Colin and his partner used to live on a narrowboat in which they travelled around the UK but sold up in 2020 and bought a beautiful highland croft in Scotland.
Colin had followed Laurence’s YouTube channel for a couple of years and had always been interested in keeping bees. He had kept a couple of beehives but wanted to take things up another level. He chose to buy bees from Black Mountain Honey as he liked Laurence’s No Nonsense approach to beekeeping, but had also heard great things about Laurence’s Buckfast Bees.
Colin decided it was time to increase his hive numbers and decided one nuc just wasn’t going to cut the mustard. There was just too much available Ling Heather forage available for one beehive so he jumped in at the deep end and bought 12 x nucleus colonies!
Colin was slightly nervous about the proposed transport arrangements for his nucs as he lives at the very northern tip of Scotland but he was pleasantly surprised with just how fast the colonies were transported by Royal Mail. They left the Black Mountain Honey premises at 530pm on Wednesday evening and arrived by 7am on the Thursday morning, via a dedicated, albeit, slightly nervous Royal Mail delivery driver.
The nucs were in perfect condition and Colin set to introducing the colonies to his apiaries following the advice on Laurence’s YouTube channel.
The twelve nucs settled in really well and the colonies developed quickly, filling the beehives with bees in around 8 weeks. Just in time for the Ling Heather flowering period.
Colin managed to get a sizeable first year crop from the heather which wouldn’t have been possible if the bees hadn’t been through a rapid expansion process. Check out his video HERE which shows he extracted his ling heather using a hydropress.
He managed to get his colonies up to weight for winter and applied varroa treatments to ensure his bees stand the best chance of getting through the winter.
Colin has big plans for his bees next year. Follow his journey at Foxes Afloat on YouTube.
