Macro brood inspection with Cedar & Mira

Today Mira joined Cedar during a hive inspection to show off some beautiful, close-up footage of the bees in action. As well as answering beekeeping questions on subjects such as wax cappings and fixing cross-comb, the brother and sister team delved into some fascinating aspects of bee behaviour like nasonov fanningand the waggle dance.

 

 

Video Transcription

Hive inspection

Cedar

Look at that, you can see these bees are ready for the super to go on, which is fantastic. They're looking for more room. They're building comb underneath the inner cover here, and we've just cracked that lid off now. And you can see the way all the worker bees are starting to clean up already. They're mopping up the honey with their tongues.

If you've got questions, put them in the comments below and we'll get to answering those. My sister Mira is going to do some nice macro footage for you as well, so tune in and enjoy that. She does all of our amazing macro andslow-motion bee footage. You can see it atTheBeekeeper.org and also on all of our channels. Look at the tongue, the way it's licking up the honey. Isn't it incredible? It's such an amazing view to get right in what they're doing.

Mira

Yeah, the bee tongue is really cool. It's actually got two functions. When they're doing this, they're probably slurping up the honey with the outer tube. And when they're sucking up watery nectar, they're lapping up with the inner tube. It's like kind of a straw inside a straw. When it's lapping the nectar deep from within the flowers.

Cedar 

And it's covered in all these kind of branched hairs, that give it the mop effect as well. So what I'm going to do is pull out a frame so we can get right in and have a look at what's going on in this hive. At first view, it's looking good. We've inspected this hive a few times recently and we've been watching it build up. So it's great to see that there's this level of bee numbers, all the comb is now drawn out and that means it's ready for a super, even though we're in our winter here.

Mira 

Yeah. It's almost like the spring season has started in our area, even though it’s the middle of winter.

Cedar 

So what I'm doing is choosing a frame that's going to be easiest to get out. I applied a little bit of smoke to clear the bees out of the way. And first of all, I'm just going to lever it sideways a bit just to loosen it up so it's an easier lift. And then I've got this J here, right under the end bar between the wall of the hive and the frame. And then up we go, nice and easy like this, same at the other end. It's a case of just slowly, slowly. The first one's the hardest to get out and the rest can start moving sideways after that. 

So that's on the edge, there’s quite a bit of nectar being stored. So it's good to see some coming in there. You can see some glistening nectar here. It's typical to have honey on the outer edges of the hive and the pollen and brood stores as you go further in. We've got a few hive beetles as well, something to watch out for when the colony is small. You can see them crawling along here, that one just dived back into the hive, lucky escape there for that hive beetle. 

I'm going to have a quick look for the queen and I'm going to put this frame on the frame rest. If you haven't realised already, you can use the shelf brackets for a nice frame rest on the edge of your hive. You can fit a couple of frames on the edge here, which is a nice way to do it while you're inspecting your hive. Coming across sideways again, gently, gently. The movements inside a hive should be slow and gentle unless you're trying to get bees off something. 

So I've got some more honey there. Look at that. It's good to see they're bringing in a bit of nectar. It becomes quite clear that they're bringing in nectar once you get in there and have a look. They're starting to cap it up here. This is what it looks like when they're closing the cappings in, they're saying the moisture content is low enough for that honey to keep. So they'll preserve it by putting a wax cap, just like humans do with their, their jam jars in classic old preserving styles. The bees do that to store that honey for when they need it later. Lucky for us, they store more than they need and we can share some too.

We're going to put that one aside as well and pull out the next one. We might hopefully see some brood on this next one. This frame's quite heavy, which tells me it has quite a lot of honey in it, which there is, and there's a small patch of brood. I can see very young larvae and bee eggs. So I'm happy now, knowing that there's a laying queen somewhere in this hive. 

Mira

Here you can see pollen and bee bread. It's beautiful down here.

Cedar

Thebee bread stores. If you can look down in that zone there, look at that and we’ve got oranges, yellows, it's a beautiful thing. The bees bring in the pollen on their hind legs. They scrape that off and they'll push it down the cells with their heads, top it with a bit of honey. That will ferment like a good sourdough and that makes it more easily digestible. Having a look on the other side, a lot of eggs down cells, that's a good thing.  

Look at that, that's what we want to see. A lot of brood here. All of these cells, thousands of the larvae will be emerging as young bees into the hive in no time. They’ve been about 11 days in that capped cocoon phase. So in the next 11 days, all of those will emerge, become new bees in this hive. So it really is time for a super, when you see healthy bee numbers like this and the bees are starting to store honey, even on top of the frames because they're running out of space here in this small box. The other side is the same, lots of beautiful brood in this whole area here. 

So we're looking for the queen just for fun. We know she’s here because we've seen eggs down the bottom of cells, lots of worker bee larvae, and also capped brood. So we're happy she's here somewhere and we're looking for her motions. She tends to strut around compared to the other bees, she's got bigger legs, she's got a shiny backplate and longer abdomen. And I'm not seeing her on this frame. That's a beautiful example of a naturally drawn brood frame.  

So I'm noticing the bees’ note just change a little bit and that's one thing to be aware of. As you get going as a beekeeper, you'll be tuning in with the bees, knowing when they’re sounding a bit agitated. Might be a good time to get the smoker going again and add a bit more smoke to the hive. Give it some good generous puffs to get it going. There we go, that's much better. And what we might do is just add that right to the entrance again, just to give them a calm.

Mira 

Yeah. You really do notice that tone shift, just the pitch goes a bit higher. 

Cedar 

Yeah. So if I get right down and personal with the hive, you can probably hear, hear that note. 

So sometimes you can use the smoke just to remove some of the bees from the end bars, just to make it less likely that you’ll squash a bee as you go to remove the frames.

 

Beekeeping Questions

How often would you inspect the brood box before you added your super?

Cedar 

In our area, it's a little bit of an as-needed scenario. In some places in the world, there are more demanding things like varroa mites that you might be managing. But here we're keeping a good eye on it, making sure it's building up and just checking when it's ready for the super to go on. Now, depending on your strategies you might get in there a couple of times before you add your super on top or a lot more, if you're enjoying learning and watching. If you're using naturally drawn comb like this with just the comb guides that we supply, then you might need to get in there and make sure they're building straight. And that's probably one of the main reasons you'll be getting in there and inspecting and enjoying watching them build, is just to push them back online if they start going a bit wonky. Once they’ve got some straight combs they'll follow suit after that.

 

After harvesting the honey, can you scrape off the wax capping to make beeswax?

Cedar

You can if you're harvesting honeycomb. If you're harvesting honeycomb from the edges of the brood box, or you've got another box on top, you could use that for creating beeswax, making candles, things like that. Or you might collect the brood comb. As far as the Flow Frame goes, it's best just to leave them in there and leave all that capping because they will recycle it and use that to repair the comb again. 

 

My hive has stopped capping the honey, and I’ve been told that it’s because the humidity is too high. Is there anything I can do about this?

Cedar 

I haven't heard of that as being an issue. The bees, even in high humidity, can get the water content low enough to cap it. You can get lazy bees who will cap it when the moisture contents a bit too high and you can get some fermentation actually in the frames, but usually not. So probably it will just take the bees a little longer and they'll de-water it getting that moisture content down around that 18% range. And then they will put their capping on.

 

Queenspotting

Cedar 

So we're looking at some older brood frame here, see how it's darker? When it's dark like that, it means it's been used multiple times and the silk has built up over time and the footprints and it gets darker and darker.

Look at the pollen. So that bee has raced off to the flowers, used a static charge, which is opposite to the flower, to attract the pollen onto all the hairs of its body. And it's scraped it back into what's called the pollen baskets spur on its hind legs. And it can actually carry almost its body weight in nectar and pollen load back to the hive. Bees are extraordinary fliers, to be able to do that. And they might be flying kilometres back to the hive. So it's a really solid effort by the bees to bring in all of the nectar and pollen.

Stone

There’s the queen. I see her.

Cedar 

Well done, Stone wins, behind the camera! You see how her motions are bigger strapping motions. She walks quite differently. Her wings come just over halfway down her body as she is hiding amongst the bees. She’s getting a bit camera-shy this morning. Nice golden queen who has been laying lots of eggs in this hive to really increase the numbers, responding to the nectar flow. And that way the bees can really harness when a flow comes by making sure they've got lots of bees ready to forage. Here we go. Running around here, just in front of my finger.

 

What stops the queen from flying away? 

Well, nothing really, she does sometimes. Generally in egg-laying mode, she doesn't like to fly so much because she's quite heavy, she's a bit too heavy to fly. But she will actually fly away. See her shiny backplate, it is a little bit hard to get a view of her, she’s in amongst so many bees. Look at the way she moves is quite different to the other bees. She's quick, she's on the move.

Mira

Yeah, they don't usually fly, but I had a queen fly out of a colony that was laying. She just ran up to the top of the frame and took off and flew into the air and didn't come back. Runaway queen. But they don't usually.

 

What lens are you using?

Mira

This one here is a Moment lens. It's a macro prime lens and it just twists onto the case. So the case is one of the Moment cases, it needs it to mount the lens. I also have a Ztylus lens as well, but I use it more for on-the-go stuff. If I'm shooting, I'll use this one, but this one is called the Revolver lens kit. And you can flip out this little macro lens. It's not as good quality as this one, but it's great for on-the-go in your pocket, never miss a bee.

Cedar

And you can really get great content without the lens at all. It's more about getting fascinated about what's going on and really chasing it. I think we've been filming bees since the iPhone four and getting good results. 

Stone

Could you use a magnifying glass?

Mira

You could. You could also use clip-on lenses, but you can also just use straight iPhone. A lot of the settings I use are slow motion and I lock focus at the shortest distance. That and good lighting, good, bright, sunny lighting. You know, you're working with a very minimal lens, so you need good lighting.

Grumpy bees

Cedar 

They're just getting a bit agitated there. We might just put that down, put the queen back into the hive. If you find your bees ever get agitated and you're not wearing much protection, like my sister here, it’s a good idea just to walk back and walk away.

Mira

So now they've settled. I just felt they were buzzing at my veil and getting angry and I walked back and they've left me alone. So they're trying to warn you. They don't actually want to sting you, because they die usually. They generally, unless it's at a very aggressive hive, they will buzz at you loudly first. So don't swat because that will just make them more angry. Just calmly walk backwards away from the bees and usually you won't get stung.

Cedar 

A good time to get your smoky going again, add a little bit more smoke, wait a little bit of time, let them calm. And also take note that their flight path is sort of through here because we've got this foliage in front.

Mira 

Standing in their flight path will eventually upset them too. They're sometimes very patient and they wait behind you to come home. But sometimes they get a little antsy about it.

 

I put a super on recently and now it looks like the colony is trying to make a new queen. Would that be possible? (Western Australia)

Cedar 

Okay, you put the super on. And you've gotten in there and had a look in the brood box again, and you can see some queen cells. Queen cells look a bit like a peanut-shaped cell that hangs down off the frame. It’s unusual this time of year for them to be producing queen cells, it would be more in spring. But they could be doing it as an emergency if they've actually lost their queen. So it might be a good idea to get back in there in two or three weeks time, even though it's winter here and just check that they still are queenright. And they're going to have enough bees to keep them going.

 

Is it difficult to get the bees to start working on the Flow Frames?

Sometimes we get that feedback. I find that if you put it on a busy hive when there's a good nectar flow, they just get in there and start working it. And it's really quite quick. However, if you've got a colony, it's a bit weak, a bit slow, or you've got not enough flowers around, it will be slow for them to get going, especially that first time on the Flow Frames. If you find that's the case and you're getting impatient, you can speed it up by scraping off some of the burr comb off the top of the frames and just mash it into the Flow Frame surface, you won't break it. Do it in the window and you can enjoy watching them recycle that wax start working in that area on the Flow Frames.

 

How many times can you harvest honey from the Flow Hive in a year?

Cedar 

So it really depends on the nectar availability, how many flowers are producing nectar in your area and how strong your colony is. So when those two things align, it can get really exciting. You can harvest all your frames, get 50 jars of honey from your hive. And then a couple of weeks later, it's full again. And that gets really exciting when it's like that. However, that'd be more normal in this area to harvest all of your frames a couple of times a year, which would be about a typical a hundred or so of those hexagon jars that you see us harvesting into.

Drinking bee

Mira

We’re watching a honeybee drink some honey from my finger here. We can say that you can actually see the proboscis there, you can see the little furry tip that she's shooting out beyond.

Cedar 

Getting some more footage of amazing macro images of what the bees get up to. There’s so much learning. Every time you look in a hive, there's something new you find. And that's what it's all about. It's a beautiful and rewarding passion because the learning never stops. It's amazing to be able to just continue learning about bees and about everything they do in the hive. And also coupled with the importance of not only the European honeybee, but all of the other pollinating insects that are the unsung heroes of our world. They’re so vital to pollination and keeping the whole organic system going.

 

Can the hexagons of comb on the brood frames be different sizes?

Absolutely. So basically bees generally use around a 5mm cell, 5.3 mm is the foundation sheets that beekeepers give them. In the wild, they tend to make cells that are slightly smaller than that. And the concept was you give them a little bit bigger cells, you get bigger bees, you get more foraging. And then when you come up to making honey stores, they go for a little bit bigger, more like 6mm cells. So if you see these cells on top here, they're quite a lot bigger than the brood cells. So having looked at that, you've got about 6mm cells, very similar to the Flow Frame. That's why we made the cells bigger. We wanted the Flow Frames to be used for honey storage and not brood. So also the depth is deeper for honey storage than for brood. Another reason why our Flow Frames a bit of a deeper cell than the typical brood frame size. They also use a larger size for their drones going upwards from 6mm to 6.5mm or so for drone cells, the male bees.

 

How do you know when to add a super to the hive?

So the best time to put the super on is when you've got a lot of bees like this in the hive, and it's starting to run out of space. That will really increase how quickly you get some honey stores in your Flow Frames or any other types of honey super that you're putting on. You really want to make sure you've got lots of bees and they’ve finished drawing out all of the frames. Now, if you’re going into a long cold winter, you wouldn't go and put a super on. Here, we're in the subtropics and we're expecting some good honey flows during the wintertime. So we will go ahead and put a super on this hive.

How do you fix it if the bees are not building straight combs on the brood frames?

If you've got an issue with the comb going sideways, cross comb it's called, where it's going from one frame to the other, it's going really wonky and you need to fix that. What you can do is, if it's just honey came on the edge, you can just harvest that and give them another go. Just simply by chopping out that those sections of comb and putting the frames back in again. Scrape away the patterning of the wonky bit and let them have another go at drawing straight off the comb guide. If you're using naturally drawn comb, like we are here, you find that there's brood on sections and you need to save that. Then cut out the sections, use some rubber bands around the comb like this, and that will hold temporarily that piece of brood comb in the right spot and the bees will connect it around to the surrounds again.

So that's the fix up if they've gone sideways, it's a stitch in time saves nine. When it comes to a naturally drawn comb, if you get in there early and they start to go wonky, you can just push them straight again with your tool. And then that saves having to do that process of tidying them up later.

 

What should you do if you put the comb guides in the bottom slot instead of the top? Should I remove them and just put them in the top, or have them in both slots?

Well, top and bottom will be fine. And that's probably the easiest thing to do if you've glued them in place into the bottom. Just find some wood that's the appropriate thickness, you can even use lollipop sticks and glue them into that top slot. And the bees will then draw from the top and still connect to the bottom as normal.

 

Do I need to replace or rotate the brood frames? 

It is a good idea to rotate out the brood frames when they get really old and dark. You can shift those old dark ones to the edge of the hive wait until there's no more brood in them. And then you can simply just cut out the comb when it's honey, enjoy eating that and give the frame back to the hive. If you're using naturally drawn comb, you can do it all in the field without having to take it back to the workshop. You simply shake the bees off the comb that's got honey and old dark comb, cut it out onto a tray. Take that away and put the comb back in again.

 

What should you do if you find queen cells in the brood box?

So queen cells are a normal thing. The bees often raise emergency queen cells, or perhaps they're gearing up to swarm. Now in the springtime, it's good to do what's called swamp management. So it's not ideal if your hive divides in half and half your bees take off because you really lose a lot of productivity. And if you're in an urban area, that swarm might annoy your neighbours. So it's better to get ahead of the curve. And as you see your bees building up in the springtime, get in there and do some swarm prevention. The way I like to do that is simply by taking splits. Get in there if they've got queen cells already put them into the new split and that'll give your new split a flying start. But some people who don't want to take a split will get in there and actually tear off the queen cells before they've got an emerging queen in them and that will also limit it.

And one of the best things to do is to give your hive some fresh new area to lay those eggs in the brood nest in the springtime. And to do that, you can do what we were talking about earlier, cut away some of the comb that honey away from the edge, move those frames in towards the centre. And you'll find they'll draw some nice fresh comb. And that will limit one of the swarming triggers, which is enough room for the queen to lay eggs. 

Another thing to do is harvest honey, make sure they're busy and that will also help limit your hive from swarming. If you don't know what you're doing, just leave the queen cells there, the bees will know what they're doing. And there's a risk in just getting that in there and hacking off queen cells because you might find that your hive ends up queenless.

Nasonov fanning

Mira 

Cedar, we’ve just got a bee with its nasonov fan out. Do you want to talk a bit about that?

Cedar 

So when the tail is lifted in the air like this, it's just super cool. Look at that macro footage there. Isn't it amazing? It's exposing its nasonov gland and it's fanning. And why it's doing that is to put out a scent to say “here's home.” So we've got the hive apart, everything is a bit disturbed. And this bee has decided it's going to help the colony by fanning the scent out for the other bees to find home.

Mira 

And they can fan to cool the hive, but they don't have that little, you see the little gland there, she’s just got the tip of the abdomen tilted down. And this little gland is exposed, which fans that pheromone into the air.

Waggle dance

Cedar 

The communication in the hive is really interesting. So there are always things you're learning and watching and wondering what's going on in the hive. But the bees are able to communicate. I can see a littlewaggle dance going on. When you see them waggling their tail, what they're doing is giving the bees some information. And if they're doing a circular or figure of eight dance, how long their waggle is how away the nectar or pollen source is. So if they waggle for a second, that is about one kilometre distance. So you can actually learn to decode the waggle dance and learn by watching the bees about which direction they're going and how far it is to get to the forage. 

So these insects have developed a whole language, which is the same language here as the European honeybee is in Europe. So they all speak a language they can understand, and they're able to somehow communicate deep within a dark hive that’s totally packed with bees, whereabouts of flowers and how far to go. It's absolutely extraordinary that they're able to do that simply through dance.

Pollen

Mira 

Here's a bunch of returning foragers with colours like orange and some light yellow. And there's actually quite a few on the entrance because we've created a little bit of a roadblock. You can see there's a bunch of 10 bees with yellow and orange pollen on their legs.

Cedar 

The bees are bringing in pollen, that's a good thing. They need almost a frame of honey and a frame of pollen to raise a frame of brood. So you do need that abundance of nectar and pollen for your hive to build up and then store more honey, beyond that in your honey super or Flow Frames. 

There's yellow and there's orange pollen pants. Look at that, beautiful. Now that bee's got a torn wing, she's getting towards the end of her life. She's flown probably hundreds of kilometres already and her wings are tatted. And soon after she's done with the pollen collecting, she’ll be on to water collection, which is the last job of a forager bee’s short life. And that's why you'll find bees down by the water side with tattered wings looking like they're dying. That's because they are there at the end of their life. Beautiful. Isn't that amazing?

 

When you see your bees bringing in lots of pollen, can you assume that they're also bringing in a lot of nectar? Can they collect pollen during a nectar dearth?

Cedar 

So the answer is no, sometimes you find they don't have enough pollen and other times you find that don't have enough nectar. So it really depends on what's available in your area as to what the bees are able to bring in. But some species of plants will only provide pollen, others will only provide nectar.

Mira 

And when you watch the entrance of your hive, you can see them bringing in the pollen. But if you learn to watch really closely, you tend to notice when they're bringing in lots of nectar because they kind of come in bottom-heavy, they kind of fly back in and land like really quite heavy. You'll notice that when there's a strong nectar flow on what your bees and how they land on the entrance is quite different from when there's a dearth on they kind of going out and looking and coming back with not much. And so they don't land quite as heavy. It's pretty cool. 

Cedar 

It’s now getting a little bit much for these bees. We're going to start closing them up again. This has been open for a while. 

 

Why do the bees slow down in storing nectar during the winter compared to the warmer months?

It's just the abundance of nectar. If there was an abundance of nectar in the wintertime, then you would find that the process of storing honey would be a lot faster as well. Somebody might have a better answer than that, but please jump in and help answer questions as well in the comments. 

 

Why did you smoke your hands?

That was because we have a scent of a mammal and bees have been protecting themselves from things like bears for a long time. So it just helps mask that scent. If you're going gloveless, a little bit of smoke on your hand will lessen the amount of stings you get.

 

I have been advised to remove the super in mid-August. Is it always necessary to take the super off for winter? (Washington, USA)

It really depends on where you are and that information is probably best found from your local beekeepers. Ask them whether they're removing the super for winter, how big the hive should be over the wintertime and how much honey storage you'll need to get your hive through the winter. Here, we don't really have a winter like that. We can leave the honey super on all year round. In those colder places, it is common for people to pack down their hive to a smaller one. They might just leave a brood box and one super or they might pack it all the way down to a brood box with some honey storage on the edge. It really depends on where your colonies up to and the strategy you're using to get your hives through thatwinter.

 

Do you always put the frames back in the same place after a brood inspection?

Ideally, you put the frames back in the same place. And the reason we do that is, if you have a bit that's bulged out, for instance, let's say you've got a curve out here and it's meeting a curve out here because you've muddled the frames around. Then you can find the curves are touching and the bees can't service that area until they've chewed it all away. And if you've got the small hive beetle, they can get in there and lay, and the bees can't stop them. So be careful squashing comb faces together. If you've got a whole face and another face where the bees can't service and you've got hive beetles, they'll be sure to get in there and make a big slimy mess of it. So that's the reason why you're trying to put them back in a similar order. Or at least keep that in mind and make sure you're not squashing two faces together.

 

I put the super on yesterday and there are a few bees moving up there. I added melted burr comb to the Flow Frames and then drenched them with honey. How often should I do this to keep the bees moving up into the super?

I don't think coating the frames in honey or sugar is necessarily a good idea. If you are going to put something on the frames, then put wax and use the burr comb from the top of its own hive, rather than using wax from a different hive. So you can scrape off the burr comb from on top of frames and push it into the Flow Frame surface if you want to. I don't bother doing any of that. I just simply wait until there's a lot of bees in the hive and that coincides where the good nectar flow, then they'll be up there storing honey.

 

If there are too many bees in the brood box and the super, should you add another brood box or another super?

So you can either take a hive split, which is my favourite thing to do. Or you can add another super or you can add another brood box. The reason why I like to do a single brood box is it's much easier to service, to get in there and find the queen if you need to. I find there is enough space, even in the smaller size hive for there to be quite a big colony. So if you add up all the cells, there is quite a lot of space there and the bees will clear the cells out as they need them to lay. So I prefer just to go with a single brood box. However, in the colder areas, it is quite common to add a second brood box. Get some advice from your local beekeepers there as well.

 

What is burr comb?

It's just a name for comb that's not in the frames, it's just somewhere else. And beekeepers are often scraping all of that away just to make it a bit easier to manage the hive. In the end, what you're trying to do is keep your hive nice and serviceable because you do need to get in there and look for pests and disease and check on your hive to make sure it's happy and healthy.

 

I did a harvest a couple of weeks ago and got a lot of honey. When should I harvest again?

So just have a look at your flow and also pay attention to the time of year. And if you've got a long cold winter ahead, then you might need to leave that honey for the bees. So if you're unsure, you can just take a little bit of honey, like you see us sometimes doing. You can harvest part of a frame or just one frame out of your six or seven frames and just leave the rest for the bees. But the time to harvest is when you can see it in the end frame view, and you can see that beautiful look of the cells filling up and the capping going on. So if you're unsure, then by all means you can get in there and lift a frame out and really have a look at what the side windows are telling you as to what's going on inside. The idea is you're harvesting when your frames are mostly capped and that way your moisture content will be nice and low for your honey to keep on the shelf.

 

Trace

Everyone is loving your closeups, Mira.

Mira 

I'm just trying to convert the world to be as bee-obsessed as I am. 

Trace

The bee whisperer!

Mira

I just think they look so incredible and what we can see when we film and look back in macro and slow motion is that we see all these intricacies that we miss otherwise. And they’re actually cute. I mean, you'd never really call insects cute. But I think they looked a bit like kittens when they're sitting, they're grooming their antenna and they're all kind of furry. So I’m clearly obsessed.

Cedar 

And if you go anywhere with my sister Mira, you'll find that it's a short-lived thing before she takes off into the garden or somewhere and starts chasing bees around for the next two hours. 

Mira 

Many of my family members refuse to go to the park or anywhere where there's a flowering garden with me anymore. I just end up head deep in a bunch of flowers for a couple of hours.

Cedar

And she comes back with the most extraordinary footage, which you're all used to watching onour channels. And it's amazing, it's just coming from a phone, but it's really coming from passion. 

All those frames go back in that same order. It's not a bad idea to leave a bit of burr comb because it helps you see that bit goes with that bit and so on. It helps you really put it back together in a good order. There’s space in the edges of these brood boxes, so just put that space on either side. You'll appreciate that as time goes on, but you're basically squishing the frames together in the centre and allowing the extra space on the edges.

 

Thanks again for tuning in again, this is my sister Mira doing her wonderful work, getting all the macro footage. There are some beautiful beautiful pieces we've put together onTheBeekeeper.org. If you want to have a look at that, it's free to try. And it's also a fundraiser and there's some beautiful imagery showing all things bees and experts from around the world tuning in to deliver really high-quality content training material. It’s designed to take you from square one all the way through to being a really knowledgeable, competent beekeeper. 

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