Three weeks from our shortest day, plenty of flowers (this is a Penda just planted) and the girls are fighting to get into the hives with big balls of pollen. I guess winter will come but we are blessed to have such wonderful beekeeping conditions here on the Gold Coast Queensland.
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Hi Macbee, I feel the same, we are lucky happy beekeepers down under.
I had expected the bees to slow down now, but all that beautiful sun and golden penda and basil and wild roses keep them out and about and collecting.
I am just a bit South of you, Byron Hinterland.
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Great part of the world. Hope to do a split early spring to bring me up to 4 hives. Two nucs have come from JeffH and he has been most helpful with advice. I went for conventional hives rather than the flow and am loving it. Extra work no doubt but I have all the time in the world as a retiree
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not as warm here in Adelaide- But- watching my hives today the bees are bringing in three different colours of pollen- very active- and I still have quite a few drones. Driving around my neighborhood there are all sorts of things in flower. All is good with the bees.
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G’day Jack, it got cold enough to light the fire last. Plus I wanted the house warm for extracting honey today. It’s hard to extract when it’s too cold.
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- The bees aren’t doing too much first thing in the morning when it is below freezing here. You mainlanders might be interested in the ice patterns on the roof of my car from a few days back. Frost is common in Tasmania but this swirly ice pattern is rarer and attractive.
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I used to get that kind of pattern on the inside of my bedroom window when I was a child. 
Because of the energy crisis and cost of heating the house at the time, my father turned the heating off completely over night. It was quite bracing being the first one to get up in the mornings! 
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Dawn,
Same same here in Puget Sound some Nivembers thru Jauary day n nights. Our little four room house had little in insulation n wood heat early on. The old fire wood die-out after midnite … Dad was up early hours to restart but took hours to drive all the cold back out some very COLD (teens n single digit January mornings. Yah lots of interesting feathery n icy crystal artwork. Mom use to heat bricks n wrap in newspaper n old material for our toes in bed
Brrrrrs just thinking about it,
Jerry
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Once I was in China and climbed a perilous holy mountain called huashan. It has been called ‘the most dangerous hike on Earth’
I had already been there 5 years earlier with my mum- and she made the perilous climb - but that was in summer. My brother and I were young and goading her all the way- in hindsight it was an amazing feat… especially in 1991- there were no safety harnesses in those days
When I went back it was mid winter and I climbed it with a friend- there was no one else on the trail. When we reached the peak we found all the guesthouses abandoned for winter and buried in snow. We went into one and it was like a scene from The Shining- a huge abandoned hotel- except for a strange janitor who shooed us away…
Luckily we found a room in a house to stay the night- it must have been -20 c in that room. We probably would have perished if we hadn’t found that place- we were completely unprepared for the conditions… Our noodle soup froze in the bowls before we could finish eating it and in the morning there were stalactites of ice hanging from the bunk bed rails.
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