Hello and welcome to the channel, follow us on our journey throughout the British seasons on our traditional English farm. You will see our day to day, unfiltered lives from beekeeping and honey production, to tractor driving and general upkeep on the farm. Our aim is to give you a first hand view of life on the farm and the challenges we face in the 21st century. If you enjoy what you see please do give us a like and subscribe!
I’m surprised that you are still doing weekly inspections, I was advised not to be going in at this time of the year due to the robbing attraction. I had a game trying to get the strips out as they had stuck them down with propolis which made it difficult to get out, plus they were super grumpy that they were being disturbed.🤣
Last year we had stopped completely but this year I don’t know what it is but our bees are just insisting on trying to swarm. Maybe they’re too tightly condensed I don’t know?
Hi from southern New Zealand 👋😃 nice strong colony's. Whoever told you that rubbish about swarm cells @ 11:20 into the video needs his/her head read that's utter rubbish 😂 this is a generalisation but swarm cells tend to be built near the bottom of the comb but not always 🙄 and supersede cells tend to be in the middle to the top of the frame but not always 🙄 and emergency queen generation cells will be anywhere there's brood the correct age. You will 98% of the time rarely have only one cell for swarming or supersede or emergency. Swarm cells mean cramped conditions and too many bee's, supersede cells mean the bee's have detected a issue and it may not be readily apparent what that is, sometimes the queen starts firing blanks (drone eggs) which is easy to spot or her pheromone production drops which isn't 😂 emergency queen cells mean you've lost the queen. try to nail swarm cells BEFORE they are capped, once they're capped the clock runs rapidly for a swarm to break.
I know that’s it makes no sense! The way I see it is, it’s a cell with a new Queen, something isn’t right 😂 I think they might just be a bit too condensed maybe most of them are still covering all the frames
Hi,you might want to remove the queen excluder.There is a danger of the bees clustering in the stores and leaving the queen behind if she cannot follow them.
A comfort upgrade would be to bolt down your extractor. We use a wooden palette for ours (to not drill in our floor😅). It stabilizes the extractor, especially If the frames weight are uneven making it safer and easier to speed up. Just compare it to one s washing machine and how they have a counterweight to stabilize them.
Hi from southern New Zealand 👋 I love the top bars on your frames, those end lugs are great 😃 nice extraction video 👍 how does the buckwheat honey taste? Great job I'm glad you got success and a nice harvest 👍😃👋
@@Lagness_Farms_Honey 😃 awesome 👍 it's 4:30 am here, just noticed you commented I'm not usually about at 4:30 am here to I've been helping friends tile a kitchen that has to be ready for Monday night 😅 I'll get them back for it during honey bottling time😂
I hope you have done the extraction after the video because with all these bee's inside and for sure other will manage to enter you will have nothing left.
Hi from southern New Zealand 👋😃 the chisel made me laugh 😂 get yourselves a hive tool 😂 it'll make the job far easier 😂 a Kelly type hive tool is great for honey super cracking because you can " bump" with it which makes splitting up easier. I use a lega combination with a j- hook but I can still bump with it, it really does make things easier to have a hive tool in your kit. Something else that might help is investing in bee escape boards. I do this rather than blow or brush supers out , it is a little bit of nonsense because you've got to put them on a couple of days before you pull your supers but it really simplifys pulling supers. I run full depths so I don't want to muck around brushing half a hives worth of bee's out, personally I use the Ceracell Great Escape boards but I'm sure you'll find a local producers making them in the u.k. Running a dehumidifier to remove Moisture content can be simple if you buy a refractometer, they're about $25 nzd so probably a lot cheaper there and it takes the guesswork out of how much moisture content you've got. Capped honey is not always below 18 percent so be careful because people will tell you when it's capped it's ready, a fellow beekeeper has tested capped honey at 25 percent which if you bottled would be a disaster, and uncapped he's tested at 14 percent and had to add some wetter honey to blend with it for bottling because it was as sticky as tar😵💫😁 18 percent which is the magic number most beekeepers aim for to stop fermentation but some people prefer it a little dryer around 16 percent. I spin thyme honey at 17 percent moisture and it's mid summer so I don't run a dehumidifier myself because I live in a dry area but if you think you should then absolutely you should 😂 nothing worse than getting the honey bottled and having it ferment 😬 great job and glad to see you got success at that site👍😁
Maybe one day I’ll invest in some hive tools but got to get them in a sale! 😂 we always test what the honey comes out at we made the mistake last year being our first extraction and checked after that it was 21%! Certainly learnt our lesson on that one
Please do yourselves a favour and buy some hive tools and clearer boards. Will make your hive work so much easier as will the proper use of a smoker!. You’re wearing £200+ beesuits and don’t have clearer boards or hive tools. We use clearer boards for 2 days and only get a few bees to blow out the supers when we harvest. Also we check the moisture in all supers before thinking of harvesting and only take honey less than 18%. This year it was all less than 16%.
We normally do put in clearer boards but it was a bit of a last minute decision taking the supers off. I do like the idea of testing each super though so we might do that next year. Thank you 😃
Anyway I was going to suggest checkerboarding some empty drawn comb in the pulled out supers if you want to maximize the crop that the bee's are packing and ( personal preference here) Id newspaper combine that queenless with another low strength colony and get four decent hives working that flower patch while it's booming. I'd also have a full depth box of food capped or cured first because I run double deeps and prioritize my bee stores before a honey crop it's just the way I do it myself. Beekeeping approaches is like noses everyone has a completely different one and everyone is right ( until they start loosing colony's anyway)😂 great to see a nice flow for you👍😃
I really do appreciate hearing what everyone else does, I’d love to go out and see first hand how you guys do it, I’ve seen small parts of beekeeping in Australia, not sure if that’s similar to you or not?
@@Lagness_Farms_Honey most beekeeping in NZ is a " fire and forget" style which is similar to the southern Australian method of beekeeping, especially in larger commercial apairys. Quick checks, not a lot of time spent in hives, using higher numbers of hives to offset losses and doing splits from larger colony's during spring ( which is just started) and throwing on treatment for varroa with a couple of mite washes per apairy, usually about 35 hives strong per apairy, hives all honey supered around the same time and pulled at the same time. I like to employ a more in depth approach treating each hive as a separate unit and adjusting accordingly, it's far more time consuming and not the standard approach here but I'm convinced time spent completely checking individual hives pays dividends during production season and lowers disease incidents but it's definitely not the standard model of New Zealand beekeeping which is bang through the boxes quickly.😂
Plug away😂 little bit of a rant here, I'm a huge believer in giving local producers top spot in the local markets first so you should brag about being the best in Britain, we do it too because we're the best in the world at everything 🙄in NZ including selling our prime NZ beef and lamb meat in British supermarkets at half the price we pay for the rubbish cuts in ours and pricing local British farmers out of the markets where they should have the prime spot in their own country. it's not like we have a shortage of supermarkets here😂 and don't get me started on "That manuka Honey" stuff that some NZ outfits sell in the UK for 200 quid a jar, I still say it's rubbish and we have much better honey varietys which we should be prioritizing selling to the 5 and a half million people who live here first and our honey should always take second seat to locally produced honey. 🥵 Ok, I'll get off my soapbox 😂 preaching to the convertered anyway but a lot of kiwi producers would prefer to sell to local markets first and don't jump on the export bandwagon, I certainly don't. If we don't allow honey imports here from you we don't have any right to shove our crap on your shelves either. I point blank refuse to export my honey on that principle, local beekeepers can and should sell local honey to their markets in country first. You know I was going to talk about your honey supers but I've written a book already😂
Haha love it! But it’s totally true though, the problem with UK is that the government just doesn’t care. I believe there’s only around 14% of British honey that is put on the shelves everything else is imports!
@@Lagness_Farms_Honey woah😳14% is ghastly and I hope that Improves to give local beekeepers a larger market at home. You guys have some fantastic honeys which I hope the British public discovers😃👍 tastes better than the manuka rubbish too😂
Congratulations from central Otago southern New Zealand on your first jarring of the year 👍 drying honey once its out of a frame is a menace.😬 Sorry i can't offer you any great sage post extracting suggestions, but, i would try drying some down to say 16 percent before you spin it. the easiest way is to put a box fan over a staggered set of supers with a dehumidifier running in a small sealed room before you extract because the frames give you a much larger drying surface area, but once it's out of the comb, it becomes difficult. If you extract dryer honey then blend that into your "wet" honey it should pull the overall moisture content down, im pretty sure i got that advice from American beekeeper Bob binnie who has a video about drying honey, watching that may help you 😬 only solution i can offer and i hope it helps. What is your honey by the way? I've got the opposite problem, my main honey crop is thyme honey and its as dry as a pub in the middle of the Sahara 😂 great video 👍👋
My mom used to live with a man who had many beehives. Once he extracted honey he was putting into a drum and kept it open to dry it out. He was saying that bees with theiy wings flopping drying it to some state which is ok if left in honeycomb but not ok if extracted. That's why he said he needs to leave it to dry. He was drying this during the hot summer months. So it looks like he was doing opposite thing to what you're doing. My question who is right?
Honey in a frame will dry down because it's got a large surface area for drying, honey in a barrel won't dry except at the very top of the honey. American beekeeper Bob binnie has a video discussing "wet honey" or honey with a unwanted moisture content, ideally it should be less than 18 percent moisture to stop fermentation but certain honey can ferment even that dry and you have to get it below 16 percent.
@@Manuherikiabeekeeping You right. I remember that he was few times a day shaking the drum and made honey got to sides to increase the area. I agree that it would be better let the honey to sit in a frame and let the bees do their work and dry it.
@@Lagness_Farms_Honey It went good thank you for asking, I received 80kg of honey that are currently in 20 liter buckets. I have ordered a honey refractometer to test the water percentage before I start jarring the honey.
@@Lagness_Farms_Honey The best way that I can think of to lower the water percentage of honey is to put it into your new honey house with a container that has a large service area and use a fan blowing over the service area to cause evacuation and then use a dehumidifier to take the humidity out of the air.
Best tip is ditch the gloves that you either keep changing or get honey on everything and simply have a bucket of soapy water and a towel. Takes a second to have clean non sticky hand time and time again through the day.
Seems to work nicely with the knife! What are the widths of the top and the bottom bars and how far are the frames apart from each other from middle to middle? 35 mm? Greetings from Germany
It’s such a rewarding job isn’t it! Out of that honey crop we did only get about 30kg which was less than I was expecting but with the weather we had I was just pleased they made some surplus
By the way - you said you were a little disappointed by the yield you got so far. How much did each super produce for you? Here in France, my 6 hive back yard apiary did nothing at all this spring - like most people over here, I had to feed in May to keep them alive. Summer has turned out nice though and not so wet. The three supers I harvested so far yielded 50kg, so that 16.6kg per 9 frame super which I though was pretty good.
We did weigh what one super was and it came out at 14kg but that’s with box and frames. The trouble we had is we just didn’t get the weather windows. One day it was nice and sunny the next two days would be rain! Your yield sounds very good indeed though well done!!
I have a couple of simple suggestions to make your extraction process more efficient. Note, I'm only in my second year with 6 hives deep in the French countryside, so I don't pretend to be an expert in any of this. First - now the frames in your honey supers are drawn, place 9 frames in each super instead of ten. Equally spaced. The bees will draw the comb wider, with more honey in each, making the decapping and extraction a lot more efficient. Second, when decapping with a knife (this works for a heated knife too, lean the top of the frame over the knife - the cappings then fall straight into the tray and won't need to be scraped off afterwards. Lastly, make a simple bridge to go across the decapping tray with a short vertical nail poking above the middle. Figure out some way to hold this in place so it doesn't slide about. When decapping, place the end of the frame on the nail point where it will be held firmly while you cut through with the knife. And then simply spin the frame on the nail to get to the other side. In your video, you balance the frame on the edge of the tray - I didn't see it, but I'd bet you have honey all over the bench and floor with the system you currently use. Cheers and happy spinning. P.S. One more thing - invest in an motorized extractor. Hand cranking is a PITA
The wasps have just arrived this week 12/8/24 not in the volume of last year ,so lesson learns from last year try liquid feeding with speed . And don’t open to inspect if you can avoid too .as my records show the last wasp that was seen was in October a long time for that headache . Smaller entrances which is challenging should the weather change to hot.
Great video. Love the honey house! I used the rhombus bee escape with the multi functional crown board. I only had 3 bees left in two supers. The honey b gone spray from Throme looks effective too. I may try it next year to save having to go back the next day yo remove supers.
Are you treating for varroa mites this year and if so when are you treating them? I suggest ordering the varroa treatment now if you are going to treat them before Paynes or Thrones are sold out. The honey container is looking good 🐝
Thank you! We have got some treatment for them so once the honey comes off we will apply it, old castle farm hives also have some good products for varroa treatment as well
Good luck with the extraction, nothing better than seeing capped honey supers! Will be doing the same as you next week, but only have a few colonies. Love the sheep, sadly out little flock of Shetlands all gone due to old age.
Thank you, hope it goes well with you! She is character that’s for sure. That’s a shame there’s nothing better than seeing animals out in a field grazing
We’ll be using apistan strips this year, we used apivar last year but I wanted to change it up each year just incase of immunity build up. We do it with chemicals on crops to prevent it and in my mind this is the same process
Nice work. My 2nd year beekeeping. No honey last year. I hope to get a bit from two hives this year. Just wondering what do you do with the uncapped nectar if its still in supers going into winter and putting mite treatment on hives.?
It’s our second year to!! What we did last year if it was only a bit that wasn’t capped we just mixed it in with the rest of the bulk and moisture was fine but on one hive we had we put the super at the bottom and brood box on top and the bees just took it up.
I had a queen do that but luckily i put her back in a cage and 10mis later she was walking around. They sometimes play dead after you handle them. I wont be caught out again.
