The bee tv

The bee tv Hobbyist Beekeeping in Bristol, UK
3 beehives on a Bristol allotment, with short videos describing events in the hives, and a bit about beekeeping.

Questions will be answered, if you want to learn a particular bee fact!

29/08/2021

Lets take a closer look at the wax comb, and what the bees store inside: Eggs, larvae & pupae (collectively known as "brood" or baby bees), nectar and honey (sugary goodness as an energy or food store) and pollen (protein, for those growing baby bees to develop)

29/08/2021

Repost UK Spring 2020
Wax comb: This ones is about wax comb, and what bees store inside the hexagonal wax comb cells

29/08/2021

Repost UK Spring 2020
How do bees find their way home?
and how do they tell the other bees about great flowers they've found? Through the waggle dance!

29/08/2021

Repost: UK Spring 2020
How many bees do you have?
How does the population change between Winter and Summer?
How many eggs does the queen lay per day?
How long doe honeybees live for?

29/08/2021

Autumn Jobs: Cleaning and Feeding
Cleaning;
Hive hygiene is important, and we need to keep hive parts clean of old wax, harbouring bugs and viruses, so hive components can be stored through winter months. Its good to be prepared, because in Spring when the bee colony rapidly increases, its good to have clean hive parts to house that rapid growth!
The perfect excuse for a blow torch!
Feeding;
Its also time to make sure there is enough honey and sugar in the hive for the bees to eat over winter and survive. Sometimes, you need to supplement their stores with sugar, and in this video I show you one common way to feed liquid sugar.

22/08/2021

Bees need enough honey (sugar) to eat through the cold winter months.
They also need enough space to store the sugar!
My new colonies have been in the apiary since early July, so 2 months in.
This video is a quick check on the health of the colony as they grew through (this years dreadful rainy UK) summer, and provides some new space to store sugar in the hive for winter.
No hive check (or Bee TV video) is complete without seeing the queen too :)

08/08/2021

Just going through a few more Brood box frames, looking for eggs and describing how many eggs the queen can lay in one day (about 1,000 / day!) and what smokers are all about.

08/08/2021

This video shows whats inside the Brood box - a set of Frames, which you can lift out to inspect the wax comb cells. The Brood box houses the brood (eggs, larvae and pupae). In this video, you can see the cells filled with brood. There are usually 11 frames in one brood box, and makes inspecting the hive simple, and doesnt impact the colony between inspections.

08/08/2021

Beehives are made up of a few different components, or chambers, with different things begin stored in each of the chambers. The Brood box is at the bottom housing the queen and her brood, the upper boxes store honey and are called Supers. You can simply stack one Super on top of each other, as the bees store more honey over the Summer months. A grill or Queen Excluder separates the Brood box from the Supers, preventing the Queen getting into the Supers, because you dont want the queen to lay eggs amongst the honey.

08/08/2021

Beekeepers use smokers - why, and whats in them?

08/08/2021

A brief intro to the year long series, as I share a bit of insight into the world of a couple of Bristol beehives, through the UK 2020 season: starting April 2020 (UK Spring)

08/08/2021

During 2020, and the UK covid-19 lockdown, beekeepers were allowed outside to tend to their bees.
To try to help with lockdown boredom, I recorded some videos
* starting in April 2020, Spring when the bees start emerging from winter 'hibernation' and the colony grows in the number of bees,
* UK Summer in June, July & August as all those bees start collecting most of the nectar and honey,
* into Autumn Sept, Oct, Nov when the the honey harvest occurs and the colony start to reduce and prepare for Winter,
* and through to the cool days of Winter, finishing December 2020.
I hope you enjoy this series of videos, providing a peek into a couple of beehives, and beekeeping, on my Bristol based allotment.

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Canford Lane
Bristol
BS93NX

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