Just magnificent Jeff!
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Thanks Cathie, cheers…
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That was last week from 1/2 of my hives. This week, just under 10 boxes to extract from the other half. This is some of the frames that make me go “wow”.
cheers
PS Study those frames: 2 with predominantly dry caps, 2 with predominantly wet caps. It goes to show that if wet caps are responsible for flow frame flooding & you want to avoid that, it’s best to check each frame before harvest.
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that pic is worth a 1,000 words Jeff, as good as I have seen showing the difference between wet and dry caps. Cheers mate.
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That was last week, this week, another 10 boxes that I’ll extract tomorrow. Considering the days are getting shorter & the days & nights cooler, I think the honey flow where I am is increasing. Lots of paper barks in flower at the moment.
cheers
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That was last week. This week I have 12 boxes to extract tomorrow. A LOT of frames are like the ones in the photo. Quite a few not so good. Anyway it’ll be a busy day tomorrow.
cheers
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Nice pictures Jeff. That’s a lot of honey!
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Hi & thanks Keith. It was fun & games replacing the stickies this morning. I’ve never had the bees so hungry trying to eat the honey in the stickies while returning them. I anticipated the challenge after the recent rain, so I did it in 2 trips.
That was a whole week ago. Only 7.5 boxes this week. It appears that the tea tree & golden pendas are just about finished. The local gum trees are about to come into bloom. We must be in a temporary lull between two honey flows. I had to work fast at my main site because the bees were trying to get the honey out of the frames while I was putting them onto the back of my truck. I took off in a hurry without tying my cargo net down, the bees were that hungry.
I’m seeing a reduced amount of bees in the honey supers now, with more bees needed to keep the brood warm as winter readily approaches.
I’ll be more selective in the days I choose to harvest the honey. I’ll be looking for the warmest days.
cheers
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Really nice to see your pics inside your home Jeff, it makes me feel so much better knowing that my home is used so much in my bee keeping.
Peter
Same here Peter 
The sugar cane mess got cleaned up. You didn’t see my back verandah, that is needing a serious tidy up. I’ll start on that tomorrow.
I can’t believe it’s 12 months since I posted this. The Buckinghamias are out in flower again.
Flowering everywhere in Brisbane on every street you look.
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Sure is Gaz! My concern has quickly shifted from the weaker hive to my strong hives in a matter of days.
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Same here, I checked on 3 colonies that had bees up in the lid, they were all preparing to swarm. Everywhere I look, I see flowers, especially Buckinghameas & Bloodwoods are heavily in blossom.
I have more to check on this afternoon, tomorrow morning, tomorrow afternoon, Thursday morning, Thursday afternoon & so on.
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My hives are going great with the recent rains and did a walk around last night with my red torch and most of the hives were having large bearding so I’m weakening a few of them adding their capped brood to weaker hives and having to do a few splits.
One thing I have noticed is a few hives have gone queen-less which I suspect haven’t swarmed as they are strong except found no brood or queen cells. A bit confusing. There are ‘play queen cells’ half made but none fully made. I have added a frame of eggs to each of them but after a week there is no sign of queen cells. The queens in all the hives are marked and as there is no brood at any stage I’m beginning to think of buy new queens as an option.
Heaps of nectar coming into the hives now with the recent rains over the past three weeks.
Cheers
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Seeing the same thing. Interestingly the hive is pumping with activity and honey flow is rapid. I did notice one frame in the centre of the brood box was empty. No eggs, no brood and no honey. I noticed the wax was a bit darker in colour than the rest. Is the empty frame common?
I have also noticed my bees have become much more aggressive. They were so placid before but really have a go at me when I open up now.
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We got 2 phone calls yesterday with bees moving into walls of houses. That prompted me to go & take a look yesterday afternoon because a few of the hives are pretty strong. One colony looked like it had a practice swarm moving back in. Sure enough it had advanced & capped swarm cells. I removed 7 brood frames leaving only 2 with open brood in the middle flanked by 7 frames with fresh foundation. I’ll take another look at that hive in a few days time. Then this morning I went down with more fresh foundation frames to find two more colonies with bees in the lids preparing to swarm. I only checked on 3 hives, so far a 100% of the hives I checked are preparing to swarm. I’ll see how that %age alters after this afternoon.
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I’ve noticed my hive a little more agro this past week but there is plenty for the bees to do at the moment. I’ve been thinking and checking for any reason but was starting to think it might be just not liking the humidity about now.
If that dark frame isn’t used for brood in a week I would replace it with a new frame of foundation, maybe the queen is held back from laying in it with the cell size being reduced because of cocoons.
The three hives that have for some reason gone queen-less I checked today and the frames of eggs I gave them they still aren’t making queen cells. Most of the hives are packed with brood.
Cheers
I’m finding the same in most of my hives, wall to wall brood and ultra strong bee numbers. Bees have gone above the mat into the roof but no comb up there yet… I’m having to make more new hives up to do preemptive swarm splits. Only a few months ago I was having to feed some of the hives and now having a look today they will need extracting in a week. This rain in the past three weeks has changed things so much.
Cheers