Layens Hive Review 06 09 2020

hello everyone my name is Jean Rene and I've been a beekeeper for about twelve years and today I want to talk to you about a beehive that I think you would be really interested in and it's called the Lyons hive and it's right here and I'd like to encourage new beekeepers as well as experienced beekeepers to really take a good look at the features of this particular hive it's one that's designed so that it mimics the environment that bees would find if they were in a tree hollow it is a horizontal hive and let's go take a look at it now and I'll tell you some of the key features that really makes me interested in this hive and I think is probably one of the best ways to keep bees so let's check it out [Music] now here's something I want to make sure that you understand right off the get-go dr. leo sure Ashkan out of missouri USA he's the real expert on these so if you want to get some really good in-depth information about using this style of beehive I highly recommend visiting his website horizontal hive comm and getting the book how to orchids call keeping bees with a smile so I highly recommend that book too so if you were a beginner beekeeper just starting off if that was the only book you ever read you'd probably be good for life and I'm I'm that serious about it now I've been able to compare what I've been doing for years using the Langstroth style methods of the stackable hives and in comparison this is by far hands down one of the best ways that keep bees especially if you're just a backyard beekeeper and you have no intentions of doing this as a you know a full-blown operation this is definitely something you want to look at but let me tell you real quick the horizontal hive there's a lot of horizontal Ives out there and I didn't just I've tried top our hives which by the way I really like I think they're awesome but these are actually better in my opinion now they the key to really making these hives work is not so much the fact that they're horizontal because there's a lot of different horizontal style hives out there but it's the fact that it's deep it's it's a very deep horizontal and that's kind of the key to this whole hive working the way that it does it enables the bees to build the brood nest in such a way that they can winter over and then the surplus honey any surplus honey gets start stored towards the outside of the brood nest and it makes it real easy for you as a beekeeper to get that extra honey without over harvesting from your bees now what I'd like to do is a hive inspection and I want to show you how easy it is to harvest the extra honey that your bees are gonna make in one of these lands hives so that you don't accidentally over harvest from your bees just watch how easy it is we're going to open it up we're going to check the brood nests and the nice thing is we don't have to tear it all apart we can just make sure that the queen is laying and then any that we see next to the brood nest is just an entire wall of honey we can take that out no problem let's check it out in the editing room I just want to give you a quick preview of what we're going to see as we continue this video this diagram shows a Land's hive and it has the same amount of frames that I've got in the one we're about to look at and all you need to concern yourself with is the yellow indicates honey and the tan indicates the brood nest now if you look on the far left you see frames a and B that's all honey and that's exactly what we're going to see when we examine this hive and the other frames that are tan with yellow at the top that's the brood nest and that's what the bees need this is crucial for them to winter on so we never harvest any of the honey that's mixed on those brood frames and then the frames hgf e and then you see that the other ones are blank that's exactly what we're going to see in this hive but I wanted to give you this information before we go in there that way I can kind of move through the video a little quicker and kind of cut to the chase and make it a little less boring and just more educational so let's take a look now as the video continues as you can see right here this is one of the big draws two horizontal beekeeping is that everything's all at your fingertips there's no heavy lifting other than putting that box into place that's the heavy lifting but once it's there you're done and you can just easily move from left to right and examine your colony I want to show you this look at this that is just beautiful capped honey I bring it in that is nearly all capped just gorgeous now this is something I could take if I want to but I'd rather them cap it off mostly capped mostly kept a little bit fun Kevin to one side let me show you close they're about halfway down the frame not too many bees on it almost all of its capped again I'm looking for one that's full yeah now this one I think you're gonna bring in the house [Music] all right let's take a look here I think we're gonna take this one in the house and we're gonna bottle this this will probably be about a quarter honey and isn't that easy you don't you don't have to harvest at all you can just harvest a frame at a time if you want to and that's what a lot of backyard beekeepers would be happy doing you notice the honey banding around the top and sides and the brood nest in the middle and they'll have multiple frames so far I think I've counted four or five like this so the brood nest is probably about six or seven frames just like this and this is the honey we don't harvest that's on these frames we just leave it for the bees and that's what they winter on alright we're gonna take that in the house we're gonna take two of the frames in the house so again this one full frame of honey we're gonna bring that in we're gonna leave the other full frame that they had these on now let's take a look with GoPro vision in my second leg inside let's take a look inside our famous 39 pound swarm trap takedown see how they're doing yes you might even have some brood on this frame let's have a look it's heavy boy oh yeah that's heavy this is probably just honey yep this is all surplus honey and it looks like a piece of that cone collapse went down on that one too all right I'll pop that off watch out guys I want to set this down so they're they're capping all this this is great they're starting to form that let's take away this piece that collapsed we can get that out of there Wow I have to say they did a really good job packing the honey away it's all honey guys this is every bit honey look at this honey you're working on cabinet they're capping it at the top [Music] all kept and then uncapped towards the bottom way they're doing a good job since april 20 so alright now we're gonna probably see some brood on this one not yet not yet they're they're camping this is another honey frame they might be putting some brood towards the bottom here I don't see any eggs in these cells we've got the brood nest built up on this side over here so let's see 20 frames altogether one two three four five six that were not touched so they're only working 14 frames total I don't expect they're going to touch any more frames this year I need to put my fingers here guys let me get my fingers there okay I don't think we're gonna see any more build up what they'll probably do though is they're probably cap off everything that we looked at that was still open honey they'll cap that off all right much lighter frame now this is going to be a brood frame let's take a look and see this is what they're going to cluster on in the winter okay all right now we've got some capped brood we've got some open brood and we do have eggs towards the bottom boy look how calm they are you picked the right time of day and they'll treat you good and they're still chaining at the bottom so then you might just finish this out you see how they're chaining up at the bottom they might be drawn the rest of the comb right down at the bottom of the frame but this is the brood nest then the honey band is at the top let me come here with the camera the honey band is across the top this is honey that the beekeeper does not harvest this is what the bees survive on in the winter so if you find a frame like this just put it back keep the brood nest all together oh and there's our queen bee I'm gonna move this back in they look really good I'm very happy with how this one is progressing now this one has an eco floor which means that I used an extra three or four inches of empty space below the entrance and below all the frames and I filled it with peat moss to wick moisture and to give them an environment more like what would be found in a tree hollow that's as far as I'm gonna go I don't really have a need to harvest there honey I don't think I've got any frames I got one frame that I got to put away all right I'm not gonna take any other honey I already took two from the other colony and that's plenty for me I think what I am gonna do though I'm gonna scrape the honey off my knife give it back to the bees right here though clean that up you don't have to worry about cleaning it they'll do it themselves let's shake these bees off here there we go not too bad give these last little ones a bump here okay this is one of the cartoons taken from keeping bees with a smile and if you look on the Left Industrial beekeeping using Langstroth equipment not that I want to knock it because I still use it it has a place for me in my apiary and it may have that for you as well but there's a lot more to keep up with and the learning curve it takes longer to go through so if you want something that's just easy easy on the mind easy on the back go with the lands style hive I at least make one make one in your apiary and try and try comparing it between that and the Langstroth hive I think you'll probably enjoy using the lands so let's go ahead and and look at our honey harvest next I'll show you how I just do a crush and strain from the honey we harvested [Music] okay so that's all we're doing is just mashing this up if I had to guess we'll probably get two courtside of this we'll see once it all drains through now I'll leave these out for the bees to clean up they'll clean those frames for me but let's just go ahead and get all this honey mashed up crush and strain that's all we're doing [Music] and it's a nice warm day buy this honey I'll go through there and a couple hours probably let's see what we already have look at that okay it's looking good it's working good this is a nice strainer for this it's perfect for the job I think everything's crushed pretty good now what I'd like to do is just go ahead and put a a plastic garbage bag over it so that the bees don't get in it because the bees are gonna find this and won't take them long and we're gonna tell everybody in the colony to come get it with them and they'll all be sticking to it and a lot of them will die and we don't need any of that happening here so we're gonna cover it with a plastic garbage bag clean one of course so that's a zoom back out and we'll put the garbage bag on there [Music] all right we're done we're just gonna leave that in there for a while there it is we'll just leave that in that bag for a while maybe an hour or two the bees can come clean off these frames for us right here the bees will clean the frames and the knife that's okay we'll let them clean that up we got a couple honey drips on the floor and they'll get everything for us we shouldn't have to clean anything so that's how we're going to harvest our honey all right there's our harvest six pints plus a couple little jars and there's the cleanup crew right here still working we're cleaning everything up so all the honey that I couldn't get they're going Piper for me I'll get it next time these are other wax home that was crushed up they'll get every little bit of honey out of there clean an oculus trainer I mean the knife already and the frames are pretty clean kennel I just put that on there starting to get that well friends there you have it there's really not that much more to it I mean I did harvest honey today when I probably could have waited until the fall so I will have to keep an eye on that colony but I think they're gonna do just fine based on the amount of honey we saw but you know if you really want to enjoy beekeeping just use local bees they've already adapted to the environment and your area you're going to have the best success with that so that's foundation so if you can catch a swarm that'd be great use the well-insulated deep horizontal highs that's the key to horizontal hive success they have to be deep enough for that brood chamber to really build up enough honey stores around the brood nest and then just let the bees do their thing and keep it low maintenance and you're gonna have a blast so I hope you enjoyed this video I just want to show you a couple of pictures I was tooling around YouTube and I was looking at how beekeepers are keeping their bees in other countries and I came across some videos from West Africa and I also found one from Creek Stan you notice they're using horizontal hives now I think these might be called Lizotte in hives I'm pretty sure that's what they are but they're very similar to the lands design I just thought it was interesting you might be able to check some of these videos out for yourself here's a few more pictures from old-time beekeepers AE madam I don't think these are horizontal highs but the gable groups kind of remind me of it I think they're kind of a cross it might be called a Bristol hive but it's really cool just to see the history of beekeeping and how people are doing it successfully in other ways so I hope you enjoyed this video feel free to reach out by email you can reach me at enjoy beekeeping at gmail.com thanks for watching [Music] you [Music] you

Channel: Enjoy Beekeeping

Views: 58,168

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Id: FGM2P3al6lU

Length: 20min 6sec (1206 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 10 2020