Iaorana from Tahiti, French Polynesia

Iaorana, my name is Hiro, I live in Tahiti and I launched into beekeeping as amateur 2 years ago.
I have 5 hives Langstroth, I made 1 half harvest last November because my hive became “bourdonneuse” (3 frames of male brood!) and I had to kill the queen and divide the hive.

I come on here to follow advices of experienced beekeepers such as you to help me in case of doubt.

The apiarian season here begins from October-November till April-May then we enter southern winter from June till September, thus we are at the height of the season here and I don’t know if I’m harvesting because it’s raining a lot since 2 weeks, hope we don’t have a cyclone this year.

Here, the beekeeping equipment is expensive. A wax sheet can reach 650f ( 6$ us) minimum!

We can import some sheets only by France, that is expensive.
It is expensive because we have to supply to the local veterinary service a sanitary certificate and a certificate of ionization and these two certificates cost 125 euros without speaking forwarding charges.

Finally, the great majority of the professional beekeepers keep jealously their own wax thus, us, amateurs, are at the mercy of price rates applied by importers.

I am a handyman, I make my hives, ruchettes, for frames I made 10 then I resolved to buy them because too many falls.
I made a solar wax melter.
On my ruchettes, I installed on a side a photo frame so as to see bees working without disturbing them.

My next step is to make my own waffle iron machine so as I can make my own wax sheets.

Sorry for my English.

1 Like

Welcome! Please don’t apologize for your English, it is excellent. You might like to take a look at Michael Bush’s web site. You can be a very successful beekeeper without any wax sheets at all.
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesfoundationless.htm

Then you can extract and sell all of your wax locally and get rich! :smile:

Do you put a cover over your “photo frame” when you are not taking pictures? Bees do not like light, so I imagine you cover the window.

Your hives are beautifully constructed, congratulations.

Dawn

Thank you very much for the link, it’s very interesting.

Yes I put a cover, it was just for the picture.

Thank you.

I ordered a flow hive last year on march, and I had a mail a few days ago telling the flow team is going to send my frames and box soon so I am very excited now.

Niro. Congrats on raising honeybees. I am 70 years old n just returning to beekeeping as I had a school bee project for 6 plus years 55 years ago. I live east of Seattle in the state of Wsshington. Yes … Your bee/honey seAson is the opposite of our in this northern latitude.

As for your English … Do worry ! I teach Vietnamese people ESL and you writing n English we can understand nicely.

My 3 Nuc’s of bees hopefully will arrive on or before mid April. Our early spring weather has started n flowers n trees will be in full bloom this week or next and continue fhru most of June into mid July then slow until a couple last blooms before deep fall. We have to winter our bees n let them keep about 60 to 80 lbs of honey so they can survive our chilly/wet winters.

Nice meeting you. Like your pix’s too. Good luck n happy beekeeping …
Gerald

Thank you Gerald.
I’ll make some posts with pictures to show how I made my solar wax melter and my future waffle wax!
We are lucky here because we don’t have any hard winter as northern latitude. The coldest temperature here must be around 14°C (57.2 °F) so bees go out of the hive all year.

Hiro,
Yes, that’s much milder. For northern latitudes we are considered mild but often gets as low as 0 dgs C off/on for short period during December thru January. Once in awhile we will see temps near mid 20 dgs F down to mid teens F. This winter we only saw the Mercury get to 25 dgs a few days the return quickly up into the mid to upper 30’s F. That’s mild for us. It’s early Spring here now n temp got to 62 dgs for a couple hours. Some early flowers are blooming now.

It’s nice to be done with winter. Take care. Gerald

Iaorana Hiro,
Génial de lire vos efforts ici.
Je suis en Nouvelle-Zélande et je suis allé à Tahiti dans le passé.
Je suis intéressé par la façon dont vous travaillez avec vos ruches maintenant.
Vous voyez de bonnes récoltes maintenant?
Vous rencontrez des problèmes particuliers en ce moment?
Mes amitiés, Jean

Sorry for bumping an old thread up. But @Hiro, if you’re still active, would love to make contact as i have friends in Tahiti and Moorea who are about to purchase a couple of Flow Hives which i will likely bring up to Tahiti with me in a couple of months. Is there an apiary group on Tahiti? Are there recommended suppliers of bees?