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Thanks for your positive comments, it’s nice to know my video is of benefit. I’m afraid you are right about my beekeeping/car maintenance balance though.😩

Thanks for your comment, I'm glad you're enjoying my videos.

Thanks, will do!

Thanks Robert, let’s hope it’s inspired a few future beekeepers 🐝👍

Thanks Pete, that really means a lot to me and you’re right, I’ll definitely mention the relevance of the coloured dot next time. 👍😀

Thanks for that Anne, yes it was a really great couple of days. I thoroughly enjoyed taking part in proceedings.

Absolutely yes and I have done it that way with push on lug extenders and even just by putting a screw down the end of each lug to bridge the gap and it works but you get surplus comb build up underneath the extended lugs and it’s a bit long winded. Also I wanted to transfer the entire five frame nuc onto Langstroth frames without too much messing about and stressing of the bees by swapping frames in and out, so I thought I’d give this a go and it works well for me. It was cheap and easy to make and I will get a good few years use out of it. It also goes back into two separate Langstroth nucs with no messing too so I’m very happy with the result.

@@kimberesford2444 yes that’s good ! I want to do just the one transfer this spring so the screw idea is good !

Glad you enjoyed it. Thank you 🙏🏻

Hi John, I’m glad you found the video useful. It was exactly the same reason that induced me to do this…… flow hives that is. I had a few customers wanting bees for them and of course they need to be on Langstroth frames. As soon as the bees start to build up yo can do this. If you want to speed things up a bit by placing the queen on a National frame with some emerging capped brood into the Langstroth box by extending the frame tabs. I made some push on sleeves from a bit of thin folded steel or aluminium plate or by screwing a couple of 2 inch wood screws into the end of the frame tabs. Put a queen excluder on straight away to keep the queen upstairs. Don’t attempt this unless there are plenty of nurses bees to keep the brood warm or you could end up with chilled brood. Once the queen starts laying the Langstroth frames you can slowly move the extended National frame to the outside of the box an d remove it. Have a good season. Cheers Kim

@@kimberesford2444 Thanks for the reply, what I have been planning is on making a double brood box to Langstroth dimensions. Place 10 empty langstroth frames and foundation in this half, The other side I hope to pad out sides and floor with wood/ polystyerne to bring it to suit nation frames. Then place full national colony here when bee activity and weather improve. Place feeder on top and too many kgs of sugar later I would hope colony have expanded across and then do a split taking 5 to 6 of the langstroth frames out to new hive and then repeat process. Thanks mentioning temperature and cold brood. I was wondering myself on how much floor ventilation I should have and reckon a strip of veroa mesh approximately one third of the floor area should be adquate. As hive will not always be full. That's my theory, whether it will be successful or not only time will tell. Shall keep you posted as project progresses.

@@johnmurphy380 it sounds like an interesting project. I’ll be interested to hear how you get on..

Thank you for your kind comment. It’s nice to see things getting back to normal at last. I was back at The Old Poets’ Corner last night, once again able to perform my light hearted address to a packed house. A fantastic night it was too. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Thanks for watching the video, I’ve reviewed my commentary and I do accept your point. What I should have said here was “it’s full of propolis” not “rubbish’. The positive attributes of propolis are well documented and as such it is most definitely not rubbish. However in this context where I want to re-utilise a box that has housed a failed colony, I need to remove any potential transmittal of disease to the next inhabitants. This requires removal of all dirt, wax, mould etc. and my objective here was to return the poly box close to a sterile, ‘as new’ condition and so everything must go, including the propolis. Q: Does that make it rubbish in this context? A: In my mind at that point it obviously did but I thank you for pointing out my flippancy, I’ll reign it back in future 😁 Many thanks Kim

Hi Russ. Glad you enjoyed the video (it was my first attempt early last year so perhaps a little basic but hopefully my subsequent offerings have improved). In answer to your question, I use open mesh floors. I find that for me, insulating above the brood nest with ventilation below works really well. I do tend to leave the varroa board in over winter to prevent too much of an up draught in case we get high winds but there are still enough gaps to allow enough airflow. Condensation can be a killer but insulating above the brood nest means that the side walls (which aren’t insulated) attract the condensate. It hangs there until the mass of water breaks the surface tension and it runs away leaving the brood safe and dry, it also provides a source for water that the nurse bees need to rehydrate stored honey to convert into brood food…….. win win 👍 As with everything in beekeeping there are many varied opinions on this. Some will tell you not to insulate but put matchsticks under the crown board to ventilate. You really have to find out what works for you by trial and error and common sense, but if you ask me………… throw away the matchsticks!🤯 Good luck for overwintering an here’s to a good spring build up in 2022 🐝🐝🐝👍

@@kimberesford2444 I used 100mm kingspan as I get off cuts free inside a swienty super. Also mesh floor but the floor tray is a good fit which didn’t allow much flow, so I just put in a half floor board , leaving around 7” open. In your opinion is this too much open area ? It’s my first winter so still unsure to fully remove or use half floor trays.

@@russdean6598 it’s difficult to say without knowing how harsh the winters are where you are. We’re in North Derbyshire in the UK and winters are usually pretty mild here but I still reduce gaps to a couple of inches. It’s not usually the cold that directly causes problems, the bees can regulate the temperature of the cluster by closing up or opening up to control air flow. They vibrate their wing muscles to generate heat. This burns calories and so an uninsulated or over ventilated cold hive will see the bees consume their stores more rapidly which in turn increases the likelihood of starvation. Getting the balance right between insulation, ventilation and stores levels is key to successful overwintering. With my insulated feeder/crown boards fondant or sugar blocks can be safely topped up if the bees use up their stores before the spring forage is available. As I said before, you need to find what works for you in your area. Take your best guess regarding insulation, ventilation and feed well going into winter. You’ll know if you’ve got it right when you don’t need to top up with fondant in February/March. If you’re pro-treatment, make sure your mite levels are knocked right down too as this is the other main reason for winter losses. Good luck 👍🐝🐝

Hi there, apologies for taking so long to respond to your comment. I'm not quite sure how I missed the notification as normally I take great care to reply to everyone. Thanks for the sub by the way. I don't have dimensions for the conversion to hand. It was a prototype and I just subtracted the width of the national frames from the langstroth ones. I divided this distance by two and made each end cheek to that size. I hope that helps. I'll try and find time to measure up and make another video of the construction now the winter months are approaching.

Thanks for subscribing 👍

Hi David, I totally agree. Supers are needed on the first and last hive and will be on by the weekend.

Thanks Rickey, this is a separate apiary that I’ve set up with five other beekeepers with a view to training people to selectively raise their own queens and improve the quality of bees in the area generally. It’s early days yet and the breeding program won’t really get going until next year. This year we’ll be concentrating on establishing a sustainable group of colonies to raise our queens from. How are you doing over there. It looks like you’re doin a great job with your long hives, it’s really interesting stuff.

Hi David, we’re at the Gate, Swanwick on Saturday 26th June at 5pm, Crossroads Tavern, Alfreton on Sunday 27th at 5:30pm and the Beehive, Peasehill Ripley on Saturday 3rd of July at 6pm. Look forward to seeing you. If you’re on social media, all our future gigs will be posted on our Facebook page facebook.com/rockandbluescrossroads

Hi Rickey, nice to hear from you. Yes it’s been a really busy month for me but the weather has been awful over here. Lots of rain and the odd days when it didn’t rain it was too cold to go into the bees so I’ve literally been making up nucs in between rain showers so I could get the queens into a colony for mating. I just hope that we get some decent weather soon so they can get out on mating flights. I hope things are good for you, your family a your bees too 🐝

Thanks Andy, glad you like it 👍🎸

We can’t wait to get back out there. The itch needs scratching 🎸

Glad you like it Archa 🎸

I hope so too Rickey. All the best to you and your family.

Thank you Rickey, you’re very kind 👍🐝

Hi Rickey, yes let’s hope it warms up again soon. I watched your video earlier, I’m impressed with the company you keep. Kamon Reynolds is a great beekeeper and someone I follow with great respect.

@@kimberesford2444 Just got lucky my wife let me go because it was her b-day while we was there. Kamon is a great guy and his wife Lura really keeps him straight and she is killer with the computers. He was very kind to let me bring my hives. Great guy to watch on youtube.

@@horizontalbees3480 I totally agree, Kamon is an excellent beekeeper and his videos are very informative but also his personality is quite endearing. Something for us both to aspire towards methinks?

Thanks Bill, your comment is much appreciated. 👍

Hi Nigel, glad you like the video. I’m still in my infancy stage with all this presenting malarkey but hopefully improving. With regard to the bee import ban I can see both sides; yes it’s going to cause some pain to some UK importers, yes it will cause a shortage of bees in the approaching season, yes that will cause prices to rise in the short term. On the other hand it creates a great opportunity for UK bee breeders to ramp up their production of queens and overwintered nucs to fill the gap. It also reduces the contamination of the AMM gene pool and gives us the chance to start improving our native stock without constantly battling with the aggression that comes from Melifera/Ligustica 2nd and 3rd generation crosses. We managed quite well before there were substantial imports and we can do it again. Apologies For the rant. But I’m all in favour of creating opportunities in the UK even if there’s a little pain to be endured in the short term. And you’re more than welcome to visit us when Covid is conquered. Thanks for your interest. We’re a very small operation born out of my retirement from running several businesses alongside being a hobby beekeeper for several years. I couldn’t just switch off when I retired so I turned my hobby into a business to keep me sane. I promised my wife we’d keep it smalltime though so we could do more holidaying but that’s not working out at the moment with Covid. The current import ban just makes me want to get back on the horse take the opportunity head on. But I keep telling myself noooo! Thanks for your comment . All the best Kim

Hi Rickey, Good to hear from you, I hope you’re doing ok. Yes I consider myself quite fortunate so far. That said, we still have the two worst months to go over here with February and March. The bees can easily starve as they raise more brood and consume more stores, particularly with the inclement weather that we can get here in the UK which limits the availability of natural forage. I’m keeping my eye on them though as you can see here th-cam.com/video/iEzJUbNbV-o/w-d-xo.html Fingers crossed for no more dead queens though. Just got to suck it and see until first inspection. 🤞🏻🐝🐝 Happy beekeeping

Hi Rickey, I see you’ve already watched this one. Sorry for sending you the link again. I’m pretty happy with how most of them are shaping up. If the weather is kind to us we should be in a good position to raise plenty of UK queens this year. How are yours doing?

@@kimberesford2444 What breed of bees are you using in your hives? So far all of our hives are doing really well. On Jan 27th we had a day at 65 degrees and all of our hives was out finding some pollen yellow somewhere. I started a deep inspection but chose not to!! We have 10 inches of snow here from last night and it is still snowing.

@@horizontalbees3480 glad to hear there doing well, it sounds like you had a really mild day on the 27th. The highest temperature we’ve had over the last couple of weeks here is about 9deg C so 48F generally though it’s around 3 to 5 C at the moment. We have snow today too. My bees are all descendants of a couple of Buckfast queens that I bought a few years back, but I raise all my own queens now and select breeder queens from my best three or four colonies each year. I’m trying to follow the teachings of the great Michael Palmer from Vermont and highly acclaimed Richard Noel from Brittany. Do you know these guys? They really know their stuff and well worth a watch 👌

@@kimberesford2444 You guys can keep the very cold cold..lol.. The Buckfast line of bees are very poplar and I need to do some more research on them. Both Richard and Michael are very great bee keepers and have a ton of information and videos. I watch many beekeepers and find that a lot of information is the same, so I search for people that are trying new ways of beekeeping. Not that there ideas are right all the time but there willing to try a new way which pushes beekeeping forward. Your videos are great and I believe you may have found a better way of keeping honey bees. The new/small beekeeper can make a big difference for the honey bees by taking chances. Most of all thank you for sharing your bee journey my bee friend!!

@@horizontalbees3480 thanks for your very kind words. I’ll do my best to keep the videos coming. I see that you’re getting quite a portfolio of videos together too with lots of views. It looks like your daughter has taken to the camera well. Maybe she has a career in the making. 🎥 And I’m very happy to bee friends with you too sir. 🐝🐝 All the very best Kim

Thank you so much Archa, you’re doing my confidence a world of good 👍

Thanks Charlie, you are too kind 👍🐝

Haha I too am a just man of England but I’m certain there is a Scotsman in there somewhere, desperate to get out. Thanks for watching and for the comment 👍

Archa, I’m not sure if ‘Wow’ is a good thing or a bad thing? But thanks for watching and commenting anyway. At my early stage as a TH-camr I’m taking all responses as a positive. Many thanks Kim

@@kimberesford2444 wow because you’re the first person to show this on TH-cam. It’s a good educational video. Keep it up.

@@archagoodwill271 you are very kind, thank you. I certainly intend to continue if there is an appetite for them.

Thank you so much!!

I’m glad you found it useful Rickey. This was my very first attempt at producing a video and it was only uploaded last night so your reaction is very encouraging for me. Can I interest you in subscribing to my channel? You would be my first subscriber 🏁. I will be trying to put a video out every week with more useful tips and video number two is already available, it’s about Treating Varroa with Oxalic acid. All the best 👍🐝🐝🐝

@@kimberesford2444 Sure I don't mind to subscribe and I'm very new to TH-cam also.