Preparing for my 3rd Year of Beekeeping - Building hives, cleaning equipment and getting more bees

hey there my name is Alex and these are my beehives I've been a beekeeper now for 2 and a half years this will be my third year of beekeeping and it has been such a big learning curve but also a very rewarding one the feeling of harvesting your own honey at the end of the season is just the best thing ever and I'm going to be documenting another year of beekeeping I started beekeeping back in 2021 and on that first year I really didn't have a clue what I was doing I got stung loads my bees swarmed but despite this I still managed to harvest 12 kg of Honey which I was so so pleased about year 2 was slightly different I knew more of what to expect I managed the bees much better and I harvested 68 kg of Honey which I sold in an honesty box outside my old house now things have changed quite a bit over the past few months at the end of last year I actually moved house from the southe east of England to the West country in the City of Bristol I managed to move my bees onto this little piece of land where some very kind people let me keep them and this year the aim is to make even more honey I'd really like to have a little market stool at one of the Bristol markets this year to sell my honey at so that is the aim for this season anyway the winter really has been dragging on a bit but I've been trying to get on with a few important tasks so let's rewind back to the beginning of this year so you can see what I've been up to it's not cold out there it's just really kind of well at the moment it stopped raining but it's been so wet but quite mild conditions which is kind of not great for the bees because when the weather is warm it means the bees are active but at this time of year there's no there's not really many flowers for them to collect pollen and nectar from so they end up going through the stores in their hive pretty quick which means I need to keep an eye on their food levels and today I'm going over for my weekly check to maybe top up the food and just check that everything's been okay there's been a couple of storms recently so I hope that uh the hives are still up [Music] right I can actually see they're quite active today and it's cuz it's so mild it's like 13 14° in January it's meant to be cold now but it's so mild I can see the bees down there there there's still a colony of bees now what's woring is I don't know if the Queen's okay it's quite hard to tell you can't open up the hive really at this time of year and have a look but I can see that there are bees and they are eating away away at the sugar they still got probably another week or two of food on there which is good so I don't need to do anything with this one on this high I've got a 2 and 1/2 kg bag of fondant sugar and you can see where they've eaten a hole through the sugar I can also just lift up the back of the hive and I can feel that there's still quite a bit of weight there so they have got I think enough food to last them through to Spring in this Hive but then this one this is a small colony and I have a feeling this one will need some more food also worried cuz then might be bees in the top here so when I open it they might they've actually got enough food this hi is so light like they don't have much food stored in the hive but they have enough of the sugar to eat at least I made this little bench out of scrap wood so I've got it to sit on and watch the bees my bee watching bench look at this this must be the first bit of sun we've had in weeks climate change E I just hope that my bees survive another few months until the spring and then we can get on with the beekeeping season look after these hives hopefully they Thrive and we get a big honey Harvest because this year we're aiming for more bees more honey more wax more candles more of everything I just want more that's the that's the plan hey pigs [Music] until the beekeeping season really gets started in March and April I'm going to be doing maybe a weekly or fortn nightly check just to make sure they've got enough food to get them through the last of the winter over the next few weeks I'm also going to attempt to make some beehive Parts because beehives and beekeeping equipment is quite expensive like if you make if you buy ready made stuff uh so I thought I'd go to the shop and buy some wood and use my limited woodwork skills to see if I can make some of the beekeeping equipment that I need for this year just to try and save some money and also to try and pass some time because this part of the year is really uninspiring and there's not a great deal to do next time I see you will probably be in my back Garden making some things out of wood I have got so much wood in my room I uh I went to the wood shop today and uh bought a load of ply sheets and they actually cut the pieces in the store so most of these pieces of wood are cut the size already or maybe half of them uh which saves so much work because I don't really have many tools and space to do all the cutting of large sheets of ply but the main job I have to do is measuring things accurately and then sticking the pieces of wood together to create the beehives beehives have to be really accurate you can't just um make any old sized box they need to have specific dimensions so that the uh bees can live happily and so that they don't um create comb where you don't want them there's something called a b space actually um it's between I think four 5 mm and 8 or 9 mm it's a specific size which you can't have any gaps in the hive bigger than that otherwise the bees will fill it with comb like uh beeswax which makes the job as a beekeeper hard cuz then the The Hive is like clogged up with comb where you don't want it but if there's a space in the hive which is smaller than a be space smaller than that specific measurement uh then the bees will fill it up with propolis which can also be a problem because if you have a very small Gap in something the bees then fill it with this sticky propolis stuff which glues it shut basically anyway on the next day where it's not pouring of rain outside and horrible weather I'm going to go in the garden and do a bit of cutting do a bit of gluing and screwing so that we have uh some new B boxes now even though I'm not very good at making things out of wood especially not accurate things um I realize that some parts of a beehive are pretty easy to make well at least I think they are cuz this here this is a crown board it's a lid which goes on the top of every single beehive you it has a couple of holes in for like feed holes uh in the winter when you want to feed them you can put food on top so the bees can come through and then these holes also used with these things these are um like B Escape mechanisms so it's like a oneway system for bees and when you're harvesting the honey you put these in to get the bees out of the supers where the honey is anyway these Crown boards are very useful you need them in every beehive it's just a square of plywood and then uh four strips of stripwood around the outside this is one that I bought uh but this has been nailed on or stapled on I got myself a staple gun thing so shouldn't be too tricky to make I think one of these would cost you 2030 I should be able to make like five of them for the same price so that's pretty cool well that's just ridiculous within seconds of picking up my staple gun I managed to break it I think I loaded the Staples in the wrong way and then a bit of metal bent out of place so I've been in a very bad mood for the last 5 minutes thinking that I need to go to the shop and get a new staple gun but don't need to because I got a screwdriver and a hammer so we're going to figure this out another way well I managed to find enough nails to hit into this board that's basically what we're going for still got to make a hole in the middle of this but I'm also going to go to the shop and get another staple gun cuz it'll be way quicker to just go didn't like hitting the nails in what a disaster look what I got a new staple gun and this one I managed to not break within the first 5 [Music] [Music] minutes taada there we go we have a crown board for a beehive now I'm going to make another four of [Music] them well the other day it stopped it started raining and then I had to go back inside cuz all my tools were getting wet and all the wood was getting wet so I thought I'd come back out here today everything was nice and dry until I got all my tools out here and now it's raining so annoying H I'm just going to go for it and hope it doesn't rain too [Music] much [Music] God well there we have about 150 quids worth of beehive Lids we've got one 2 3 four five six of them they're probably about £25 each if you buy them and it didn't take long it was quite easy to do good way to spend some time in the winter when you can't really do any beekeeping anyway it's raining again so I'm going to resume my beehive building on a slightly nicer day I've started work on these nuke boxes uh basically a small beehive and this is a little bit more complex than the Beehive roofs these have to be pretty accurate so I'm actually following a design and I watched a YouTube video of someone building a beehive the other day and what they did first was make a little rig for it so uh these things hold the wood in place for for when I can like screw them together these slot into these gaps and now I can screw it all together and it should be easy and held in [Music] place well that just happened oh my God no [Music] oh it's freezing cold today but I'm trying to get the beehives [Music] built H my housemate made me a mint [Music] tea [Applause] I now have three of these wooden boxes and to demonstrate how they work I've got these Hive frames which go inside like so and these are meant for five frames as you can see here there's five frames in there it might be able to fit a sixth one I've got to put a bottom on them a lid on them and also cut out a little entrance hole in the front for the bees to come in out of on the base of each beehive I cut a hole then stapled on some mesh this would allow the hive to have fresh air flow coming up into the hive I then attached the base to the box with some screws we got the box and then we got the lid and then the roof they're nearly done I've just got to spend one more day painting them once they're painted then they will be ready one last thing to do before painting was cut a circular hole in the hi roof this would end up being a feed hole and when it wasn't being used for feeding I could pop in one of these little plugs to stop the rain getting in it's time to do some painting I bought this paint here Forget Me Not color how nice um it's kind of a nice light blue uh this is outdoor paint it's waterproof which will protect the wood I need to do two layers of these 8 hours [Music] apart [Music] so that's the hives painted I now actually need to do the same thing all over again uh for the second coat I got paint [Music] everywhere cleaning isn't something that I've enjoyed much throughout my life uh but as I get older I definitely um find more satisfaction in it like than I used to and my beekeeping equipment also needs cleaning diseases can build up in Old comb um so by removing the old comb thoroughly cleaning it off uh you are reducing the chances of diseases getting into the hive also as a beekeeper you want to be able to go into your hive and lift out the frames easily you don't want it to them to get jammed and stuff and and if you don't clean equipment uh the propolis and wax can build up and it can make just inspecting the hives pretty tricky I've got a box behind me of things which need sorting I'll I'll show you what I need to do so I've got a few old frames this one as you can see the wax is gone I need to clean out the last bits of wax from the edges and then I can reuse this Frame I can put a new sheet of wax in and then these ones have been used for a season or two and the bees have actually decided for some reason to eat their way through and kind of destroy this Frame and that's not very good because this bit becomes weak um and it can end up breaking off like that but this wax I'm going to melt it down and see if we get any good wax for candles out of that it smells nice but with this Frame we'll take out the wax Mel down and then clean the actual wood cuz look that there that's all propolis and wax sticky stuff you see how it's like actually really accumulated at the top there and then also I've got these uh feeders this is what I feed the sugar syrup in like in the Autumn or the spring if they need extra food then I use these feeders for that and as you can see in there it's full of oh gosh dead ants mold and again bits of propolis and wax and all this equipment will be roughly cleaned off like I think I'll try and scrub off most of the dirt and then it will go into a boiler this is a 30 L boiler full of water and also the magic ingredient is um soda crystals now most things in the kitchen you can clean with just washing up liquid and water however the propolis and wax is super like sticky and resistant to uh most washing up liquids and you have to use something kind of stronger and more abrasive I didn't really believe at first but beekeepers told me like if you want to clean your equipment use Soda crystals and I was like can't I just use washing up Liquid I tried washing up Liquid it did not work uh soda crystals are incredible it dissolves the propolis dissolves the wax and you're left with very clean nice equipment so for a 30 L boiler I think I'm going to add 1 kg of of soda crystals this will create quite a mild solution but this as well as the boiling water should do the trick it's quite nice actually how beekeeping is uh quite seasonal it means that you have the winter to like plan and prep and do things like this clean equipment because if it was always like it is in the summer which is pretty hectic you would probably never have time for all the tasks like this so the wires are trapped in here uh with these nails so I need to actually remove this bit of wood smells quite nice [Music] actually so you see that there that is propolis and after being soaked it just comes out so [Music] easily would you look at that it is so clean there was so much gunkle around the frame here and now it is so clean perfect ready to be used [Music] again so after a few hours of cleaning I have a box full of wax which is really good stuff I'm going to uh keep adding to that throughout the season and then turn this all into candles the wooden frames and the the feeders are just airing out once they're dry I'll put them in a box and then into storage ready for the season ahead of us uh there's signs of spring the bulbs that I planted in this Garden a couple of months ago are starting to come up we got croes daffodils tulips snow drops snowlakes and some aliums things are slowly waking up um I feel good after this day of cleaning it's one of those jobs which you know needs to be done but you don't really want to do it um but it feels good now that it is [Music] done well I have finally finished making my three little beehives um it took me way longer than I expected and it would have definit have been cheaper just to buy some of these from online um but I'm trying to find a positive I feel quite satisfied and it it's quite a good feeling having made these myself um will I do it in the future if I can find a slightly cheaper way of making these and also if I had maybe a workshop or a bit more space and uh a few more tools then I might consider doing this again cuz it was quite a lot of hassle trying to build these in my bedroom and in the little Back Garden but for now they're finished inside of all these boxes are frames um like this with Foundation that's just a sheet of beeswax which then the bees will uh draw comb out from the function of these little beehives are for when I split one of my larger colonies I split one of those large ones into another Colony uh which I can put inside this little box and then when they outgrow this little box you can then put them in a bigger box um I think I might also use one of these boxes as a bait Hive you basically place a hive like this somewhere uh in hope that when someone else's bees swarm they find your box and then you can basically have a free colony of bees so I might Place one of these in the back garden and then place the other one near my bees where they are currently just in in hope that maybe I'll catch a swarm it feels good that these are these are finally complete we're getting stuck in all the Bristol traffic it's a Sunday morning it should be quiet but there's quite a few people about as you can see and also as you may be able to tell the camera is moving I'm not holding it and that's because um my housemate Tom is helping me film today which is cool cuz I've never really had someone help film anyway today the plan is to get some bees now I've been posting beekeeping videos on YouTube for the past 2 years and somehow they have accumulated quite a few views which has allowed me to connect and meet up with many other beekeepers and just recently I got an exciting offer from an Instagram follower who asked if I want wanted another colony of bees I actually lost one of my own colonies a few months ago so this would make up the numbers again okay I am currently trying to park my van into a field a very muddy field so I keep my front two wheels on the hard stuff oh wheels are sliding I think that's as far as we're going to get right we arrived in a field in the middle of nowhere and we're getting on our protect gear sometimes bees can be a bit angry I always feel like a teddy bear when I put this on they never go for your hands they don't bees always go for like the face it's really odd they really like they know where I don't know they can see a human face very well they have eyes a p have eyes yeah they eyes they do have eyes you got your gloves on not giving me any gloves no you're going to be fine mate you stand back and you'll be okay we got some hi straps we're going to need these to ratchet strap The Hive together so it doesn't fall apart the bees are up there okay let's go get some be don't D don't walk down front this side is where the entrances are okay so they go in and out so if you stand like back here you'll be Good Sam made this beehive it's so amazing if you have a look you can see where you see the bees in there you can actually see the honey in there in the summer well you can see a bit there look really nice and tight think we don't want them escaping in the car that is not what we [Music] want I imagine this going to be heavy it probably is going to be and it's going to be top heavy as well cuz all the honey and everything is all it's all at the top at the top that's it [Music] wow I think we're going to go in the side [Music] door there we go there we go nice nicely behind my seat Alex yeah we got the bees in the car goodbye go left at the top follow the road all the way down and then you'll be back on the main road thank you thank you all right we've taken the bees hostage they're in the back blindfolded now we just have to bring them to their new home and let them [Music] free [Music] but we got the bees in position we now got four lots of these my hives I have currently are National hives which is like the size and shape of them like National is sort of what most people in the UK use for beehives so everything is interchangeable you can lots of beekeepers can just use National size and then everything fits however this is a war Hive invented by a guy called Mr War I guess but it's a very different sort of setup it's a more natural way of beekeeping where you don't actually have frames which you can take out people often use these hives um they just leave them to it and they don't inspect them they don't check them or manage them as much but my aim is to get maximum honey Harvest this year so what I will do at some point uh this spring is take all the bees and all the comb out of here and try and transport them into a national Hive I don't know exactly how I'm going to do that but uh it might involve using elastic bands to hold the frames like hold the comb in place um but I will show that on video when I do it but we're just having a look through these little Windows there's a lot of bees in there and looks like there's a lot of honey as well here it goes there we have it new addition so it's currently the 11th of March things are meant to be turning into spring uh there are signs there's all this wild garlic around the beehives uh starting to grow which smells really nice and some of the trees are starting to flower uh quite a few of the spring bulbs are coming up but it really hasn't felt like spring yet but over the next few weeks things should really start waking up and so should the bees when I see you next time I will be opening up the beehives for the first time of the year and we'll see what's going on inside and if you want to keep up to date and see more regular updates of how the beekeeping is going um follow me on Instagram uh alexor smith1 1809 uh I'll try and post regular Instagram stories on there so you can keep more up to date with the beekeeping see you soon see you bees

Channel: Just Alex

Views: 216,494

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Id: XbvRhtgqEGE

Length: 29min 57sec (1797 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 19 2024