wow, I can’t believe that people would be feeding at this time of year in the Melbourne area…
but I did notice when I was in Melbourne last week for the Military Tattoo, that it was dry as dry as could be in the countryside… brown grass with dirt starting to show through…
living in Warrnambool by the sea, it is dry, sure, but flowers are still coming out throughout the city and my bees are still filling the flowhive with Honey…
I will probably open both my hives this weekend, so will see what is actually in there…
we have plenty for pollen and nectar in my area to keep our bees with food all winter long in my area…
but if Benedict Hughes says that there’s not much food in the burbs in his areas in and around Melbourne then I believe him 100% as he works those places continually and knows exactly whats going on in those areas…
hell, Benedict showed me and the mrs how to build our first beehive frame and how to inspect beehives and look after them…
its also good to hear from you Valli, I haven’t seen you around much in a while
I worked away for nearly a month (most of January) but am still re-cooping - my work I love but it brings stresses of it’s own and I suffer with SAD and presently it is driving me bahmy - 1 month down the road so long as we have good weather I will pick up.
What is the weather you way been like - I have not heard from my friends recently Mayor of Moyne’s wife
we are having a mild summer I guess… I don’t think we have even had a 40* day here this year yet…
temperature has been mainly in the 20s most days over the past week and will be again next week…
we had a few showers of late but not much at all … hardly enough to wet the ground…
it is no good persisting within a job that makes you stressed or depressed even if you like the job… (if that makes sense)
I’ve talked to the mrs about this in recent years and say to her that if the job ever gets real bad (with staff reductions etc) then i’ll get her to just leave the job… even if there’s not another job lined up… we can cope… its just not worth it…
you should come live in Australia… down the southern/eastern part would be best for a Pom… that would cure your SAD mostly
Andrew I’m Aussie - what ruined me was a year ago, I was in Oz to visit Mum and family and friends, but we had such a crap summer and winter was no better here - it has taken its toll.
I love my work but seeing my client yo-yo has been hard, he’s a sweet little man of 92 and as sharp as a tack - we have also lost a few friends recently - mortality sucks
I was there in Feb March up in Cairns and drove down to Byron Bay where Mum is - NOS. Then down to Melb Stopped at Lara with Little Sis and met my Warrnambool friends in Geelong for lunch and then up to Coburg with another Sis. We had 3 weeks and flew back business class with extra air miles (wonderful treat I didn’t know he had booked) - the joys of having a hubby who travels a lot. Germany today for a week and Sweden in 2 weeks - so we travel a lot on air-miles.
Weather in Oz was great but the UK was worst for bees in 42 years - even for a friend who is Commercial, and winter has been weird - not cold just overcast and yuck but the bees have been pretty busy all winter which is really weird.
I’m going to be checking for QC (Queen Cells) early this year as my one hives is well into spring mode already.
Hi Renee ,
This is the Captain - from Welshpool in sunny Gippsland Victoria .
My opinion is remove your Queen Excluder , swap your brood box with your flow frame then replace your queen excluder . Your queen will be trapped in the top box till you swap positions again in late july .
This will do several things - 1 . allow bees to increase stores around the brood by both honey flow and by moving stores up from the bottom to the top as is natural at this time of year …You can also just move some frames of honey up there from your flow box .
2… Your micro -climate will dictate the timing for this move .
3. Do not pull the trigger too quickly as I believe there is still plenty of opportunity for a mild Autumn into a mild winter which may well result in significant honey inflows we should position ourselves to full take .
4. reduce your hive entrance to about one inch -2.54 cm .
5. pop in a small hive beetle trap , followed by a water barrier suspension of your hive from the ground .
6. Keep two full frames of honey capped in your freezer for winter feeding or spring spinning .
7. take the two full frames of honey from the outside of the brood box if you have them with no brood , split your brood into BBEBBEBB Where b is for brood ,e is for empty , this will create space in the brood box , encourage drawing new comb , encourage queen laying and delay or stall Autumn swarming . The other measures will dissuade predators and pests . Wasps and robbers are now coming out , not so much hive beetle ?
ps some pollen and nectar can be frozen with the honey for spring stimulation .Good luck
From the Captain .
Thank you so much for your advice @David_Smith This is our first year with bees so we are learning a lot fast!
We just wanted some information on how to go about winter shut down so we know what to do when the times comes. I’m thinking that we won’t have to do anything until April depending on how the weather pans out, will definitely keep an eye out for the Drones being kicked out.
We pulled a few flow frames on Saturday and we have the top 1/2 of three flow frames capped, so its looking like we will be extracting at least one frame in the near future to give them some room for all the incoming nectar. They are working the outside frames but they aren’t full yet and the brood box only has the outside 2 frames of capped honey - were keeping an eye to make sure it doesn’t get honey bound.
We only got a 4 frame Nuc on the 28/11/15 so they have done extraordinarily well to build up the brood box, wax the flow frames and just about fill it in about 3 months
Hi Renee, I’m a super newbee beekeeper, have had my girls for just over 7 weeks now! I’m working on my overwintering too in the Macedon Ranges in Vic. I’ve just bought myself a 3/4 size langstrooth box that I will put underneath the flow box in the next couple of weeks so the bees can make another smaller store of honey to get them through the winter when I take the flow super off. Hoping this works, it was some advice given to me by some fellow beekeepers.
We’ve got quite a flow on with my flow frames ready to harvest in the next week, so I don’t anticipate they will have any trouble filling it up with a decent store.
Hi @Shelly_Andrews, its definitely a learning curve once you get bees Our girls have 3/4’s capped the middle 2 flow frames but as we don’t want to have to feed sugar were avoiding harvesting them unless the others are full. Our area hasn’t had rain on over a month so everything is very dry and our nectar flow has all but dried up. We’ll keep a close eye on their stores and if it looks like there back-filling the brood box we will rob a flow frame to give them some more space.
This winter we will have to overwinter with the flow frames as their honey stores but next spring we will give the girls another box with ‘traditional’ frames to fill out for their winter stores before we put the flow super on.
Hope your beekeeping adventures continues to be a positive one
Gooday Renee ,
The sweet smell of success is in the air , well done for a newbee you are doing exceptionally well insightful beyond your experience , again well done on your studies and mentoring experience . You will be teaching us all a thing or two soon - in a nice way of course . And that is the essence of it , we are all learning the peccadillos of this new fangled invention and the judge is out .!
Exciting times , the hottest world temperatures ever recorded ,seasonal rainfall unpredictable , ozone holes appearing then gone , what next ? Watch this space and respond with intuition to a changing weather/flora/potpourri and you will be just fine .
Chow from the Captain .
I’m scratching my head as to why the QX has to go in cold climates. The way I see it, the bees constrict the brood in the brood box which means they store honey & pollen around the brood, in the brood box.
Why would the bees leave the brood & queen behind to go & cluster above the QX? if that was the case, that means the brood box can’t be insulated enough.
It kind of goes completely against what I understand bee culture to be: Bees taking care of the next generation.
When people insulate hives during winter, that insulation should include: under the floor as well as the roof & sides.
Having kept bees in the UK and the US, @JeffH, I can understand your confusion. Here in southern California, we have brood in the brood box(es) year-round. However, in the UK, there was almost never any brood from about mid-October to late December/early January. So theoretically, the cluster could move up into honey stores above the QX, because there is no pull from the brood. You would think that they might miss the queen, but we never tried it - it was easy enough to pull the QX off and not take a risk. Of course your point about insulation is well-taken, but that seems relatively new to me. Nobody local to me was insulating hives in the UK in 1990s, that I was aware of at least. We just had to provide enough honey to let the bees shiver the best they could.
This is our first year with bees so we are learning a lot fast!
Our girls have 3/4’s capped the middle 2 flow frames but as we don’t want to have to feed sugar were avoiding harvesting them unless the others are full. Our area hasn’t had rain on over a month so everything is very dry and our nectar flow has all but dried up. We’ll keep a close eye on their stores and if it looks like there back-filling the brood box we will rob a flow frame to give them some more space.