Quarantine Apiary visit becomes a race against the clock. 12/7/24

Hello Everyone,
Today's video isn't going to be a "How To" like usual as I accidentally did one of those last week.
I decided on the way home from work to visit my Quarantine Apiary as it had been more than a week since my last nosey at the hives there. This Apiary is predominantly used to house swarms that I pick up throughout the year. They're kept here until winter to ensure they don't have any diseases that can be passed to my other colonies.
As they are mainly swarms, I tend to only inspect them every 2 weeks, as they are more resistant to swarming again. Please note that I didn't say, "They won't swarm again."
As always, I was hoping that I could blitz through my inspections and have a nice, short, interesting video for you guys. I also had to pick up my daughter from nursery pretty sharpish, too. So, of course, the bees decided to throw some surprises my way.
One of the issues from today is due to me not inspecting the colonies weekly. So, this is a good example of dealing with the consequences of your actions.
I hope you enjoy the video. it was a little rushed near the end, sadly, but I think it has some good examples.
Hope you're safe and well,
Greg
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[@AndrewAHayes]

Do you find landowners, farmers are inviting to you siting colonies on their land?
I used to have quite a few on a strawberry farm and nursery, I got loads of garden plants and strawberries, and the business owner got his plants highly polinated and some honey and furniture polish.
Apart from my own large garden I only have other colonies on a friends land.
RE warped queen excluders, if you have some large enough metal plate, you can sandwich the excluder and heat it up with a blow torch and flatten it, you can even use a board and one metal plate, make sure you leave the metal on well past it cooling down or it will warp even worse than it was, I do a bit of CNC milling and so I have some tool plate and copper plate laying around, which is ideal for the job.

[@MystTreeHoney]

Thank you for your comment.
If I need more land to put bees on, I usually put a post up on my local community Facebook page. I usually end up getting quite a few people getting in touch, which means I can go around and appraise the sites before choosing. This means I can look at the space, security, and how much work would be required to get it ready for the bees. The cost for keeping the hives there is a big point, too. Some people just want to help the bees and don't want anything (I spoil these amazing people with honey whenever they want it). Some want monetary payment, which I draw up a contract for, so there's no misunderstandings.
Thank you for the tip. I bulk buy my queen excluders, and they don't really last longer than 4 years of heavy use, so after the 4 year mark, I give them away for free and buy brand new. Softening and flattening them makes sense for around 10 QE's, but I've got around 60 and very little time as it is, so I've decided to just get fresh ones.

[@dcsblessedbees]

You have a queen in your super, I hate it when that happens.😂Nice pattern at least, oh you got them good and riled up.

[@MystTreeHoney]

No idea how she got up there either... a problem for tomorrow's Greg to deal with as today was too rainy

[@aidan4158]

Bees definitely like to do something random and not follow what they should be doing.

[@MystTreeHoney]

To be fair, I may not have checked thoroughly for a queen cell. I think that all of this was completely my fault for not inspecting them every week.

[@chrishar110]

As a very experienced beekeper-scientist said, I wrote a lot of books that I explained the bees' behavior, the problem is that bees never read them and they still do what ever they want.

[@MystTreeHoney]

I love to say "bees don't read books"

[@P-lu9is]

Can I ask why you use so many queen excluders on a single hive please? Unless it’s a demaree I thought there was only a need for an excluder on top of the brood box so I’m genuinely interested.

[@MystTreeHoney]

Thank you for your question. I tend to leave queen excluders off until the end of July when I shake all of the bees into the bottom box. This means that until the last two-three weeks of the summer flow, the queen has no restrictions on where she can go, reducing the swarm response.
Sometimes, the bees can reach a "critical mass" and want to swarm even though they have loads of space. When this happens in a massive colony with multiple boxes and no queen excluders, it's exceptionally hard to find the queen to remove.
I put a queen excluder in between each box and wait for 3-5 days before my next inspection. It means that only the box with eggs has a queen in it as she is unable to venture elsewhere. It's easy enough to just remove that box, and then you've removed the queen.
I hope that makes sense?

[@chrishar110]

@@MystTreeHoney That could be very easy to do if you have same size boxes everywhere, brood boxes and honey supers. You just put the brood box, even if it is 1st, 2nd or even 3rd box at the bottom, put everything else on the top and wait till they cap the honey.

[@MystTreeHoney]

One of my biggest regrets is not just sticking to a single box size. If I could start again, I'd just get Brood boxes only.