Hi Alex, I'm a 32 year old beekeeper in New Zealand, and it is really awesome to see how different the beekeeping styles are. I work for a company that has around 20,000 hives and have been working here full time for the last 15 years, and a few years ago I decided to get some hives of my own as well, and am currently sitting at 23 hives. If you're interested in seeing how our hives are different from yours, let me know and I can send you some pics of my hives at my house, it's insane how different they can be set up around the world. Keep up with making such awesome content, I'm really enjoying all your vids, and am hoping to be able to get into some home gardening as well
@@kirstievapron4705 If you were given 5 unlabelled jars from a market and told one was from NZ you'd spend a good few minutes trying to work out which one it is because you can't tell the difference.
Hi Alex, Painting your wood is good for more than just the looks. Originally, paint was applied to wood to make sure the wood stays good for longer, and this still is the case. If you want to give your hives a longer lifetime, applying some paint, or even varnish/lacquer or whatever it is called, will keep the wood from being weathered down by the elements for much longer. I would definitely recommend it.
@@sarahsleamanova2072 You can use wax to coat your hives, but paraffin wax is used, not bee wax. You'll need also some micro-crystaling wax. Here you see how it's done: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-KK21RVAX19s.html
This is one of the reasons why they use cedar. Cedar contains weatherproofing oils and weathers beautifully instead of degrading. In America, many high-end homes have cedar shingles on the roofs because they last many years in the elements and look beautiful once weathered.
Just make sure your paint is vapour open, and that you dont use plastic based paints. Vapour open solutions as oil or limestone based paints are better for the enviroment and the wood itself. As wood acts somewhat of a sponge, its important to let the wood drain and dry out. Placticpaint is vapour closed, and can cause fungi and deteriation. Furthermore, the plasticpaint will crack eventually, and leave big "chips" plactic in your garden. You can also make your own paint from linoil, oxidepowder (natural coloring minerals) and buttermilk, which is quit fun.
It is very good of your dad to let you have more hives. One thing I wondered is if you asked locally if anyone would let you keep bees in their gardens, it could spread the word and would expand you flock or whatever the collective is for bees
I think the word would be "colony". However, that seems more like it would refer to the bees within one hive in particular, instead of all of the bees he owns collectively. I don't know.
Hi Alex. Great to watch you develop as a beekeeper. A couple of things to help you from a Scottish beekeeper with 6 years experience: put your fondant blocks directly on top of your frames, not on the crown board, your bees can then access it across several frames rather than through a small hole (a mistake I made in my first year and my bees starved!). Also have a water source close to your hives, a shallow bowl with pebbles and moss and water from a water butt (not tap water). Enjoy your bee keeping!
Hi Alex, awesome video. I'm a biologist (although more into the microbial field) so always into data collection and analysis. Might I recommend you draw a grid on the white board you insert at the bottom of the hive, so that you can get an average square inch concentrations/infestation of mites. Depending on how often you swap out the boards, you can track if the mite concentration is increading/decreasing over time. It'll let you know how effective the strips are as well, if you get a sudden increase and then decrease. Hope it helps and keeps the bees healthy. Best wishes from New Zealand.
I originally started watching you for your beekeeping. Then your recent 3 hour video was playing as I woke from a nap, I continued to watch all 3 hours of it. Your voice is so calm, your adventures are calming. I love your channel already and only been watching you for the last couple of days.
Man I wish you all the best! May your bees swarm right when you want them to, may the mites die off when you need them to and may the honey flow as heavily as you wish it to!! I'm a beekeeper in Spain so I like to think of these videos as an update from a fellow brother in the hive :P
From what I have heard painted hives help prevent drift, they provide visual cues so returning bees can easily locate their own colony. Different hive colours or blocks of colour help bees hone in on the right hive. Seeing you have more hives now it seems worth doing that.
Hi Alex, a tip for you: never wear dark clothing around bees, including gloves. This will sound stupid but I've had numerous beekeepers tell me that it's something to do with bees thinking you might be a bear! I thought it was a myth, until I was mowing my lawn (about 5 metres from the nearest hive) wearing black gardening gloves and a few of the guard bees came charging at me and stung me on the hand! Also, bees are generally a little more defensive when there's a strong nectar flow on. If you have aggressive bees, then it's best to swap out the queen and replace her with a new docile queen, especially if you have neighbours.
You got 12kg of honey man, that’s awesome 👏. Very educational stuff about mites, pests and diseases etc. You are learning loads ( and so are we). Keep it up matey
favorite moments: (knocks on fondant) (the dad's evil giggle after shutting his son in the van) "They have a few less than they did before" "this is an egg. it came from a chicken" "huddling together like penguins" "the bees don't need them to be painted..." (the dad and his orchids) "it's so good to see my little friends agaaaain" "it's like a drive thru, but for bee equipment" "I am surrounded by lots of pieces of wood" "I'm already confused" (skips to a RU-vid tutorial) "you don't really want baby bees...er, inside your honey"
Maybe you could make a structure to give the bee hives a roof to help prevent rain and snow a little more. And another thing, maybe you could use gardening gloves instead when handling the bee work 😋
If you look into VSH Bees. They are more Verroa mite resistant. Researchers are working on making colonies that can fight mites better. When I went to VSH bees it was life changer. Varroa mite and and too strong hives are my weakness.
Great video! Though you really need to learn how to lift with your legs and not your back, you’re going to blow a disk that way. Keep your chest up more and get lower with your legs so that you can basically do a squat up with it. Might be worth getting a trainer to learn some basic lifting movements so you don’t hurt yourself when expanding the bee population.
Hey amigo! 30 years experience here from California. Always happy to see the next generation following the passion. Look forward to seeing you get into splitting hives, learning about requeening, and more!
Hi Alex, You can put another brood box on top of both of your hives to give your queen more room to lay. So you will have two brood boxes on each hive. If there isn’t more room for the queen to lay they make more room by swarming. Plus you will get more honey because the queen can lay more worker bees 😊 Watch Bob Bennie or Kamon Reynolds they are very helpful and David Burns. Just passing along with I have learned ❤ love your videos
Hello Alex! I am loving this bee keeping content because just like your brother, I'm horribly allergic to bees but seeing you become a bee keeper and teaching me more about bees, I've grown sentiments towards bees and understand them much deeper now. they are such lovely beings and knowing we can co exist with them without harming them and really taking care of them is making me want to do bee keeping myself! I've learned about bees and how important they are for our ecosystem, keep it up! 💯
Power to ya man,youre an inspiration to the world in my opinion. Ive never even thought bee keeping was for me but after watching you i really wanna try
Well done alex you have done so well with every thing from your van to your bees and just your life in general i love these videos i watch every single one of them you've done so so well to get people to watch your videos and like i said keep it up 👊🔥🇬🇧
I absolutely adore your videos Alex. You are such a kind soul, with an amazingly relaxing energy. Keep up the fantastic work, and let me know when you harvest some of your honey. I'd gladly buy some to support more hives and future projects!!! Your Koi are also gorgeous!!
Free rm and brd for bees and painting the bee stands? Sounds fair to me! Anything for the bees! Pine rots quickly in wet weather. Make bee stands out of cedar and wet westher is no problem. Love the program 24:09 and admire your parents!
I love how much effort, money and time you spend on your videos and I hope you the best for your growing bee keeping business. As you expand your business you might be interested in a bee invention we have in Australia. its basically a hive where honey can be extracted without carrying heavy load of honey and using expensive processing equipment instead it pours right out of the hive as pure honey. keep up the good work and thanks for sharing your journey. I can't wait to see what you have in plan next!
Alex - you crack me up. I own a Practice in Herts. and keep bees. At the moment we have a skeleton dispensing team and so after a day of Optometry, I spend evenings doing the dispensing and any admin. I’ve watched / listened to several of your videos here in succession and some of your comments make me laugh spontaneously out loud. I love your enthusiasm and dedication as much as your researched nuggets of wisdom. Keep up the good work.
Just gonna point this out cause sometimes we need a reminder of how grateful we need to be. I don't hate my parents and I love them for who I became. However my parents would never support my passions and goals like yours do. I am a expert psychologist and I can recognize your dads hesitation as you prob do but he's supporting it anyways and that's worth a world of gold anyhow.
Nice one Alex, your presenting style has really come a long way over the last couple of years. I found that this latest vlog was so educational and informative so well done. keep up the good work and may you have the best of luck this year with your Bees.
I cant wait to see how you get on. I wish you all the best and hope your plans for having more bees becomes a reality. I know you have more plans for the garden like your veg and also planting more flowers to also help the bees. Please please keep us updated and again i hope everything goes well.
Hi Alex, I'm a beekeeper and a woodworker in a similar climate as yours. While the cedar hives look very nice in their natural unpainted state, you can make them last much longer with some sort of protectant. I really like the look of the natural wood, so I treat mine with a mixture of 50% paraffin wax and 50% microcrystalline wax. I then apply that to the outside of the hive with a heat gun until the wood will absorb no more. I'm 4 years in and my hives still look brand new. Cheers!
Great job Alex! Love these beekeeping videos. It's always heartening to see your passion for learning and caring for your colonies. Keep it up! I'm hoping to start a hive myself, here in the States, this year. Wish me luck!
I've been doing a lot of research myself cuz I plan on having my own bees and I ended up stumbling across your videos so it's definitely helping out. And another thing I seen is it's good to have a certain type of mushroom around your bees to keep them from getting a specific type of disease that causes their wings not to develop correctly
I am a beekeeper in New Zealand - i do a "sugar shake" to get a more accurate count of varroa than your drop board which relies on only counting mites that happen to fall off and not crawl onto another bee. it involves 30 grams icing sugar and about 300 bees and a jar. Not quite as accurate as an alcohol shake but with a sugar shake the bees don't die :) You can easily find out how to do one on youtube.
You have inspired me to try my hand at bee keeping. Thank you Alex! I’ve thought about doing it for a few years now here on my farm in Northern New Mexico, as one of my friends kept a few hives here years back. The biggest problem he had was bears destroyed his hives several times. We finally discovered the best way to keep them safe was to put them inside of a cattle trailer with a roof on it. After he put them in there, we heard the bear angrily trying to get into the trailer at night several times. But never successfully. Haha
When I was little, we used to have hives that opened from the back instead of top, so they could be stacked on top of each other. My grandfather and dad had them stacked on top of each other in rows. Nice memories 😊
Just three suggestions. #1. You should keep a water source close by the hives for them. Just a small birdbath filled with small stones and pebbles with do - sloping up the sides so they can walk down to the water. #2. If you want to protect your new bee boxes - going forward - give them the viking treatment. Get some raw linseed oil and organic pine tar, then do a 50/50 mix. It'll preserve the wood for decades, and it's food and insect safe - and pine tar smells so good! Just leave them to dry for a week or two before you introduce bees to them. I do this for all my raised garden beds too. #3. You can easily build an insulating frame box to go over your bee boxes for the winter. Just need to cut out around the exit of the box for air circulation. Pop it on in the winter, take it off in the spring. Happy, warm, bees, also use less energy to stay warm, so less food required for them. Keep at it, love your work, man!
So no disappearing on holiday during swarm season this year then. I hope you'll be able to catch them before they get up in the trees and split the hives easier than last year. Really enjoy watching you learn and do new things and I look forward to your upcoming Bee antics and whatever else you get up to. Never stop learning and all the best for 2023. 👍
YOu have come a long way Alex in VERY short time, well done lad, such honest, kind careing person, an amazing positive outlook on life, your definalty a breath of fresh air in my nto so bright life atm, cheers.
As a carpenter I’d probably screw something extra supports under your stands because the screws can snap over time and the weight of 200kg from the 3 hives might compromise the strength of the screws all you need is just a block into the legs supporting the timbers that the hive base sits on. Really enjoy your content looking forward to seeing you grow in knowledge and the subs 😇🙏❤️☮️🌟
I love your positivity and adventurous spirit. You are inspiring people all over the world to try new things and live life with intention. I showed one of your traveling videos to my husband and he looked at me and said, "Let's buy a van!"
I saw a video of you from last year, Me and my friends got really excited of that video. We are getting ready for the summer to get our own hive going. We hope it is as much fun as your bee hives! Thanks for the content, I hope we also get honey this year :)
I love your care for the most amazing insects in the world. They're amazing - even as a none beekeeper; I appreciate bees and always will. They never harm you unless you are a threat. Love you for it too Alex! You're a keeper of the bees and that's amazing. Youre amazing. Thankyou for taking care of my best friends x
Thank you for sharing your experiences with us! I am of the opinion that all the wood kept in the open should be painted-including the beehive boxes! Stops them from rotting, being eaten by woodworms and/or mice and as a bonus they look great if you use different, vibrant colours.
Hello Alex, Your videos are so educational and inspiring. I have had two colonies in the past. Whilst I thought I knew enough and thought I had researched enough both of the colonies did not survive. I was devastated and felt so guilty that I had failed the bees. I have learned so much through your content , and am so thankful I found your channel. I feel more confident and prepared to try care for another colony if I am able to get one this year. Thank you for putting out your journey and everything that you have learned. A fellow bee keeper
I really like your video. Like I can watch your video peacefully. The video will be calm and you will be explaining everything very sweetly. I really like your video. I want more videos like growing garden and sharing your information 💋❤
I think the painting of the wood will prevent water rotting it. It will weather proof it. I heard you say the bees don't like wet conditions so it is actually vital to paint all the wood around the outside of the hives to help your bees get through our wet winters!! The paint will prevent the rain from seeping in so it helps keep the bees dry and it prevents the wood from rotting so your hives last longer!!
I'm glad your bees are doing well...we need our bees. I love your garden shoes. I think I viewed a video where you were having them special made. Good luck with your beekeeping.
31:29 There are different types of hives. 1 consisting of large hives 2 consisting of only small hives 3. Combined of large and small floors. The main idea of small hive tiers for honey is that you can separate meadow,forest etc honey because they take less time to fill 1 compartment the other reason (mainly for emale beekeepers) is that they can hold a small section.
I worked on a dairy farm that also had bees and I got to say knowing all I do it's great fun to watch you learn and even fumble your way through this. Like I noticed bee diarrhea in your first hive but then it became a super swarmer and what you saw as bad them swarming showed how strong your hives were that they prolifically kept swarming. Positives in negatives my man.
Thank you so much for creating content like this, it truly helps me focus on being productive and calm, im fascinated by nature and ways of taking and giving back to it and your content is perfect for me
Alex, sounds like you could do a world tour of beekeeping?! The beautiful environments and landscapes you would see would be fascinating, as well as the people involved..
Love your videos Alex! I’m 24 from Scotland and I’m about to covert my Caddy so I can go camping! Your European vlogs really inspired me to go for it 🚐 Keep up the great content and thanks for sharing your journey 👍🏼
Your parents’ garden is lovely and your bees look great! Very nice of your dad to give up space(and bushes!) in the garden to support your bee venture😊. Not to mention turning the kitchen into a bee box building studio workshop!lol. Fun seeing where the apple came from…you with your “pet” bees and your dad with his “pet” orchids and tortoise.❤. Cheers!😊
One of the things I find really fascinating about beekeeping, is that you can see how things have progressed over the centuries, with people thinking things like, "It would be better to keep the honey cells separate from the brooding cells, I wonder how we can do that?" and now you see a queen excluder, where you know someone at some point figured this out, and other people started to do it too.
Been watching since the secret lake! I’ve not fished for years. But I have become a keen gardener. Now I’m onto bees! You have always had a wise head on young shoulders 🤙🏾🤙🏾 Can’t believe I’ve found your content after all these years and it’s on a completely different subject. 👍🏾👍🏾
Nice one, Alex. Nice to see you're extending your bee collection. You're becoming a pro 👌🐝🐝🐝 and it's always very interesting to watch. I can't wait for the next one keep up the amazing work, Alex, as always 🐝😁👍
out of all the videos ive watched from you, it seems that bee keeping is something you look super comfortable and confident in. and you aren't teaching people. you're taking us along your journey as a humble person. that is invaluable. glad i found this place.
@ Alex, I think it would be a really cool thing to document not only your stores and what you get from them, but also it would be cool to see how the hive affects the greenery around you. The garden, if you have any fruit trees and the area. They're pollinators so I'd be curious to see if you and your family notice any of those extra effects on your area. Maybe your neighbors would as well.
Hi Alex, Iam a beekeeper in Kenya, East africa. To make sure your beehive last long due to the changes in weather. You can build a roof on top of all the hives. A structure like your dads green house and all your hives are under that structure.
Hello mate, I'm across the pond in USA. During the Autumn, Its a great time to evaluate your equipment and assemble your frames or more hive boxes while supplies are available. The beekeeping supplies are an investment as I am getting into producing queen bees for resale (most people are requesting a starter hive).. I build my hive stands with treated pine timber to resist decay, not necessary to paint or apply other coatings.. My operation is stable with around 20 full hives and a dozen or more small Nucleus (NUC) hives for producing new queen bees and starter colonies.
Here in Australia. We are varroa free (for now) I think one of the last countries. When we had a breach they shut down the WHOLE honey bee industry. Hives were destroyed in the thousands, no hive movements could happen. We, Australia, are super lucky to be varroa free.
Hi Alex. I never thought I would sit watching almost 2 hours of beekeeping tips. I found it very interesting. Well done. My daughter(adult) keeps bugging me to start a hive and now I have more idea of what is involved.
Hi Alex!!, adding to the "social media connects people" it´s funny bc now people and beekeepers are going to recognize you from all around the world. Keep doing an amazing work. Saludos desde México.
I just found your channel today and watched all your beekeeping content only for you to post more! thank you for the good information and entertainment you bring to the subject. I wish you luck with homesteading!
