Hoping our friends in Australia are safe in the fires

I am married to one MrJ.H. She says I’m already on the strongest medication.

Always has been. Climate change makes things 10 times worse.

You make a healthy argument though I will stand my ground in this fact. I’m here to help save the honey bee not the world. Yes your concerns are legitimate and since typing a reply does not convey at all times the spirit in which is intended so I’ll say it. Its not a snarky disrespectful reply on my part. I too care about the world and the people in it. Though as I understand the forum it’s for the purpose of the flow hive and the honey bee. Be safe people in the fires people. I guess I started the whole thing by posting care and concerns of the home of flowhive and her bees in the fires. I really hate those double edged swords.

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Opinions are like ass holes we’ve all got one :joy:.

In today’s news half of Europe is flooded :crazy_face:. One side of the world needs the water the other needs the heat :exploding_head:.

It’s a crazy old world eh. Hope everyone wherever you are as Martha originally posted are okay.

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How much are you having to supplemental feed? In our dearth I was going through about 5 gallons of 2 to 1 sugar syrup about every 3 days for my 3 hives.

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I was feeding about a pint each day to each to each hives but as I have never need to feed hives before there was a degree of guesswork involved and regularly checking that they were not getting too much or not enough.
Since the bush fires I have got enough rain that the bees are finding nectar in the flowers in the bush and things are looking much better, the bees are even building up honey stores. That is really pleasing since about 30 to 40% of my foraging natural bush area has been burnt out.
I was feeding 1:1 sugar/water.
Cheers

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I wonder if something just happened to come into bloom just in the nick of time.

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Hi Martha, normally here there isn’t a drought or bush fires to contend with but this past 12 months hasn’t been normal. Amazing how much of the native Australian bush can flower but have no nectar in them during a drought. It makes it easy to fall into the trap of thinking there must be excellent foraging. A bit of rain makes a big difference.
A ‘normal’ year there is always plenty of nectar for my bees to collect.
Cheers

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My heart is broken for all the fires raging on in Australia. Prayers and hopes that this will end soon, really soon.

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Thanks for your kind thoughts Martha. It has been a bad fire season indeed. We are all praying for rain here…

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Yes, thankyou Martha, whilst I live in the suburbs of Sydney, two thirds of my bees are in the forests not far away, I have to say for me its been the best season ever, massive nectar flows filling 10 frame boxes every two weeks. I can’t help noticing that the fuel load on the ground in these areas is huge, at least 1-2 feet thick in places, thats why the bush is burning so fiercely and this tends to happen every couple of decades.

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to save the honey bee- you must save the world. At least that’s how I see it. I used to say beekeepers are at the coal face of climate change. That was last year.

Now we all are. I truly believe that here in Australia. I also think we can’t escape politics. We are political animals- and democracy demands engagement and debate. It’s a shame things are so utterly divisive these days but that’s how it is.

@Rodderick same here in adelaide- we are deep into a second flow despite the terrible heat we have had. And I am gettign this amazing light vanilla/butter honey- I don’t know where it is from but it is sooooooo good. I have a friend in sydney with a bee shop- she said there has been a huge run on buckets and everyone is raving about how much honey they are getting. It’s a good thing too that our cities are doing ok- much of the rural honey has now been affected by these continent wide fires. Could be more than a few bad years to follow. And we haven’t even got close to february.

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Amazing how in the midst of disaster the bees find a way to store such bounty.

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