Beekeeping - Short and Sweet

We have a winner in our Honey Paw Competition and It’s all systems go this weekend and despite the Coronavirus, beekeeping in isolation begins, stay tuned for my latest update and plans for this weekend.

I’m grateful to Honey Paw hives for sponsoring in part our podcasts for this season. Honey Paw hives are, as I’m sure you’re aware, Poly Langstroth hives and we’re setting up an apiary full of their hives this season courtesy of Honey Paw. Check out their range of hives and other equipment on their website, I’ll leave a link to their website in the show notes as usual.

Honey Paw Hives - Designed by Beekeepers, For Beekeepers.

Get The Latest Podcast Release Here

Welcome back to the podcast, and, without further delay, the winner of the Honey Paw Poly Langstroth Hive competition is Ricky Taylor who lives in Gibraltar, he correctly answered the question I posed, along with quite a number of others but he was the lucky one randomly drawn from the list of correct entries and wins the fantastic Honey Paw hive. I’m arranging to send the box of kit over to Ricky and hopefully, once he’s got it made up he’ll send us a photograph or two showing it in action for me to share.

Apart from the excitement of the competition, I’ve had a bit of a nightmare week, I should qualify that by saying anything I do with my beekeeping is totally insignificant compared to the work currently being undertaken by everyone out there helping us all get through the coronavirus outbreak and I really don’t want to make a mountain out of a molehill but what a couple of days I had midweek.

................................

Have a great beekeeping week Stay safe and Please do remember to check out my Patreon page where you can access lots more content, that’s www.patreon.com/norfolk honey.

I’m Stewart Spinks and that was Beekeeping Short and Sweet.

Support the show

Hi I’m Stewart Spinks and welcome to Episode 103 of my podcast Beekeeping Short and sweet. My beekeeping continues despite the challenges of the coronavirus outbreak, listen in to catch up with my latest challenges as we head into the new season.
Check out my latest podcast here

I’m grateful to Honey Paw hives for sponsoring in part our podcasts for this season. Honey Paw hives are as I’m sure you’re aware, Poly Langstroth hives and we’re setting up an apiary full of their hives this season courtesy of Honey Paw. Check out their range of hives and other equipment on their website.

Honey Paw Hives - Designed by Beekeepers, For Beekeepers.

Modern Beekeeping - UK Suppliers of Honey Paw Hives, Apimix & Apipasta foods

Stay safe and keep your distance! Remember for those of you who haven’t yet entered the competition draw, there’s still time, but only just. The final date for entries is next Tuesday the 31st of March.

Head over to the Podcast page on my website where you can check out the details for entry.

Have a great beekeeping week and Please do remember to check out my Patreon page where you can access lots more content, that’s www.patreon.com/norfolk honey.

I’m Stewart Spinks and that was Beekeeping Short and Sweet.

Support the show

Hi I’m Stewart Spinks and welcome to Episode 102 of my podcast Beekeeping Short and sweet. The weather has been fairly constant this past week and I had a message from one of our contacts saying their Oilseed rape is nearly ready for the bees. It’s time to get set up for the new season but don’t be in too much of a rush to open your bees, it’s still cold out there!
Check Out the very Latest podcasts on my Support Page www.patreon.com/norfolkhoney

I’m grateful to Honey Paw hives for sponsoring in part our podcasts for this season. Honey Paw hives are, as I’m sure you’re aware, Poly Langstroth hives and we’re setting up an apiary full of their hives this season courtesy of Honey Paw. 

Honey Paw Hives - Designed by Beekeepers, For Beekeepers.

Honey Paw Hives in the UK - Modern Beekeeping

Well, I never did get to BeeTradex and I’m kind of glad I chose not to go, it seems like it was a good event despite the reduced attendance, but  I guess a lot of beekeepers took the same decision I did in staying away. We’ve now been told that the second major event of the year has been cancelled, that’s the BBKA Spring Convention in April and is usually a really good weekend with lots of talks and lectures, hands-on sessions and of course the Trade Show. Lots of suppliers now seem to be offering show discounts online so if you have pre-ordered or were thinking of buying some new kit check out the retailer of choice and see what they are offering. There’s always bargains to be had and I’m sure they will want to mitigate their losses by offering some really good deals online. Sign up for newsletters and special offers to make sure you get notified, although I don’t think any of them are selling toilet paper!

Not going to the Trade Show meant I had time to get a few more plans sorted, I love lists, you can never have too many lists, jobs that need to be done, kit to move, bees to check.

We spent Saturday scraping and washing queen excluders, it’s another task on the IPM or Integrated Pest Management plan that we have. Keeping kit nice and clean makes it easier to use and reduces the risk of spreading pests and diseases to the bees.

Cleaning queen excluders can be a bit of a chore but once done they clean up well and it also helps extend the life of them too. In previous years I’ve shaped and scorched, the technique involves scraping off all the wax and as much propolis as possible and then using a blow torch to bubble up the remaining propolis to kill anything that might be lurking in it. This year I wanted to try using the oil drum to boil them clean and it worked really well. The key once again is keeping the water at near boiling point and adding a decent amount of washing soda and washing up liquid. It has the effect of dissolving the propolis and they clean really quickly.

My main job right now, making sure bees have enough supplementary feed to get them through the cooler weather until there are again enough bees to cover the brood area and keep all of the larvae warm and healthy. They will be in prime condition to be taken to the oilseed rape and that looks like it will happen sometime next week which is really early for us. I’ve just recorded a couple of videos showing both the oilseed rape field and the new apiary site for the Honey Paw hives series of videos so do catch up with both of those.

I hope you’re all keeping safe and healthy wherever you are and looking forward to getting out into the fresh air and starting the new beekeeping season. Remember for those of you who haven’t yet entered the competition draw, there’s still time. Head over to my Podcast page on my website where you can check out the details for entry.

Have a great beekeeping week and Please do remember to check out my Patreon page where you can access lots mo

Support the show

The sun is shining, it’s warming up nicely and I’m thinking further on our Integrated Pest Management controls. Stay tuned for more suggestions on how to keep your bees healthy this year.

Check out my weekly podcast as it is released by signing up NOW

I’m grateful to Honey Paw hives for sponsoring in part our podcasts for this season. Honey Paw hives are as I’m sure you’re aware, Poly Langstroth hives and we’re setting up an apiary full of them this season courtesy of Honey Paw. Check out their range of hives and other equipment on their website www.mesi.fi

For all UK Beekeepers check out the range at Modern Beekeeping

Honey Paw Hives - Designed by Beekeepers, For Beekeepers.

One of the main focuses this week has been getting wax into frames, as you know we’ve been cleaning and washing frames and boxes for a while over the Winter period and that all comes to it’s grand finale with the final step of putting the wax foundation into the frames and loading up the brood boxes with prepared frames ready to go on to the hives.

My intention this Spring is to get as many of the nucleus colonies into full-sized hives as soon as we can to allow them to build up for the main flow in the Summer.

We may get a box of honey of them from the Spring flow but as I’ve said many times before to make honey you need lots of bees and lots of nectar. 

Finally, a further mention about the Apipasta Plus Pollen Substitute, I popped out to check up on a few colonies yesterday prior to delivering three colonies to a fellow beekeeper and I have to say it was pretty much as I suspected. I lifted the roofs on about a dozen colonies and the Apipasta plus, which comes in those flat, plastic trays is easy to see and check without having to disturb the bees. A couple of colonies hadn’t touched it at all to the point that I couldn’t see any activity, about four had eaten enough to make a small visible clean spot on the plastic tray and the rest were gorging themselves on it and had eaten about two-thirds of it.
 I knew the bees would take to it well because I had put it on the colonies between the flowering of the Snowdrops and Hazel finishing and the first Willows becoming available.

I would expect that over the next week or so more Willow to flower and the bees will have greater opportunities to get out and forage on naturally available pollen, the Apipasta has, however, been a very valuable source of protein for them and I’m sure they will have benefitted from having it as opposed to me not feeding it to them. I’m going to post a video next week showing some of these hives so do look out for that on YouTube.

Well that’s it for this week if you are going to any gatherings or meetings please do take care, remember to wash your hands and stay safe.

Have a great beekeeping week and Please do remember to check out my Patreon page where you can access lots more content, that’s www.patreon.com/norfolk honey.

I’m Stewart Spinks and that was Beekeeping Short and Sweet.

Support the show

Hi I’m Stewart Spinks and welcome to Episode 100 of my podcast Beekeeping Short and sweet. This week I’m starting a review of how to implement an Integrated Pest Management system in your apiary.
Get the very latest Beekeeping podcast here

I’m really excited to be sharing my 100th podcast, I never thought I would reach the heady heights of 100 podcasts, it’s been a lot of fun, if not hard work, and I’m really grateful to everyone that tunes in and listens each week. This season my podcasts are sponsored in part by Honey Paw hives, the guys at Honey Paw have kindly set me up with a range of their equipment to demonstrate and I would ask you to take a look at their range via their website. I’ve used it for a couple of seasons now and I’m really enjoying the experience. I’ll leave links to their website in the podcast notes as usual.
Honey Paw Hives - Designed by Beekeepers For Beekeepers

Before we get into this week’s topic I thought I’d round up how the week has been as usual. I’m still watching the weather, it’s a favourite pastime for most beekeepers I guess, waiting to see if the warmer weather allows the bees to get out and start building for Spring.

In other news, I lost my first winter colony last week and as I’ve said on several occasions before the biggest threat to bees over winter is the beekeeper. It was all my fault. So, the colony in question was a medium-sized nucleus colony in a BSHoney 2 in 1 nuc box, so that’s a six-frame poly box. The bees occupied around three seams previously and looked healthy enough. Listen to the podcast for more details.

An Integrated Pest Management plan is a great way to identify specific areas that you can control to minimise the risk not just from Varroa but from all pests and diseases.

And the great thing about a plan like this is you can adapt it to suit your beekeeping style, whether you’re happy to use chemical treatments or if you’re treatment free, there’s a plan that you can use to keep pests and diseases to a manageable level and allow your bees to develop into strong, healthy colonies.

I intend going almost treatment free in one of my apiaries this year, that sounds a bit daft but the plan is to use brood comb removal to reduce the loading of Varroa and all the other nasties lurking in the hives. I say almost treatment-free because I still intend using Oxalic Acid Sublimation over the Winer period but other than that I’m going to use no chemicals at all. I’ll explain more about this as we go into the new season and I’ve selected the lucky apiary.

An integrated pest management plan doesn’t have to be complicated as there are several simple steps you can take to get control of pests and diseases in your apiaries.

For instance, make sure you wash your bee suit regularly if you wear one and if you wear gloves use either disposable ones or washing up gloves that can be washed thoroughly between hive inspections. Likewise, always have a wash bucket with clean water with washing soda and a splash of washing up liquid in it to clean hive tools in between each hive inspection.

I’ll talk more about the integrated pest management plan as we get into the season and I can show you what I do around the apiaries to manage my risk as best I can.

I hope you have a fantastic week, the new season will soon be upon us so let’s do all we can to have a fast start.

Please do remember to check out my Patreon page where you can access lots more content, that’s www.patreon.com/norfolkhoney.

I’m Stewart Spinks and that was Beekeeping Short and Sweet.

T's&C's for the competition can be found on my website at http://www.norfolk-honey.co.uk/competition100

Support the show

Hi, I’m Stewart Spinks and welcome to Episode 99 of my podcast Beekeeping Short and sweet.

Someone recently predict that Spring had arrived, well, with snow showers today and cooler weather ahead Winter still feels to have a grip. That shouldn’t stop us looking ahead and getting our bees in tip-top condition for the new season.

Catch up with the very latest podcast as they are released here

Honey Paw Hives can be found online here
Honey Paw in the UK Here

This podcast is sponsored in part by Honey Paw Hives, This season I’m delighted to have Honey Paw hives on board as one of our biggest supporters. Do pop over to their website to take a look at the fantastic range of Langstroth beehives and here in the UK check out Modern Beekeeping who are the sole UK distributors of Honey paw Hives. As usual, I’ll leave links to their websites in the podcast notes.

We’ve had a few chilly days of late, I’ve even taken to wearing my crocheted, beanie hat that I was given as a Christmas present a few years ago. Looks little daft but keeps my head warm, especially at the workshop where we don’t really have heating apart from the hot air that Pete and I spout when we’re talking, which is most of the time, but it’s still not enough to keep us warm.

We’ve been trying to keep warm by painting the Honey Paw equipment, it sometimes seems a never-ending task especially as we don’t have the luxury of spray painting so it’s all rollers and paintbrushes, that said, we got a couple of coats on most things and Pete’s been checking everything out this week and covering up the bits we all missed. Hopefully this weekend we’ll have completed that particular task and we can move on to some of the more exciting jobs. I’m going to filming my take on the floors and roofs of the Honey Paw hives next, some interesting kit with some very clever features so do keep a lookout for that. Then it will be frames and wax foundation, and mountains of them. Not just for the Langstroth Poly Hives but for all the boxes we’ve been cleaning and preparing ready for the start of the new season. And that brings me on to today’s topic of getting ready for the new season.

I was recently asked to give a talk in late March at the Norwich and District beekeeping association, my local beekeeping group that I’m a member of.

The topic I’ve been asked to talk about is Getting hives ready for the new season. 

Well, the problem is by the time I give the talk, the third Wednesday of the month, it’s likely to be too late, I know that last season, we were very busy with our colonies moving to Oilseed Rape, putting nucs into full-sized hives and more generally beginning the checks for swarms.

The perfect time to give a talk about preparing hives for Spring is probably August!

Now that might come as a surprise to some beginner beekeepers but the more experienced beekeepers Will know exactly what I’m talking about. For me, the honey production season comes to a sudden halt at the end of July, you could almost see the nectar tap being turned off, it’s that sudden. So what is the beekeeper supposed to do between the end of July and the start of the new season around six months later, well, not a great deal if he or she is organised but there are some crucial steps that gets the hive in perfect condition and ready for a fast start the following Spring.

I hope you have a fantastic week, the new season will soon be upon us so let’s do all we can to have a fast start.

Please do remember to check out my Patreon page where you can access lots more content, that’s www.patreon.com/norfolk honey.

I’m Stewart Spinks and that was Beekeeping Short and Sweet.

Support the show

Hi, I’m Stewart Spinks and welcome to Episode 98 of my podcast Beekeeping Short and sweet.

This week saw the completion of the Top Bar Hive build, we’ve once again been battered by Winter storms, and excitedly, we started the Honey Paw Langstroth Hive project, so stay tuned for all the latest updates.

Get the very latest podcast as it's released by visiting www.patreon.com/norfolkhoney

Check out Honey Paw Hives in the UK at Modern Beekeeping

Honey Paw outside the UK can be view at Honey Paw Hives

Before we get started into this week’s podcast I want to give a shout out to Honey Paw Hives who are very kindly sponsoring, in part, our podcasts for this active season. You’ll hear lots more about Honey Paw Hives as we go through the season and lots of the podcasts will feature the Langstroth Poly Hives as most of our YouTube videos are going to be based on the season-long collaboration we have with them.

I’ve had these hives for a couple of seasons now and I certainly wouldn’t have agreed to another collaboration with them if I didn’t think they were great products.

Here in the UK you can find out all about them by visiting the website of  Modern Beekeeping where the full range is on display and outside the UK take a look at the Honey Paw website itself and of course, I’ll put links to both websites in the podcast notes that accompany this week’s show.

Honey Paw Poly Langstroth Bee Hives, designed for beekeepers because they’re designed by beekeepers.

This month seems to be really racing away, January seemed to stretch out way ahead of me and whether it was the New Year hangover or something I don’t know but we barely seemed to trip into February and here we are with just over one week to go before it’s March and the Spring equinox will be upon us and we all know what happened here in the UK last year, I have pictures of swarm cells to prove it!

With all of that in mind, I decided it was time to get stuck into several projects as if I don’t have enough to be going on with. The major one is the Honey Paw and we’ve been making up brood bodies and nuc bodies ready for painting which we started today actually. To be honest these are pretty much the only thing you need to make up as everything else comes preformed and ready for painting. There are a couple of exceptions which I’ll talk about another time but mostly, we just put a little polyurethane wood glue on the joints and pushed them together.

So today we set about painting the boxes, being polystyrene you need to be careful what paint you select or you could find your precious hive parts dissolving away! I opt for smooth masonry paint basically because I can get it in big tins and normally someone somewhere is selling off old stock in some drab colour that no one wants.

This week it was the turn of UK DIY store B&Q, they had an offer on a Dulux weather shield masonry paint listed in the green section of their website filter system. It looked a little light and was called “Frosted Lake” so I pictured a kind of light or pale green colour.

The best thing was it was really cheap so I got three 5 litre tins of it.

Turns out that “Frosted Lake” is actually “Baby Blue” and not Green at all. Oh well, never mind, it really isn’t that big a deal, too late now anyway as we’ve given pretty much everything a first coat, including my nephew who came along to lend a hand. I think he got more paint on his hoodie than on the hives which is why it’s always good to give young relatives back to their respective parents at the end of the day. 

We painted a total of a dozen floors and roofs, 36 brood bodies or deep boxes, 12 feeders and four complete nucs, basically a floor, nuc body and roof.

Al

Support the show

Get the very latest podcast as it's released by visiting my beekeeping support website www.patreon.com/norfolkhoney


What a week, we’ve had all four seasons in one day, rain, winds, sunshine, hail, snow and, not forgetting Storm Ciara for our bees to contend with, listen in to hear how my bees survived. Also to come, the latest workshop update and yet another storm to contend with.

Blimey, what a week, at least we were forewarned and despite all the fuss nothing quite so dramatic here for us as compared to other parts of the country and certainly, other places around the world so we were pretty lucky really.

Looking back at the week, the big news was the impending arrival of Storm Ciara, we seem to have become accustomed to naming our storms now and Ciara arrived on schedule with some torrential downpours and gale-force winds. I looked out into the back garden to see fairy calm scene as I’d done something I’ve never done before, and that was to prepare for the worst! I’d moved all likely flying objects into the garage, the usual empty pots and trays from my gardening exploits, a couple of old honey buckets that I use for, well, use for pretty much everything in the garden these days, all except filling with honey of course. But I could see those sailing through the skies so they went into the garage. Plants in pots were moved to sheltered corner locations, bear in mind my back garden is only 5 metres by 7 metres at the most, maybe not even that big, I did a lot of fishing in years gone by so I’m quite good at over-estimating!

Anyway, everything was tucked away ready for Storm Ciara to arrive and she was perfectly on time. We didn’t get quite as much rain as I was expecting but it was very, very windy. My mind turned to the apiary sites I have and thinking which trees were in imminent danger of falling over, and there are quite a few. At the Alpaca farm, there’s a huge oak tree on the outside track that borders the farm and that came down about two years ago. Chris at the Alpaca farm had a tree surgeon cut down the bulk of it that had fallen into their property but the huge trunk ended up across the public bridleway and is still there. It stops me from driving up to the apiary from the back lane, not a huge problem as it’s always nice to say hello to the folks at the Alpacas but there are several other ancient trees that line that track that could easily have taken a battering this week.

I did message Emma, the owner of the alpaca farm, to see if they could check on the bees for me because this is the Honey Paw Langstroth poly hive apiary from a couple of seasons ago and I was worried the poly hives might have taken a tumble.

I needn’t have worried as everything was secure and the hives were all firmly strapped down. It’s the only apiary where there is someone on-site 24/7 so I needed to get around all the other apiaries as soon as possible to put my mind at rest.

The Bluebell apiary was my first stop, and beekeeper incompetence had intervened to cause one minor issue. At the last visit to feed Apipasta fondant, I’d forgotten to put the stone back on top of one of the BSHoney 2in1 nuc boxes and the roof had been blown off. Of course, the next step is trying to find the roof, it’s only a small rectangle of polystyrene and they can travel quite a long way in a good storm.

The Bluebell apiary, although set out on concrete plinths and wood chip floor is surrounded by long grasses, hedgerows and trees, idyllic on the right day but when you’re trying to find a thin slab of polystyrene it makes for a more tricky search.

The sensible thing to do is start at the hives and scan around searching the ground all the way to the hedge line and up into the bushes and trees that form the boundary. Nope, nothing there, perhaps a walk through the long grass will reveal where the roof has vanished to. Nope, not in the long grass, now I’m

Support the show

Hi, I’m Stewart Spinks and welcome to Episode 96 of my podcast Beekeeping Short and sweet.

Another very busy week, we’ve been scorching boxes, feeding fondant and the Honey Paw Hives have arrived and that’s got me super excited for the coming season.

Find your local stockist of Zukan Apipasta Fondant Bee Feeds Here

Honey Paw Hives can be found in the UK at Happy Valley Honey 

For Orders outside the UK contact Honey Paw direct

I am very grateful to both Happy Valley Honey and Honey Paw for, in part, sponsoring this week's episode of my podcast. Both Happy Valley Honey and Honey Paw have supplied samples of their products free of charge for me to test out and promote. I use both products in my day to day beekeeping anyway so I am delighted to be able to recommend both to you.

Talking of fondant I’ve been given a few boxes of Zukan Apipasta by Paul Beardmore at Happy Valley Honey to try out, this is the basic fondant not the one with the added amino acids and vitamins. The good news is our bees are taking to it as readily as the Apipasta with the added proteins. Happy Valley Honey is, in part,  sponsoring this podcast and supporting me in producing our podcasts and in return, I’m very happy, please excuse the pun, very happy to promote their range of Fondants and liquid feeds.

If you need to get some ready-made fondant that’s great for your bees and will help them grow into strong and healthy colonies for the start of the new season then do take a look at the Happy Valley Honey Website for full details of where you can get hold of this Apipasta fondant. I know that there are now several stockists around the UK that can supply Apipasta which, if you’re local to one of them will save you a small fortune in courier costs. Alternatively, get together with a few friends at your beekeeping association and place a bulk order to split between you all. It’s called Zukan Apipasta and I’ll leave a link to the website in the podcast notes.

I am so excited to be collaborating again with the Honey Paw team, we’re going to be starting from scratch again and it couldn’t more timely. Here in the UK Poly hives are becoming more available, the quality is superb and if well looked after these hives will last a lifetime.

The plan is to use the nucs we already have in our own Honey Paw Nucs and also carry out a couple of shook swarms to convert from a different sized frame into the Langstroth hives.

It won’t work well unless you have plenty of bees and plenty of resources, that’s food. So I’ll be shaking full-sized colonies into the boxes and giving them a feeder with plenty of sugar syrup.

I fully expect we will see brood boxes filled with drawn comb in somewhere around 7 to 10 days if all goes to plan. We’ll have a brood break which also means we can treat with oxalic acid to kill off any varroa mites that may be present, and that’s a nice bonus. The key to that is to plan it ahead of the day and get everything ready.

So, do sign up to the Patreon page videos, subscribe to my YouTube channel and listen out for more updates as we get cracking into the start of the new season.

Well, that’s it for this week, If you haven’t check ed out my Patreon page as yet, please do take a look, you support is very welcome. that’s www.patreon.com/norfolkhoney

Thanks for hanging around until the end of the podcast, have a great week and we’ll catch up again next time.

I’m Stewart Spinks

and that was Beekeeping Short and Sweet.

Support the show

Hi I’m Stewart Spinks and welcome to Episode 95 of my podcast Beekeeping Short and sweet.

This week, I’ve been back at the workshop getting stuck into the cleaning jobs, had a really interesting meeting with fellow bee farmers and today, suffered the torture of the dentist's chair, so stay tuned for more beekeeping chat followed by a few blood-curdling screams as the drill bites home!

If you haven’t check ed out my Patreon page as yet, please do take a look, you support is very welcome. that’s www.patreon.com/norfolkhoney

Another busy week, someone recently said to me that beekeeping must be a doddle through the Winter because you don’t have to do anything! Believe me, it’s been anything but quiet. We’ve been recording a few more videos and that I guess does eat into the time a fair amount, not that I’m complaining, I love producing the videos to share, particularly those for the Patreon page where everyone is so very supportive with their comments.

We spent a very busy day at the workshop cleaning the majority of the old boxes and frames. I had a stack of boxes from the late Summer and Autumn losses that needed to be stripped out and cleaned so we decided we really ought to get stuck into that before it gets to be a last-minute panic. I’m really good at telling others how to get organised but for myself, I just seem to get caught up in the procrastination game and delays creep in. Totally my own fault and something I need to get a grip of.

So the cleanup operation went well in the end. We had around thirty boxes, mostly brood boxes with frames in, a mix of National and Commercial boxes. The frames in some could have been rescued but it’s a judgement call that I always fall on the side of caution with. My previous experience as a bee inspector has shown me that when you decide to take a short cut there’s every chance that’s the one-time things can go horribly wrong. A bit like that important piece of paper you had on your desk that you said you really must file, you forget to file it and three months later you’re shortly the house down trying to find out who moved it when actually you should have put it away when you thought about it.

Getting back to the cleanup operation, the process is quite straightforward, remove the frames, cut out the old wax comb, scrape the frame a little and stack the frames ready for boiling. Remove the runners from the boxes, grab a hive tool and go to work scraping all of the wax and propolis from the inside of the box and finally scorch the box with a flame to get the last stubborn bits of debris out and hopefully kill off anything that shouldn’t be in there.

The wax goes into a half-barrel with water in the bottom six inches and gets heated up to melt out before being strained and cleaned properly.

All of this takes time of course and we didn’t get everything sorted although I think the only jobs remaining are the scorching of the boxes and the cleaning up of the wax.

To be honest, I think there may be a few frames still to boil but all in all, it was a good days effort.

As usual, I have to thank Pete and Steph for their fantastic help, we tried to shoot a time-lapse video of the entire event which I’ve posted to the Patreon page, I’m not sure we got the right angle to show the sheer amount of work that was done but with practice I’m sure we’ll get better.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, I was in Solihull at a swanky hotel for a Bee Farmers Association meeting called the Knowledge Exchange Groups. It was a chance for members of the Bee Farmers Association who had signed up to the groups to get together and look at the data that we all compile for last years season, compare and contrast and from my perspective, see if I could find any indicators that would shape the way we do things this year, and boy did I get a heap out of it.

It was a thoroughly exhausting experience because I&

Support the show