The Farm Clearance Sale

A hanging fog mists the air and dampens his charters

As they lay about the old homestead, for all to see.

Some no longer used gems, others evoke memories.

Though some bidders have respect, it's mostly for profit.

That they come to kick, eye off putt disregard his things.

But there, a lanky young fellow, enthusiastic and appreciative, of his purchases fills the old man with joy. That at least some of his old things will be treasured.

So slowly his dog dampened eyes cease to water, the weighty stoop students with pride and the heart turns to hope.

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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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