Update February 2021

Just in case anyone troops over this blog in cyberspace, I'm giving a brief update on my beekeeping off late

Well basically, I am still going, a bit more relaxed in attitude and enjoying my bees. I have 6 hives, 4 of those are at my mum's place in a beachside suburb south of Newcastle NSW Australia's. Approximately 33 deg . south if the equator. The for hives sponsors of the two i bought in early 2021 and the others are products of swarms from (i think) the oldest of the two.

My other two hives I also bought probably in August or so inn 2020. They are sited here on my property and although they lumbered along for a while, the deliciously wet summer has seen them restored to good activity and (hopefuly) shaker of the Chalkbrood and Small Hive Beetle that they arrived with. I'm no longer corresponding with my Mentor, who is also the seller of these two hives.

So far I've extracted some 25 litres of honey from the Newcastle hives and their colony numbers are quite good it seems going into autumn.

As you may have assumed, I've developed more relaxed beekeeping routine and do not break open the hives without some reason. I'll write now about that later.

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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 ...

Transferring a Hive

In early February arrangements were made to meet Warren and see about taking my nuc hive home. I was really excited and nervous about whether I could actually keep some bees because my track record was pretty ordinary. I met Warren late in the afternoon because bees are best transported after dark because they're all "home" and are more quiet. He was tall, and older and seems busy talking and remembering to do stuff. Halfway through saying hello, he waved to a neighbour and took him of to show him a drainage problem, that had shown up during recent much needed rain. He opened his wagon to put stuff in and the forgotten smell of the smoker permeated my life again. The car was neat, but had seemingly everything a beek would need, ready to hand. Little did I know. In the half hour it took to say hello and get moving, Warren plied me with information about bees. I made mental noted on everything. I suspect he was also assessing whether I was up to the task. We drove to a si...

Novice Beekeeper

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