My Future Buckfast Bees

I visited a local beekeeper today, who is also the bee inspector for this area. It was fortunate that his bees performed the cleansing flight just when I arrived :) so cool to see the ladies again! We talked for at least an hour not noting that bees drop their shit all over us LOL my jacket is covered in yellow bee crap LOL so what, it mens they have survived the winter! He had no winter losses so far.

Another thing I learned was that he never places any form of insulation on top of his hives! He also regularly overwinters a few small colonies on just 2 frames (4kg of sugar syrup, he takes all the honey from the bees) without any issues. Some of the hives face North which was new to me. He noticed no problems with that either. Another thing is that his hive had no mice guards! He never found mice to be a problem in his hives (we do have LOTS of cats around this area).

He uses foundation wax 5.1mm (he is not sure what size it is could be bigger) and he treates for Varroa with Oxalic Acid every Autumn (November).

He will sell to me 2 nucleus colonies on 10 frames each. I asked him if it is ok to buy a shook swarm from him instead but he doesnt do that and would rather sell it his way so I agreed.
10 frames colony will be easy to split in the middle of June if the honey flow is good.

I told him about my intend to set up a few bait hives. He said that there are very little swarms around here since beeks practice very well swarm control and the ferals have died due to Varroa. But I should try he said.

He didnt react in a strange way when I told him that I have Kenya Top Bar Hives. He thinks its up to the beekeeper to decide what hives one prefer. The only thing he say to newbees is to get Buckfast bees since everyone in this are has those.

Here is a video of the bees performing clensing flights;