the flow is over so I get in a spin with my new creamer!

so we are Sunday morning no time to do video this week but I've got some other videos to show you from last week that I haven't even put together yet because I've just had no time this week was supposed to be a little bit quieter but I've ended up doing loads of jobs like cleaning the swimming pool like filling in over there I put a new manhole in for IP cameras and all that that's what I'm doing now I've been doing all this finishing off some Landscaping it's bone dry and I've got this all done that's just really good film we're going to make the road slightly wider here so the backfill from that we're going to put into there would just to level all that off that's the runoff of the rain which is obviously comes off the slab and the roof half of the roof what I'm doing here is also putting in these rj45s geeky stuff for my cameras I'm just testing all the cabling first mustn't dropped that in there just testing all the cabling first and then I will be putting in the posts and everything else when that's all working but I absolutely love doing this and I shouldn't be doing this this morning I've got like a ton of work to do I just kind of enjoy myself and doing something that I like to do every now and again just kind of something different so these are a few callings I had at home you can see which is the biggest one they're all to new to Queens except oh actually that one isn't and that one but the two middle are to neuter Queens uh you can see how these bees are absolutely lovely they're bringing in honey but the nectar flow is all but finished the lime tree's just gone over but yesterday we did have a faint hint of Chestnut in the hives so uh a little bit More's gone in but we are done what we've discovered yesterday I went to get my apivar here's the bag of it I bought 30 packets so when I collected the app of R from my local B group they get it wholesale and then also I can claim the vat back from that as well so it's actually not a bad price I honestly can't remember the price I'd have to look it up but that check's coming off this week's about 500 odd Euros so money gone but I want bees alive this winter and I'm doing other things as you know but so I went and collected that and um all the other beekeepers who were there were having a quick chat and they were saying basically was that there's been hardly any groundwater so the nectar we had at the start was not bad the flowers did well then we had a week of crappy weather well it was kind of very mixed and it wasn't really like decent flow during that week because it never really was that warm but it wasn't cold it was just not enough with the dry ground water levels and the last week had a little bit of high temperature so that last little bit was available to the bees but the flowers are basically finished now you can see this Chestnut here that I showed you last week it's just Brown tassels now on the ground but that's what they are little brown tassels they're finished now and now the trees are going to start making their chestnuts which will be ready believe it or not in like eight weeks it's absolutely amazing but that means also when you see these on the ground it's time to start splitting your colonies I've got Queens coming Wednesday Tuesday that's the day after tomorrow um and then we're on to splits but anyway here's a few things I was doing this week I hope you like the video bye for now so just fixing more jobs a couple of things to tell you about just points of interest this was on top of one of my strong colonies in the spring that I didn't get to in time so what they do is they come up through the feeder through the little holes there believe it or not those four holes and then they build in here and this was all full of drone but what I did was I left it on top I put the super in they took the honey down I believe and then all the drones hatched out and I'd put the drones underneath as well so they managed to get out and be useful but it's not a disaster when this happens and I'm going to take it back and take all the wax out there's probably about a gram of wax there but I'll tell you scrape it all out but it's just something to show what the bees can do so what I've been doing today I've just been doing a tour of the aperies adding the final supers here we've got some ow here we've got some wax moth which is now dead so this is a this is a lion worker colony and there's six frames here because what I did was the line worker Colony I've just shaken out next to another Hive and they're all joining that colony and they're gonna have to beg their way in so those laying females will stop lying the minute they go through the door and it'll take a while they'll hang out in the front for quite a while maybe a day or two but eventually they'll all go in and then they'll be useful to that Colony so I've added quite a few Superstars colony to this apiary this is when I restocked early this is where I had that Asian Hornet that I found in the frames there wasn't many overwintering columns colonies but I stopped this one and I think that was an original one that's given spring and summer honey that's a lovely Colony there the rest are doing pretty well a couple there with three supers on what I did was I had a swarm on this apple tree in the spring I did literally dropped it into a nuke as I was passing which is what I do when I'm uh out and about doing bees and beekeeping if I can't get to it it stays in the tree unless I can get something around it easily but I don't waste any time anymore I chucked it in that box that's on the truck shook it in into the red box that I've just shown you and Bob's your uncle furniture on I came back two weeks later there's a lane Queen in there and it was also a car swarm because there was it wasn't that big but they I haven't done anything to them since uh now and yes just now I've just transferred that nuke I had so the transport it was in the nuke box I've just transferred that nuke box that was there into the hive that came from over there that I've just shaken out so what I'm saying is when you come to an apery often there's one task leads to another I wouldn't necessarily use the same box again but the box is pretty clean because it came this spring after being cleaned it's not one that's been repainted as you can see but it still had a good scraper and clean and the insides were fairly work home free so now that has that was absolutely packed full RAM for that Queen in that Colony beautiful queen loads of loads of brood on all six Combs that may even give a little bit honey I've given it a super just in case they have enough time or the flow carries on for a week which it might do and it's very um we've got a little micro climber here and there's loads and loads of trees some lime still running and mostly Chestnut you can see the pollen coming in so they might give me some honey but long story short that's dealt with and I can split that in a few weeks I could have split that today to be honest but I can split that in a few weeks that can overwinter in that box and that then those bees over there are now going to join that colony and I'm not wasting the resources of a colony that's gone laying workers so I'll take those frames home I'll melt them down because there's not really much you can do with those frames The Dilemma is what do you do with frames when you've had laying workers in them I personally melt them down because I just feel that the frames the majority of them have got so many okay this is that's got a specific bit of drone selling that corner but I feel that that if I put that in a colony it would probably be mostly lying work it'd be mostly drones again all this is drone cell so I just melt it down it's a bit of a mess that look at that frame it's a right mess anyway um same with this one they're all the same and it's actually coming to the end of its laying worker activity because there's not that many I imagine there was more drones than that you can see by the shape of the cells that it's been laying workers they actually change the edges of the cells quite a lot so anyway bit of Interest again um these will be melted down as I just said but it just shows you what kind of problems you need to sort in an April you think ahead well that needed to be done that needed to be done two jobs done at once we're done and finished so as part of my attempt to bring my own brand on the market these are the three sizes of pots and three types of Jar I've decided to go with I've got a friend who's going to design my labels although I know what's going to be on them already but this is a they're all glass I was going to try and go for the completely 100 compostable type but I've decided not to because the price of them are exorbitant obviously what I've done is I've gone for a mid-range cross-section to see how it goes I've got a 250 gram a 500 gram pot which I'm already selling a lot in the plastic pots in that size and that seems to be in France what a lot of people like and I've also got a one kilo jar but I do like the one kilo jar because it just kind of says something I don't know I just feel it's that bigger quantity you don't sell so many but people like to buy kilo to take home so my friend is going to do all my labels for me we're going to have obviously have three labels for each one because it's going to be it's going to be spring honey summer honey and buckwheat honey but I may do something where I can have the same label and add a few extra labels for each type so this is the delivery that came on the top you've got your caps quite a lot of gear it's a big delivery but you know what when you've got the room to put it it's brilliant because you can buy in bulk and that is really what it's all about keeping them all protected because I want to keep them clean so I'm not going to unpack much and when I do I unpack one load take it up and use it the Honey that I'm creaming at the moment will actually go into these two jars and it'll just be stored until I use it until I sell it with some temporary labels as well until the proper labels come through the reason why it's so complicated is I've got to get my labels proofread as well and then I've got to send them back to a company probably a company in Poland I'm going to use and they'll print off them on a roll and then when they're on a roll I can then transfer them easily onto each pot I've got a machine called a label room machine which I'm going to use to be able to put my labels onto my pots really easily and efficiently so that's kind of where I work at the moment just give you some idea of what I'm organizing uh as I said this was some of the honey from this spring I just potted up to give to people where I have an apiary but this is what I'm trying now this is my Carl Fritz 300 kilogram creaming machine so I'll give you a little bit of a rundown of it it comes I bought the stand to go on okay this is heavy duty stand the whole machine cost a fortune about six and a half K Euros okay but it is a amazing machine okay so on the top you've got the motor which Powers the paddle you then have a gearbox and you've got your on off switch there all nice and industrially done and in the front you have let me just try and show you this you have a entrance way there with your auger inside which stirs your creaming honey or your creamed honey okay and you will see also that the thickness of this jacket this is a warming jacket so the whole of this cylinder is a double line jacket the is heated so there's the heater it's a 3000 watt heater so this is the mono phase version this is the single um version that it's still a 3000 watt heater so it kicks some heat out but it means you can warm your creamed honey when it's ready to be to go to get out the machine that's the problem with creamed honey if you don't have the possibility of warming it it can be tricky getting it out the device you have to cream it okay so this will take approximately 300 kilos but it'd probably be like 280 actual uh pots and that kind of thing it's always a little bit less because the weight is more but generally long story short I bought this because we have a lot of spring honey all the time and we have way more in the spring than we do the summer and it means I can diversify and give my clients something else and a better product from the same honey so I'm not I'm not trying to make it any better than it is I'm just offering another option offering a really nice product beautiful smooth creamed honey that never goes Rock Solid which unfortunately most of the time rapeseed does so it's great so what will happen is this all comes with a a nice din fitting that fits on there 40 mil and then I can then pump that directly into my bottling machine I need two hands to start that off but anyway long story short that's what I'll be doing so and I'm not going to turn that tap open because I'll have honey pouring all over the floor but this is the first time I've tried this and it's it's it could have been doing it a little bit cooler it's not um the best the idle temperatures around 12 to 14 maybe 12 degrees Centigrade the moment we've got 18s to 20 but it will still crystallize you can still see it's starting to turn here you can just see the the honey is going a little bit like light color that's that's the honey that just come out the barrel that's what it looks like and that's when it's starting to crystallize and it will go completely white but I know then that that honey there's a away from this lot is going to be the same inside there and it's starting to crystallize so what happens this machine at the moment Chris is a creamer that uses a stirring method now I could put in the top some seed I could seed this honey with some crystals that are already made that I had stored before I could just buy some honey from somewhere and add it to this as the seed and it would then grow the crystals of the right size into this but there's two methods and the method I'm using is the stirring method and that means that we continually stir and break down the forming crystals so they become smooth and you have to stir it two to three times a day and that continuous stirring breaks down and you never get it forming Rock Solid then you get a nice smooth product at the end which will then be connected to my bottling machine and I'll be able to pump the warmed creamed honey straight into there and then I'll be able to to jar up in different jars I'll have creamed honey for the first time and I'm really quite excited about this product so it should be really really good so I've just been filtering this spring honey because I want to make sure it's absolutely spotless before I put it into the creamer I'm having to bucket it out of my Barrel because I haven't got a pump that specifically does this lift which I'm going to look at changing but it's just to try and use this creamer for the first time and the most difficult thing for me is I've got to get about the bucket into the top of the creamer so what you do is you need to get it onto a level site first and high up already so you lift it do the first lift and then you get it on your shoulder like that and then you can just pour it in and it goes the other problem I've got is I haven't got a bucket rest that will support this while the majority drips into here but if you look inside there you can actually see I've already got about 100 kilos in there already so it's it's there's enough really I think there's a minimum about about 80 to 100 kilos per batch onto the maximum is 300 kilos this takes but I've tested out the heater which is just there and you can feel this this jacket is actually warmer so I'm really pleased it's the 3000 watt heater for this call for its machine but I'll just wait till that's done and just give it a good twist and then that's come away pretty clean I do keep a cloth ready all the time to wipe up any spillages and then I'm on to the next load into the bucket but I am filtering this honey as I say because I can't afford to have any bits at all in there whatsoever but overall so far so good I'm going to get a better system for loading this so I don't spill it when I'm installed in the main Workshop I'll have this as it is but I'll have either have a honey pump directly in or if it's been filtered or I'll be able to raise it up on a pallet on a forklift to get it in here it is kind of this is like a really well made machine and really what I thought you can see it's got a double jacket as I said it's this is there's distilled water in this up to here and it's got a little bit of expansion room it's actually water up to there because it's expanded slightly higher now but long story short there's no other way of making the machine the inside of this is sloped it's there's no other way of making a machine that does the same as this job and in a moment I'll connect it up and you'll see It'll begin to stir but it's got a big paddle in the middle means that it stirs it well everything gets creamed properly but also everything comes out the machine so you don't waste anything this is how I filled it up the other day without that pump but obviously I used a bucket and a device I use which is here this is something I learned about my old Workshop I built one myself it's a tray okay that sits in the barrel so you see these two hooks it sits on the wall of the barrel and then when you bucket your honey out one Buck at a time you rest the bucket against there and you can tilt it and as you pour the honey over the top you get very little spillage one or two drops the rest drips down onto here then drips down into the barrel now this is one of those DIY kits this is actually made of a fiberglass resin uh board like a um I can't remember a resin board but the I've got wood on it which is nicely plain and stainless steel fitting so it never rusts all things like that but it's just a little piece of Kit I use occasionally to bucket honey out of a barrel into another container and it works really well but it does struggle when the honey is really thick if you've got kind of honey that's around 17 and it flows well when it's warm there's not a problem you get hardly any drops when you've got really thick sticky honey that we had last year from a really hot dry summer with really low percentage of humidity in other words I think about 14 15 we had its struggles because it does does drip a bit but that's what I use [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Richard Noel

Views: 4,040

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Id: CZvcf-jSlxI

Length: 21min 22sec (1282 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 11 2023