Hi, I’m Stewart Spinks and welcome to Episode 96 of my podcast Beekeeping Short and sweet.

Another very busy week, we’ve been scorching boxes, feeding fondant and the Honey Paw Hives have arrived and that’s got me super excited for the coming season.Find your local stockist of Zukan Apipasta Fondant Bee Feeds HereHoney Paw Hives can be found in the UK at Happy Valley Honey For Orders outside the UK contact Honey Paw directI am very grateful to both Happy Valley Honey and Honey Paw for, in part, sponsoring this week's episode of my podcast. Both Happy Valley Honey and Honey Paw have supplied samples of their products free of charge for me to test out and promote. I use both products in my day to day beekeeping anyway so I am delighted to be able to recommend both to you.

Talking of fondant I’ve been given a few boxes of Zukan Apipasta by Paul Beardmore at Happy Valley Honey to try out, this is the basic fondant not the one with the added amino acids and vitamins. The good news is our bees are taking to it as readily as the Apipasta with the added proteins. Happy Valley Honey is, in part,  sponsoring this podcast and supporting me in producing our podcasts and in return, I’m very happy, please excuse the pun, very happy to promote their range of Fondants and liquid feeds.

If you need to get some ready-made fondant that’s great for your bees and will help them grow into strong and healthy colonies for the start of the new season then do take a look at the Happy Valley Honey Website for full details of where you can get hold of this Apipasta fondant. I know that there are now several stockists around the UK that can supply Apipasta which, if you’re local to one of them will save you a small fortune in courier costs. Alternatively, get together with a few friends at your beekeeping association and place a bulk order to split between you all. It’s called Zukan Apipasta and I’ll leave a link to the website in the podcast notes.

I am so excited to be collaborating again with the Honey Paw team, we’re going to be starting from scratch again and it couldn’t more timely. Here in the UK Poly hives are becoming more available, the quality is superb and if well looked after these hives will last a lifetime.

The plan is to use the nucs we already have in our own Honey Paw Nucs and also carry out a couple of shook swarms to convert from a different sized frame into the Langstroth hives.

It won’t work well unless you have plenty of bees and plenty of resources, that’s food. So I’ll be shaking full-sized colonies into the boxes and giving them a feeder with plenty of sugar syrup.

I fully expect we will see brood boxes filled with drawn comb in somewhere around 7 to 10 days if all goes to plan. We’ll have a brood break which also means we can treat with oxalic acid to kill off any varroa mites that may be present, and that’s a nice bonus. The key to that is to plan it ahead of the day and get everything ready.

So, do sign up to the Patreon page videos, subscribe to my YouTube channel and listen out for more updates as we get cracking into the start of the new season.

Well, that’s it for this week, If you haven’t check ed out my Patreon page as yet, please do take a look, you support is very welcome. that’s www.patreon.com/norfolkhoney

Thanks for hanging around until the end of the podcast, have a great week and we’ll catch up again next time.

I’m Stewart Spinks

and that was Beekeeping Short and Sweet.