Hello there,
I am also in adelaide- so can offer my experiences. My mother has a beehive at semaphore with one 8 frame brood box that came through winter strongly. We put the flow super on very early in spring, and also made a small split from that hive. Making the split slowed it down just a little but it recovered fast and around 2 weeks ago we managed to harvest 14 KG’s of honey off of five flow frames.
Myself I have 4 beehives- all established this year- and situated at Prospect. Two are swarms, one a five frame overwintered nuc and one the split from my mums hive.
One of the swarms was very large and caught early in spring. This swarm was so big it couldn’t fit into an 8 frame brood box so the flow super was added immediately. the bees have been up in the super for over 8 weeks now- and do date they have not stored any honey at all. They have started filling in many of the cells with wax.
The 5 frame nuc was placed into an 8 frame brood box around 2 months ago and quickly filled it out completely. I added a flow hybrid super around 6 weeks ago. The bees built out the four standard combs in the hybrid super quickly and have stored some honey in them- to date they have put nothing in the flow frames- though again in the last two weeks they have started building out the flow cells with wax.
The other two hives are still building up over ten brood frames.
So: the story is - spring has been slow on the honey side- except for my Mum’s hive.
Also speaking to other established adelaide beekeepers at the bee society- the overall picture is that this spring did not see a good honey flow as may have been expected in previous years. The bee society’s hives were checked about a month ago and no excess honey stores were discovered. However there remains a good hope for a better than average late spring and summer period due to the very high rainfall in early spring- setting off a large flowering of Eucalyptus trees over the next few months. It is expected this heavier than normal flowering may actually be seen for the next few years following those very heavy rains. In my area all the jacaranda is currently in flower- and many other trees- and many gums are starting to flower as well.
Whilst I haven’t any honey to spare all my colonies continue to build up steadily- and I remain hopeful that the next few months will be productive. Today is hot- and the bees are VERY active with streams of pollen coming in. Currently my bees are all building comb quite rapidly.
EDIT: I made an afternoon hive check- and for the first time- I see droplets of honey in the Flow Frames. Just a few- but they are finally there. 