Hi All
thought id see if there are any others in the wagga wagga area with flow hives, or if there is a club/group in this area
I will hopefully be receiving my hive early in the new year.
Regards Phill
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G’day Wagga. Are you in the centre or on the out skirts? Used to got there and visit friends all the time
Hi valli, I’m on the outskirts of wagga
Lots of Forage by you as well. Do you ever catch the 5 o’clock wave?
Hi Palex82, Coolamon here, there is a meeting of the Wagga Beekeepers Group at Agricultural Avenue, off Pine Gully Road, at the Uni, 1030 am 2nd Sunday of the month. which is tomorrow…Bruce.
Im in Adelong and have just received my first flow hive, only a few posters in this thread and I know one of them and didn’t realise he had a flow.
G’day bruce I will have to have a chat next time I catch you at the range.
Right, I will be at the WWCPC Thursday and Saturday, and there is a Wagga Bee Club meeting this Sunday 10-00am out at the Uni, Agricultural Ave off Pine Gully RD,off Old Naranderra RD.
Well I picked up a 5 frame nuc and installed it 2 weeks ago, last weekend I picked up a few more bees 2x 7 frames that I installed in 8 deeps. Inspected Saturday after 6 days, one of these has exploded, fully drawn the one empty frame they had, filled nearly 50% of the room above the frames with burr comb and had about half of it filled with honey. I have given them another deep and will try this hive with 2 brood boxes. The rate they are building I wouldn’t be surprised if they have drawn out the second box and have it well filled in 4-6 weeks so my flow frames might see some use this season yet.
I installed my NUC 16th October, 4 frames, they filled the remaining four frames slowly, I used foundation less, put the Flow box on last week after rolling the Flow frames with wax, bees took to them within 30 mins, will wait till all frames are capped before I open them, the bee club has been really helpful for me, next meeting 8th Jan if your interested, a few members of the WWCPC are in the Bee club.
Should be at WWCPC this afternoon
Thought this might be of interest
Had a call from mum Monday to say there were a few bees hanging around a dead tree in the back paddock, was on the road and then away for work all week. Today was the first chance I had to check it out, went prepared to have a crack at picking up a swarm that had just moved in. 2x 5 frame nuc boxes 10 frames, suit smoker and a few tools.
Found a stump about 5m high with bees going in and out of a north facing split
Cut into the front of the tree about 450mm below where the bees were entering and exiting and pulled a strip about 200mm wide out.
Removed a few pieces of comb from the bottom and used rubber bands to hold them in a frame, Decided it might be easier to start from the top so cleaned up what rubbish I could from above the hive and soon realised it wasn’t a fresh swarm. Nearly 1.5m of comb height and couldn’t tell how wide or deep.
Not much to do but keep cutting and see what we had, soon realised there was no way it was going in a 5x5nuc so sent the offsiders to grab some foam vegetable boxes.
When I finished cutting this is what we had
300mm round 1.5m long piece of comb that had been built around what the white ants had left when they finished eating.
Decided the easiest thing would be to try and remove it in one piece, cut the bottom out of 2 vegie boxes and ran a bit of duct tape around to hold them together giving me close to a 1m box.
Broke the bottom 300mm off accidently trying to remove it in one piece. Bit that broke was manily honey with a little pollen in new comb that was just to heavy. What I did get out weighed around 50kg and was still to tall for the 3 boxes together. Given I had a frame with a bit of brood and larvae I had removed earlier decided to cut a box lid and place a nuc box on top with that frame and another with foundation. Couldn’t fit any more due to the cut out taking up room.
Plenty of bees were still hanging on the tree, have left them alone to find their own way into their new home.
Pulled out and took the broken pieces of comb that were still in the tree to crush and strain.
The fun now will be trying to get the comb cut out of the white ant mess into frames and a more permanent lodgings. The bees were remarkable calm, I even resorted to a hammer and chisel to remove some pieces and while it obviously upset them at no time did they become aggressive, never had more than one or two bees around my head. Did cop 2 stings through my sweet drenched gloves but it was as a result of crushing bees when I was pulling pieces of tree out. I think I have found the perfect bees to start building from, calm, easy to work and well adjusted to the local environment.
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Sean, did ya get the Queen?
Honestly don’t know Bruce Im fairly sure I had her in the mass of comb as the majority of bees had moved into the box next day. In hindsight I think the best thing to do would have been add a couple more nuc boxes on top with drawn frames and wait for the queen to move up so finding her was easier and she could be safely transferred before trying to move the comb.
I removed the comb and put it into frames with rubber bands and into boxes, didn’t spot the queen in the transfer and lots of spilt honey so a good chance I drowned or killed her in the move.
Didn’t look for eggs but had some capped brood with patches that had already emerged Im hoping had fresh eggs if I have killed her. Might be lucky and they can make an emergency queen.
Have a couple of queen arriving early next week so can always requeen but then I will loose the genetics from these bees.
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I added another box with frames of foundation and half frames of foundation Monday.
Had a look today and they have pretty much drawn all the foundation and are working on extending the shorter half depth foundation. They have already filled everything they have drawn with honey and I had a nice surprise when I spotted the queen on one of the newly drawn frames.
I would guess 1/3 of the bees are still hanging in the old stump. As I now know the queen is alive and in the hive thinking it may be just due to a lack of space and work to do. Gave them another 5 frames with starter strips of foundation and will check them again in a few days.
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Checked again today, they have been tidying up the frames obviously pulling out loose bit of dirt and debris. A few bees hanging in the extra box I added last inspection but they haven’t started drawing comb. Squashed 3 SHB while removing the transferred comb to inspect. When I got to the new frames and started removing them from the bottom box I was greeted with this.
Bottom board was covered with debris and crawling with SHB larvae, bees looked to be corralling them on the bottom board. There were walls of bees around solid clumps of larvae.
Don’t know if I did the right thing but I put the frames into a new clean box and bottom board and took the infested box away and tipped into a container of oil. I went back and put in apithor beetle trap.
Only found 3 more SHB in the dirty box but there were 1000’s of larvae, the hive is obviously stressed with being moved and given the comb transferred across is very dirty with small bits of timber etc through it there are plenty of places for SHB to hide and lay. I didn’t see any SHB or larvae on any of the comb and the beetles I squashed were all on the boxes. The bees appear to be doing the best they can to control them but the transfer obviously gave them opportunity to lay unmolested.
Queen was on the freshly drawn foundation frames, the last time I inspected they were putting honey into everything they had drawn. They must have moved it to make room for the queen to lay as today there is a nice half moon of honey on the top and I think I could see freshly laid eggs towards the centre of the frame she was on.
There is still a bit of capped brood in the comb I have transferred across. When I inspected last time the queen was on the fresh frames and again today so if she is laying it will be on the new clean frames
Thinking the best thing to do will be get rid of the old dirty comb as soon as possible, I don’t have any drawn comb so will have to give them foundation.
There is a bit of honey in all the dirty frames with brood, I will remove these as the brood hatches.
Thinking I might uncap the honey in these frames and put them into another box without a lid a few metres from the hive and let them transfer it into new frames. Only concern is starting a robbing frenzy, this hive is about 1.5km from my other hives so I might be lucky.
Don’t know what else I could do to get it back in the hive, the only other thing I can think of is to crush and strain and then feed it back to them some how.
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Inspected yesterday, the cut out has been moving things about, honey has been transferred to the outside 2 combs and 3 full frames of brood in the centre of each box. Nice even pattern so queen is obviously going well and no sign of SHB which is a relief.
Made up 2 nucs early this month using mated queens I purchased and frames of brood from a couple of my stronger hives. I was worried seeing my hives are at Batlow I may have left it a bit late in the season, after inspecting yesterday I no longer have any concerns about being to late. My 3 stronger established colonies all had swarm cells present, uncapped in 2 and one capped cell in the other. This is despite removing frames of brood and honey only 10 days previously from 2 of them to make the nucs. All still have at least 1 frame of unused space for each deep and some more, don’t think it is lack of space driving the desire to swarm but something in the last fortnight has certainly set them down that path.
I will be inspecting again tomorrow and checking to see if the queen cells have been capped. If they have I might look at making up a couple more nucs using them. If not I will throw a super on them and check again in a few days. I Have made up a few swarm traps I will put out tomorrow regardless just in case I miss anything.
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Hi #220, I am a newbee and am in the process of buying a flow hive, so new that my flow hive hasn’t arrived yet, they could be temporarily out of stock. So in a few weeks to a month’s time I should be needing a nuc to get my new hive started, do you know of someone willing to supply me with a nuc!!! Cheers Trevor
Oh BTW, I live 33 kms south of Wagga, @ The Rock.
Might be worth a call to the bee club in Wagga someone might have a hive or nucs for sale. Bees are swarming now, I had a swarm move into a trap in the backyard in Adelong Monday. Bound to be someone around Wagga that does swarm removal and might have something for sale.
Don’t be afraid to buy a established hive, you can easily transfer the frames into the flow brood box when it arrives and you will get honey a lot faster than with a nuc.
#220 my flow hive arrived last Tuesday, and I have it probably 2/3 built so far. There is a bee club that meets at the Charles Sturt Uni 2nd Sunday every month, I’m hoping to go to their next meeting. Not in a big hurry for my hive to become productive, so I will see what to do at the Amateur bee keep club on Sunday. I’m also a bit late at getting started as there was a a delay with my hive being sent, as they were out of stock. Though this spring and summer, looks like it’s going to be a cracker, even likely into spring, so it shouldn’t be a problem. I’ve mainly brought a bee hive, because there seems to be a shortage of bees in our 1/2 acre block, even though we have a good selection of fruit trees, and my wife is also a keen gardener too, and that having my own bee hive may help.