must kill all the mites and and get rid of them as a newbie keeper it can be very confusing you know contradicting information like what would you do when you don't actually know much about it yourself and I mean I looked inside my hive the other day I did a might check which is basically putting a board underneath the hive letting mites drop from the bees onto this board you take the board out and then you look and then you see how many mites there are present there are quite a few of them like quite a few were dropping down each day and even on the back of the bees I could see these little brown mites like attached to the back where they are I think they suck the blood of the bees and slowly kill them and make them weak I've heard that the varroa might doesn't actually always kill the bee but it can weaken the bee which leads to secondary like infections and diseases so I want to treat my bees with something to uh to kill them off so we're gonna head into the Garden open up the hives and do some treatments and kill the varroa destructor mites gosh am I a bad human for killing mites I don't know I want my bees to survive I want them to be healthy and I think if you were any other farmer or if you if you're a pet dog or cat had a illness you'd want to treat it you know you love your pets and my 20 or so thousand bees out there are all my pets so I want to give them a helping hand let's go let's treat the beans after beekeeping for a year I've resorted to using a blowtorch to like my smoker because it's a lot quicker and easier [Music] oh hey one of my favorite parts of beekeeping is using the smoker it's just a lot of fun blowing smoke now things are getting serious I've got this treatment called apivar which is um made by a company called veto farmer made in France it is a dedicated aquaculture product so it's a 4B keeping and treating varroa mites it says here the active ingredient is amitras which is a sub-lethal miticide which I believe sub-lethal means that it doesn't directly kill the mites it paralyzes them and then they starve to death pretty brutal but I hope that it um it does the job appavar it comes in strips I heard that most colonies in the winter they die because of becoming weak due to large infestations of varroa mites so that is why I really want to treat these mites because I don't want my bees to die because if they die then I have to get newbies next year and start the whole process again now my bees have been rather angry recently I think at this time of year they're really on guard they don't want anyone going into their highs um I got stung on my finger the other day it was really painful but hopefully they're gonna be nice today [Music] oh wow now that's a good sight every that is solid honey like solid there's nothing but honey on that frame and the other side as well oh my goodness that's a really good sign because bees need I think 30 40 pounds of honey to survive the winter oh that's a rough estimate but yeah that is really good news and that frame as well solid that's really dark colored that stuff check out that it's just wall-to-wall solid honey thank you there's my queen spot the queen it's pretty easy because it's got a DOT on its head [Music] only just got me though wow that's painful yeah these gloves these gloves what they're pointless there's so many bees that it's crazy how healthy this high blood foreign these strips contain the amateurs [Music] so apparently the way these strips work is you want the Mite to come in contact with the strip so you put this in the bees have the Mite on their back they brush alongside this and then the mic gets paralyzed so I want this to be in the busiest area of the hive I've got two of them you're going to put two in for a full sized Hive like this but I want them mostly Around The Brood area because if it gets cold they will all go towards the brood air and The Brood areas around here and hopefully that kills a lot of the mites and I have a nice healthy Hive going into next year so that's the last inspection of the year I will have to go inside the hives in between six and ten weeks time to take out those treatment strips because you're not going to leave them in too long because you don't want the mites to become resistant to the amatras chemical inside the treatment so I have to take them out but other than that I'm just going to leave them and fingers crossed they survive till next spring I'm actually quite worried that my bees aren't going to make it this winter because it has been so so wet and I've heard that the coal doesn't really affect bees too much they can deal with it there's bees living far north in Scandinavia and Alaska they can deal with very cold temperatures but it's the dampness and the wetness of the hive which can really cause them to fail over winter and it has just been raining constantly for the last like two weeks and I checked inside one of my hives the other day and the whole of the inside of the lid was wet so I replaced the roof on one of the hives to hopefully make it waterproof again there's not really much else I can do I can't stop the rain I can't change the weather so we're just gonna have to hope that it dries out [Music] it's a pretty bleak December day and I'm going to check on my bees I've got to remove the treatment that I put in about eight or nine weeks ago for the varroa mites and also I need to check the weight of the hives to see if they've got enough food because currently there's not many flowers about so I need to feed them if they get low on their stores oh and I got some new beekeeping attire these are my shoes they are now my gardening and beekeeping shoes they're like slip-on shoes they're made of wood and leather they're not exactly going to stop the bees from stinging me but I think they're really nice using the smoker is so much fun I'm coming in bees but as quick as I can [Music] these were the varroa mite strips hopefully they did the trick the way we will know if they did the trick is by putting it in some boards underneath the hive I'm going to leave them there for about a week pull them out and if there's no mites then the job has been done well let's strip one out strip number two armor arm it calm it all right we'll go back inside go back go back to bed my poor bees looks like the not doing too well but it is very natural I believe to see dead bees at the front of the hive in winter because the colonies shrink from like 60 000 bees to I don't know 20 000 or a lot less basically after lifting this Hive I've realized that they do have quite a lot of stores in there they probably have enough for now but I want to do a test and see if these take down this fondant sugar which is a year old so fondant icing is what Bakers use because icing sugar but it's a good feed for bees in the winter last year when I fed it it was soft and the bees took it down very quickly but it has now gone almost Rock Solid I'm not sure whether the bees will try and eat it still or not so I'm gonna find out by doing a little experiment so this is a feeder which was being used for sugar syrup I'm gonna go on top like that there's some bees in this in the bottom of this feeder this feeder is for liquid sugar syrup so the sugar syrup goes in and they eat it out but in the winter they don't take down liquid food when it's cold so you need to feed them with fondant which is a solid sugar and I just get the lid and put it on top [Music] this hive is a lot lighter than that one which means they've got a lot less food inside here which means they definitely need some fondant [Music] this is called an eek it's just a an extra box to lift up the hive higher so then I can place this on top so the food isn't causing a problem with putting the lid on so here are the varroa Mite boards and we can come back in a week and just check that the treatment did the job slots in just like and now there's not a great deal to do apart from keep an eye on the uh the way to the hives make sure they've always got some fondant icing to eat in case they get low on food and I guess I will see these bees again in the spring and this season I'm putting a little bit more effort into my record keeping because my memory is terrible and I want to keep track of everything that I do in the beehives and the dates that I do everything so I can then look back on it and know what I've done last year I was very unorganized I lost a number of swarms because I wasn't keeping track of when things were happening I'm going to be a better beekeeper this year and that is all done see you in the spring [Applause] [Music] they're really small kind of purpley brown things and quite hard to spot most of this on here is what looks like Wax cappings some pollen because when they eat through their honey stores they then drop the wax cappings onto the onto these boards there's also a few dead bees whereas one might two might so to find a daily mic drop which is how many mites drop in each day you do some quick maths there were two mites divided by seven which is how many days so I have a daily mic drop which is how beekeepers measure the amount of mites of 0.28 which I believe is a very safe level now um before when I put the treatment in I had a daily mic drop of about 10 or so that's very good and on the other hive three mics on this one but just because there aren't many mites now doesn't mean that next season they won't come back there's a very good chance that throughout the season next year the the mic levels will grow again when they are reproducing more throughout the spring and summer and then we'll have to do the same again next year and treat them and make sure that you keep them under under control but at the moment I think things are good well my dad has finally given in to letting me have some more space in the garden for more beehives so my plan for this next season is to expand I want to go from two colonies to maybe hmm as many as I can fit over there there's quite a bit of preparation I need to do before I get the beehives there we need to clean out the space we need to level off the ground I need to make some Hive stands to put the beehives on and I think this spot here is a is a very nice area because Southwest is that way so the prevailing wind comes from over there so the bees will be sheltered behind the bush the sun rises I think over there Southeast which means they'll get early morning sun which is good when I work on them one facing that way one facing this way yeah so you don't mind me having more bees in the garden more bees more honey you're gonna do it you might as well do it properly we're gonna make it start clearing Alex's apiary area this is the year where Alex is beekeeping business expands into a multi-million pound company where we ship honey all Acro all the way across the world and become the biggest beekeeping operation in the world seriously though I want to expand my beekeeping I want to have more than two highs because I want more honey because it turned out that last year lots of people wanted to buy my honey and I couldn't sell them it because I had none of it I ate most of it and gave some away to neighbors so I had none left I got a notepad tape measure we've got a fork a rake that's a rake and two people and we're gonna clean up the area secateurs [Music] it's already looking cleaner three Hive stands they are what the hives stand on I'm gonna make them out of wood we found a frog I'm gonna put him in the undergrades one two three next step is to make some Hive stands foreign stands there we are oh well my dad has shot me in the back 108 pounds for the wood I learned that this would most likely came from Scandinavia which is not surprising because from my observations whilst whilst traveling in that part of the world they have a lot of trees today's job is to get on with some woodwork I've got to build some stands for my beehives to sit on and I've also got to build a tortoise shelter for my dad my dad has a pet tortoise and the Tortoise needs a new house for next spring because the other one rotted away and today I'm going to be fueled by three eggs these eggs come from the chicken I'm gonna scramble them yum my dad found the tortoise on an allotment when he was a kid and it's still alive now they're selling like 70 80 years old in the Summer she comes out of hibernation and lives in the garden and in the day she's roaming about in the garden and in the night she goes into her little Hut the plan for the Beehive stands is pretty simple I'm just making a oblong shape out of wood and then having four legs made out of these posts for the hives to sit on Stick fit all I have to do is some cutting and some screwing that's that's about it there we go that is a stand at my beef we're gonna sit on I've got this floor of a spare beehive so I can test and it fits on there perfectly I'll be able to fit three beehives on each stand so we've got an awful lot of space uh if we need it now I just have to do the same again two more times I'm gonna have three of these stands [Music] a chilly day today it was about minus five last night so the bees will probably all be tucked up inside their hive I'm gonna put my bee suit on and I'm gonna get one of the hive stands in place I'm getting my bee suit on just in case if anything it's an extra layer of warmth because it's so cold today bees are very quiet today there's no Bees flying they're probably all tucked inside the hive huddling together like penguins I have a that was very heavy it's quite wonky I opened up the hives and had a look inside and they're feeding on their fondant icing which I gave them I am being prepared for what could happen if I divide both those hives there once I have four colonies and then if I catch a swarm or I divide one of them again I have seven and that's pretty much like beehives on all of them so I built some Hive stands for my beehives and I thought nice job done and then my dad comes walking into the garden one day and he's like you're gonna paint them I say no they do the job as they are don't really need to paint them do I and he said no you need to paint them because they don't look very nice and they need to be certain type of green or something so I'm doing this purely to make him happy I don't think they need to be plain painted the bees don't need them to be painted I've already got paint on my thumb I'm gonna paint some wood painting has been interrupted because my dad is getting very excited about something in his Greenhouse foreign if I had a bigger Greenhouse I'd probably have more they look very delicate um Chic it's like having a pet yeah I suppose nice that was fun um let's do some more painting working around interesting people is it's definitely something I enjoy because it can be very easy to get to bog down with your own job and having a little break and conversation with someone else who is doing their thing you know it breaks up a bit creates a nice balance painting foreign [Music] lots of my bees on like this potting bench outside the house but they're on the plant as well I think they're drinking water well that one's like in the water they're making the most of the lovely weather today hey bees how you doing it's the last day of January and it's feeling pretty warm the sun is out and the bees are just going crazy it's the most active I've seen them since last like September time there's quite a few bees coming in with pollen on their legs which is a good sign because it means that they are finding flowers there's a lot of bees about which is good oh it's so good to see my little friends again they've been just tucked away inside their box all winter and I've hardly seen them they seem pretty docile at the moment as well they're not in an angry mood like they were last Autumn they really don't care that I'm standing so close to them we still have about a month or two where it could get cold again but we should start to see more and more signs of spring coming there's flowers starting to appear on some of the trees the daffodils and snowdrops are coming out as well Spring's coming foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] now that I had some really nice painted beehive stands I needed some more beehives to put on them so I did some online bee shopping for some new equipment whoa this is expensive it does look like an extraordinary price to pay for some boxes and beekeeping equipment but I like to see it as an investment you know if this year goes well then we might have a load of Honey to sell and I might make that money back so it kind of feels worth it and also I'm probably gonna have loads of fun as well so it doesn't feel so bad starting to feel more like spring today I'm picking up all my beekeeping equipment that I ordered online the other day luckily there's a local bee farm about half an hour away so I can go to them pick up all the boxes and all the kit that I need for this year of beekeeping just getting everything prepared beekeeping season starts in about a month that's when I'll have to start doing regular inspections of the bees so I've got the next four weeks to prepare everything ready for that time it's down this little country road and it's like a um like a dry fruit but for bee equipment that's so funny I just picked up my beekeeping stuff and it turns out that the guys who work here um I've seen my beekeeping videos that I put on YouTube last year but it's just kind of funny it's mad the world of social media connects so many different people and just by me uploading a beekeeping video last year like these people had seen it anyway that's all the beekeeping equipment collected I've now got to prepare everything over the next month ready for my year of beekeeping I am surrounded by lots of pieces of wood and this year I want to expand my beekeeping operations slightly so I thought today whilst making up these beehives I can show you and explain how a beehive is made up starting off with the the wood this is a Canadian Cedar it's a special kind of wood because it contains certain oils that help it last longer and stay strong however Cedar this particular type of wood is very expensive and right here surrounding me is like hundreds of pounds worth of wood anyway let's make some beehives shall we now I'm working with flat packed beehive parts today you can you can of course if you're good at working with wood make beehives from scratch you can make your own wood do all the notches yourself however I am no good with woodworking especially accurate woodworking so I have bought the pieces required and then I simply have to slot them together so it shouldn't be too tricky smells nice there's so many different parts in this one box give me a couple of minutes while I read this didn't take long I'm already confused about all these bits of wood and where they're meant to fit into each other I'll need to follow along on a YouTube tutorial at the same time so this might take a while [Music] the Buckle is on the inside [Music] oh gosh that took me about an hour I thought putting these boxes together would be easy we got one box done and I've got another five more to do [Music] foreign [Music] building last year so I think I remember how to do it pieces of wood small Nails Foundation this is beeswax and it's not absolutely necessary to make this because these will make the wax themselves but it gives them a head start and it also means that the frame is built uniformly in the shape frame because if you leave the Beast to do it the bees are likely to build like a wild cone shape and for beekeeping purposes you want it to be neat and nice and oblong [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] and there we have one of many that I need to make but this goes into the Beehive and I'll show you that once I've built all the others I've spent the last couple of days in the house building boxes and now I can show you how a beehive is made up first you've got the floor and the entrance block with the floor I bought you get a board which slides into the floor this is the board that you can use to check varroa mites you can slide this in then count how many are dropping through onto the board so you know if you have a problem goes onto the hive stand like so next We Got The Brood box now The Brood box is where the queen lays all the eggs The Brood box contains 12 of these frames they're slightly deeper than the honey frames the bees will draw out the comb and this is where they will have their nest next goes on this this is a funny looking thing but it's called a queen excluder the worker bees can go through these little holes but the queen can't so you put this on top of The Brood box so that when we have the honey supers on these are the honey boxes where the bees store the honey the queen can't get up through into the honey super and lay eggs in the honey section because you don't really want baby bees uh inside your honey as you can see there's quite a size difference The Brood frame is larger than the honey frame now you can have honey frames the same size but the idea I think behind having smaller honey frames is that they are very heavy to carry when they're full so when you have a whole box it's easier for The Beekeeper to have a smaller frame to deal with in some situations you might have two of these brood boxes on top of each other so that the brood Nest is really big and strong on top of that honey box you can then put as many honey boxes as you like the amount of Honey boxes that you have depends on how much honey your bees are making you don't want to have loads of empty boxes which aren't being used so if one fills up you might add another one and if the other one starts filling up you might add another one and then you just sort of play it by ear and see how many uh you need I've seen some highs with up to 10 of these boxes on full of Honey like this High where you need a ladder to get the whole way up but that all depends on how much honey your bees are making more honey more boxes once you've put your last honey box on top of your hive you then need a lid this is called a crown board this goes on top like so that acts as the top of the bee's cavity you may have noticed some holes in here now these are for when you need to feed the bees you can put feeders on top and also when you're extracting the honey you can put these little devices in which mean the bees can go one way but can't come out the other way so you can empty a box full of bees by putting this under one of the supers all the bees go through down there then they can't get back up so you've got a whole box without any bees in and then lastly when this goes on top [Music] and there we have a complete Cedar beehive all we're missing is uh some bees but hopefully at some point this year we might be able to split one of those original colonies and get another one I'm really excited because it's finally warming up a bit and in a few weeks maybe a month or two we'll be able to look inside the hives and see what the bees have been up to thanks for watching this beekeeping episode I will see you soon for more beekeeping stuff coming up see ya bye [Music]

Channel: Just Alex

Views: 407,859

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Id: 19nSWNXcn6w

Length: 33min 45sec (2025 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 16 2023