Hi there @skeggley . My inedible dropped fruit go straight buried in the compost heap. My garden spraying arsenal consists mainly of harmless home made concoctions with various degrees of ineffectiveness. Birds are my pest control buddies. I wish all my neighbours were just as primitive as me.
When Dawn mentioned starvation as another possible cause of death I initially dismissed it because I know my bees have enough honey. But then I wondered whether those dead bees could be the ones that simply ran out of fuel, or got lost and didn’t make it to the hive due to rain or whatever, and whether that counts as starvation too. It will make a lot of sense if a lot of dead bees I find around have their tongues out.
I am in a very suburban area. No farms. Aerial spraying is not prohibited, but it would be difficult because of hills and congested commercial and military airspace (I used to be a private pilot here). We have registered our hives, so the local council have agreed to inform us if they are going to do “community spraying”. We can then lock our hives down and protect them as much as possible. The poisoning that I described with our hives happened on a Saturday. In the US, it is rare for City or Council employees to be required to do spraying on a weekend. So we think an unthinking neighbor was the most likely cause.
If they tell tell us the day before the spraying (usually the City does), we lock them in the night before, and let them out 24 hours later. Our local bee inspector is tightly involved with any Dept of Ag spraying, and so he is really good at making sure we know what is happening. However, pesticides linger, as we all know. This is just practical stuff, not perfection.
Actually, now you remind me…I lived for a while in the US in NC and was shocked by the amount of insecticide used in houses and gardens there. The gardens were sprayed with insecticide against mosquitos and the houses were treated for termites etc…
Thankfully, that would be unthinkable here (Ireland).
Over here in Vic, it’s cold, still and beautifully sunny . The bees have been out and about on the Hardenbergeas, Grevelleas, Yellow Gums and the odd Banksia. It all turns ugly on the weekend though, weather-wise so I hope they snuggle up
Hi there @outbeck. Here in the SW we are slowly, and finally starting to get some Makuru weather (the Noongar’s season closest to winter. European seasons do not really describe all the seasons we get here). At this time of year we get a lot of blue and purple flowers here.
I am secretly hoping that my bees start to consume all that honey that I didn’t harvest, because I’m full of guilt for not taking more.
We are supposed to be in Chunnup but the weather is all over the shop and we seem to be in a colder version of Gwangal Moronn. I think that might change this weekend given the weather heading over from your neck of the woods!
Oh dear. I am thaf naive person atm. Just bought a flow hive and excited to get started but realising there’s so much to learn.
Will keep on reading here though. I’m in WA also.
When trying to deter weeds and also grass growing into garden beds.
What .ca you use that works but is ok for bees. I’m on acerage. So have a lot of weeds. To pull then all would be impossible, but to leave them would disturb the other plants also cause issues for the dogs fur (prickly weeds).
I don’t want to hurt our future bees though or other people’s bees nearby by using any pesticides.
We are very strict with chemicals around the property but will be even more so after learning more about the danger to bees.
The bees that take out the corpses out of the hive. Someone’s gotta do it!
On acreage probably a ride on mower will do. I refuse to use glyphosate and find Slasher from Bunnings works reasonably well. It is certified organic but I still do not spray on flowers. I always try to spray before weeds flower. Mulch is another good option, and my long term strategy is to plant natives as dense as I can so weeds have less chance. It’s a never ending battle.
I do preemptive splits from late July into August to deduce the risk of swarming here. I do it before the bees are making queen cells. During the season if conditions are good further splits are something to consider as a swarming can happen if the hive becomes too populated or they are running out of space for stores of nectar and pollen. Always during an inspection look for queen cells and if you find them then in my opinion a split is a best option to add another hive to your apiary or to sell as a nuc.
Seeing excessive bearding in warm weather should not be taken as an indicator that the hive is preparing to swarm. It might be just indicating that the internal hive temperature is too high for the brood.
Cheers
I’m having a change of plan.
I know that beekeepers around here use only one brood box, but I’m now set on going two brood boxes. So instead of a preemptive split I want to add another brood box early spring and open up the brood nest, hopefully it will serve as swarm control anyway. Never done this so I have to keep an eye on them. Any tips?
Reason I want two brood boxes is so that I can remove the flow super over winter, and hopefully they’ll have enough honey stores without me worrying about feeding. I’m having a fair bit of condensation in one of the hives (more than the other), even with a quilt box on. I also gone rogue and removed the corflute altogether from the bottom and now have an open mesh floor.
This coming spring it will third year since I have similar setup. This winter I even left supers on hives. I am FIFO worker so I cannot afford swarm monitoring exercises and rather prefer to minimise chances of swarming. Setup is not particularly efficient from commercial point of view, but I have only two hives so two extra boxes is not a big price for convenience.
I live adjacent to a large national park and am very concerned about bees escaping. They are incredibly aggressive in driving out native fauna out of tree hollows.
I also read elsewhere that having two brood boxes and therefore a larger colony doesn’t necessarily mean more honey to harvest. If that’s the case it is not a big deal for a hobbyist like me either.
From my experience with double brood hive that was necessary in my previously colder climate a double brood hive will store more honey foraged than a single brood hive, but not twice as much.
There is still only the one queen and that is the limiting factor on the size of a colony in bee numbers but swarm management is not so demanding with a double brood hive in my findings. It is Still July on the Sunshine Coast and with single brood hives I’m busy doing splits increasing my hive numbers and to manage swarming.
I like your thinking and concern about bees swarming and taking over locations that would be normally used by the wildlife for a ‘home’.
Cheers
Hi mate, I use 2 brood boxes and am also reliant on native flora. The second is WSP and is predominantly honey. The advice I was given was to move the qx below the WSP spring and above winter. Although adding a brood/super slows the filling of the Fframes initially, once drawn and filled they’ll move up.
As we all know seasons vary, always have, and I like having the extra super as a buffer. The WSP is easier to lift when doing an inspection although different sized frames are discouraged it doesn’t bother me as I rarely disturb the frames in the box because the lower brood box gives me enough information on colony health.
Hope this helps.
. The bees have been out and about on the Hardenbergeas, Grevelleas, Yellow Gums and the odd Banksia. It all turns ugly on the weekend though, weather-wise so I hope they snuggle up 
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