Hi, I’m Stewart Spinks and welcome to Episode 118 of my podcast, Beekeeping Short and Sweet, The sprint is on to the final few weeks of the nectar flow for me, listen in for a hotch Potch of Summer ramblings about apiary sites, the summer nectar flow and to kick off a small but significant milestone for me.

Do take a look at the extra content available on my patreon page, that’s www.patreon.com/norfolkhoney

I’m grateful to Honey Paw hives for sponsoring in part our podcasts for this season. Honey Paw hives are, as I’m sure you’re aware, Poly Langstroth hives and we’re setting up an apiary full of their hives this season courtesy of Honey Paw. Check out their range of hives and other equipment on their website, I’ll leave a link to their website in the show notes as usual.

Honey Paw Hives - Designed by Beekeepers, For Beekeepers.

It’s a bit of a milestone week for me, I was checking out some videos that we had uploaded recently and noticed that we’d managed to break the 500 videos uploaded mark. 501 to be exact although that number should have increased by the time we publish the podcast. Now, that’s all videos, including some fairly dodgy initial efforts and some might say they haven’t improved a great deal!

Anyway, I’m very happy to be celebrating not just the number of videos but also that so many of you have watched them and sent me encouraging comments and emails to keep me going. Apart from a few very early videos in 2012 I really got started in 2016 and we’ve continued to upload videos ever since. Now I’m not in the same rarified air as a lot of YouTube channels but I’m very happy to have nearly 2.2 million views and almost 25k subscribers. More importantly to me though is the support I have from my small group of Patreon subscribers for whom the vast majority of videos are specifically produced for. Each week through the active season I record a range of videos and of these just one goes public on YouTube, the rest are purely for release on my patreon page.

My thanks to all of you that support me and, judging by the comments and feedback I get, I know a lot of you have benefited from the content and additional support that I provide.....

......The new unit continues to be a fun project, with the wall up I’m now able to plan out where I want everything to go. We’ve filmed a couple of videos there and are working out the best way to position everything. I’ve found some really neat, rusted corrugated roofing sheets and want to try them as a background for the filming, just something a little different to a plain white wall. I’ll have to hang some posters or signs on it but I think it might work quite well. I did use a few stacks of supers but they’re quite deep and use up crucial space in the unit that I’d rather not waste.

Thinking about the forthcoming honey extraction, I’ve bought some more trolley wheels to create movable platforms for stacking the honey supers on when I get them back to the unit. It’s so much easier wheeling the full supers around than lifting and walking with them. They’re really easy to make, just a 500mm square of 18mm plywood and some heavy-duty wheels off the internet. the wheels come with large, heavy-duty screws so fitting is easy enough, even I can do that! 

The next big job at the unit is extraction preparation, everything needs a wash down and the floor needs moping. I do need to get the hanging door screen too, that’s a job that’s becoming more urgent as each day goes by. I’ll have to remember to measure up the exact size next time I’m at the unit and get it ordered.

Although it’s not the finished article yet I am enjoying having the extra space to move around and store equipment, once the new moveable trolleys are sorted it will be a doddle to get things in