Winter Solstice check

Bees busy again yesterday, coming and going at a great rate at a temp of about20c max.lots of bright yellow pollen coming in too, one girl had a yellow necklace and two full bags!
Filled water.

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More Spring Bee Lessons

Well my bees beat me up these last two weeks. To be fair though it was mostly my fault. So, I started with radix hives; two at coastal Merewether and two on my property near Paterson. Obviously the Merewether hives produced through winter and with a bit of an up-change in the weather they needed space for brood and honey. This caught me out (Lesson 1: don't procrastinate or aim to do the least amount of work. In other words don't be lazy.) I then had to rush around buying and assembling frames. Penders Bees reported that from their orders it's a bumper season. But I really need to not be so unprepared again. Adding Supers and extracting helped create space, but I'll be extracting again very soon with my spanking new machine. Unfortunately in hive #4 the Queen spent the winter above the Excluder and it really knocked them about. Removing the Excluder (which was a third full of dead Drones) got them working ok again. ...

Swarm Cut Out.

Today's principle task was to participate in my first cut out of a wild bee colony. Leading the extraction was my bee mentor Warren Bee and his neighbour, also experienced extractor, Dave. Well, the colony was hiding in a wall in an abandoned dairy building. Two things straight up to assault the senses, the smell of rear poo (and dust) and a vast number of dead bees. In a north facing wall below the kitchen sink, these bees head cooked in hot weather. The process was to remove all the internal fittings and linings, remove comb and suck up as many bees as possible. Good comb was saved for honey extraction, old comb was trashed. Sucking up the bees was done using a little vacuum cleaning drawing bees through a filtered hive box especially designed for the job. It took about 3.5 hours. I never got stung, so I liked them all. Hopefully, of those that survive this process, they will have a brighter future than their old buddies. PS. As it happens I went to my mentor's yard ...

Separation > Life

That cryptic header refers to life after separation. Up until 5 or so years ago I was married for 30 years, before my wife decamped. I was left unemployed, with regular weekly debts and responsible for the daily care of two children. The psychological and social impacts of this situation for children I will avoid commenting on. Even though our society totally supports separation as being good for the economy, it's disastrous for children as it undermines their sense of stability and trust in humankind. But this is my blog, my post about what it's been like for me. Well obviously, straight up there are some sleepless nights spent planning how to generate an income. Even though my ex, (whom i don't talk to for obvious reasons), left the home, I believe she expected me to fall in a heap and allow her to sell this property and then toss me a bag of lose change. But here's the thing, becoming free from her ah, negativity, and having a fre...

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