Lots and lots of swarm cells visible in this video (e.g. 5m40, 7m30), which the owner appeared to just not see. Bit suspicious that there has been no update since. Has this hive really not swarmed since this inspection?
Hi Matthew, they are old play cups rather than charged queen cells. They are very common in big colonies. None of the hives we checkerboarded have swarmed despite an amazing spring. We will need to extract the spring honey imminently as the hives are getting far too tall. We would look to do more regular updates but it takes time to shoot and edit. We will update in a couple of weeks when we look to remove the spring honey so you can see the size of the brood nest and numbers of super that have been filled prior to the main flow.
Hi, yes John has been having over 140lbs from checkerboarded hives so that was a good guess. I think this year will be higher as the weather has been perfect all year
We had 5 feet of snow in March and 2 feet in January, all the trees and flowers are trying to bloom again. My Rhododendron are about to bloom again. I don’t harvest the honey yet but I’ll have lots of honey for patties and water for feeding. Cheers
@@TheSoilandGreen last year was awful in the UK for us until June, so we only had the last few weeks in July for a honey crop. This year we have had a spring crop and it is looking like a huge summer crop. But from talking to the association it has correlated with a record number of swarms. This is why we are so impressed with Walt Wright’s checkerboarding method. No swarms, just challenges over how high the hives can go…
Sorry, I missed this comment. The method was developed in the US where winters are far colder. We do the manipulation in the UK in December to end Jan and despite all the comments about the increase in space we add to the colonies and the detrimental impact over the ability of the colony to control thermoregulation it just doesn't seem to affect the bees that much in reality. We need two empty supers on the top at all times as a checkerboarded colony progresses very quickly and we frequently see two supers being filled with brood/honey in a week or so. The brood nest so far this spring has typically comprised of two deep brood bodies and three shallow brood bodies so you can imagine how much brood is hatching each day the present.
@@lowinterventionbeekeeping5408 I understand what you're saying however, doesn't that make your job really hard checking five or six boxes for your queen, or checking five or six boxes every few weeks for Queen cells cuz you don't want your ease to fly off. I'm not arguing with you just curious. I use two deeps and I admit bees would probably be bigger is had a shallow as well. But 5 seam way to much for a queen to run around laying. Just my opinion
@@td4190 Hi, I agree, inspections on those colonies at their peak would take ages and probably cause more harm than good. If you look at the playlist for the channel there is a presentation by John White explaining the method. We only did inspections for UA-cam to show how a colony expands. But apart from a disease inspection in spring, we don’t do any brood inspections during the season. We just manage nectar by adding space to make sure we are always two supers ahead of the bees. They supersede frequently and so inspections can break supersedure cells that are stitched between frames/boxes. We only check into the brood area if they stop expanding but this is only ever down to a queen issue or disease. Since starting that I spend a lot less time checking the bees and I get more honey. But it is not a method for the faint hearted, as these are very big colonies to manage.
Hi Td. It would be worth watching this video (ua-cam.com/video/TjjwGmT_dcY/v-deo.html). This explains the checkerboarding methodology as for sure the comments you made are quite normal when people first see a checkerboarded hive with no restriction on the brood area. The checkerboarding approach produces an unrestricted, and therefore much larger brood nest than those colonies with queen excluders so thermoregulation of the colony is far easier and there is a significantly increased size of the field bee population to continually increase the brood size to the limit of what the queen can lay, and therefore honey production throughout the season. Regarding the drones, some colonies do appear to produce a lot more drones than others; what you see in the video is probably unusual for the average beekeeper but not that uncommon in checkerboarded hives.
very good.
Lots and lots of swarm cells visible in this video (e.g. 5m40, 7m30), which the owner appeared to just not see. Bit suspicious that there has been no update since. Has this hive really not swarmed since this inspection?
Hi Matthew, they are old play cups rather than charged queen cells. They are very common in big colonies. None of the hives we checkerboarded have swarmed despite an amazing spring. We will need to extract the spring honey imminently as the hives are getting far too tall. We would look to do more regular updates but it takes time to shoot and edit. We will update in a couple of weeks when we look to remove the spring honey so you can see the size of the brood nest and numbers of super that have been filled prior to the main flow.
That first shot is a huge hive, could have 150lbs of honey in there.
Hi, yes John has been having over 140lbs from checkerboarded hives so that was a good guess. I think this year will be higher as the weather has been perfect all year
We had 5 feet of snow in March and 2 feet in January, all the trees and flowers are trying to bloom again. My Rhododendron are about to bloom again. I don’t harvest the honey yet but I’ll have lots of honey for patties and water for feeding. Cheers
@@TheSoilandGreen last year was awful in the UK for us until June, so we only had the last few weeks in July for a honey crop. This year we have had a spring crop and it is looking like a huge summer crop. But from talking to the association it has correlated with a record number of swarms. This is why we are so impressed with Walt Wright’s checkerboarding method. No swarms, just challenges over how high the hives can go…
It's almost the end of April why do you have five supers on your hive. It's a lot of room for the heat to go up where no bees are at probably
Sorry, I missed this comment. The method was developed in the US where winters are far colder. We do the manipulation in the UK in December to end Jan and despite all the comments about the increase in space we add to the colonies and the detrimental impact over the ability of the colony to control thermoregulation it just doesn't seem to affect the bees that much in reality. We need two empty supers on the top at all times as a checkerboarded colony progresses very quickly and we frequently see two supers being filled with brood/honey in a week or so. The brood nest so far this spring has typically comprised of two deep brood bodies and three shallow brood bodies so you can imagine how much brood is hatching each day the present.
@@lowinterventionbeekeeping5408 I understand what you're saying however, doesn't that make your job really hard checking five or six boxes for your queen, or checking five or six boxes every few weeks for Queen cells cuz you don't want your ease to fly off. I'm not arguing with you just curious. I use two deeps and I admit bees would probably be bigger is had a shallow as well. But 5 seam way to much for a queen to run around laying. Just my opinion
@@td4190 Hi, I agree, inspections on those colonies at their peak would take ages and probably cause more harm than good. If you look at the playlist for the channel there is a presentation by John White explaining the method. We only did inspections for UA-cam to show how a colony expands. But apart from a disease inspection in spring, we don’t do any brood inspections during the season. We just manage nectar by adding space to make sure we are always two supers ahead of the bees. They supersede frequently and so inspections can break supersedure cells that are stitched between frames/boxes. We only check into the brood area if they stop expanding but this is only ever down to a queen issue or disease. Since starting that I spend a lot less time checking the bees and I get more honey. But it is not a method for the faint hearted, as these are very big colonies to manage.
That's a crap load of drones. Why have your bees laying in 5 boxes. Pretty sure two suppers would do same kind of job
Hi Td. It would be worth watching this video (ua-cam.com/video/TjjwGmT_dcY/v-deo.html). This explains the checkerboarding methodology as for sure the comments you made are quite normal when people first see a checkerboarded hive with no restriction on the brood area. The checkerboarding approach produces an unrestricted, and therefore much larger brood nest than those colonies with queen excluders so thermoregulation of the colony is far easier and there is a significantly increased size of the field bee population to continually increase the brood size to the limit of what the queen can lay, and therefore honey production throughout the season. Regarding the drones, some colonies do appear to produce a lot more drones than others; what you see in the video is probably unusual for the average beekeeper but not that uncommon in checkerboarded hives.