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Thank you for a great year

Thank you all

2019 has been an great year for us at 8 Frame Honey and we would like to thank our customers for all of your support!

While the honey flow was non existent for us, bushfires raged just over the mountain, 3 of our hives took tumbles during extreme wind conditions and the drought failed to break there were many positive in our year. Some of our highlights include:

  • relocating to a new premises
  • over-wintering all except a single colony
  • building an all new room dedicated to our courses
  • expanding our apiary
  • conducting the most courses in a single season to date
  • mentoring some wonderful new beekeepers throughout Canberra and New South Wales

Change

We have conducted our annual business snapshot and reflection. 2020 will bring a few changes to 8 Frame Honey. Some of these will be trivial (moving to one blog every 2 months) and some will be much more noticeable (refreshing our website and updating our product list).

Our most exciting change (to do with AZ hives) will be announced between the end of January and mid February. Stay tuned to our Instagram account (#8framehoney) to hear about it first!

We look forward to 2020 and wish everyone a wonderful year ahead!

Bee harvesting pollen from a lemon flower

Thanks for reading, enjoy your journey!

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Bee swarms

Close up of a bee swarm in a tree

We are offering free swarm collections in Bungendore and surrounding areas for the 2019/20 bee season.

What are they and why do they occur

Almost everyone has seen a single bee hanging out on a flower, gathering nectar or pollen. But have you ever seen a swarm of bees? Swarms are an amazing sight and this blog will explain what they are and why they occur.

Continue reading “Bee swarms” →
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Julie Armstrong of ACT for bees is trying to reduce the use of pesticides containing neonicotinoids in Canberra. She also wants more native plants added to urban landscape projects.

Canberra public is “behind” on the issue, ACT for Bees says

An article by Finbar O’Mallon on 12/4/19.

You can find lots of useful information about ACT FOR BEES on their website www.actforbees.org.

Instead of using nasty chemicals such as glysophate (a harmful and active ingredient in Round-Up) to kill weeds opt for boiling water.

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Moving the apiary

Today I look back at how we moved the apiary from our old house to our current home and what we would do differently next time. If you are going to move your hive/s in the future hopefully you can learn from my mistakes. I consider our business a micro-beekeeping company that focuses on quality over quantity and our move involved just 12 hives. We had 11 langstroth hives and 1 top bar hive with colonies plus several empty hives to move.

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Check your hives regularly!

Today’s article is a timely reminder to check your hives regularly – even when it’s over 35 degrees Celsius outside for 4 weeks in a row. Stick to your calendar of when to check and find a way to get it done or your procrastinating and the bees could make life hard.

Unfortunately I work my hives alone more often than not. As such, I have no photos of this experience but for any beekeeper out there, I’m sure you can imagine the kind of sticky situation I got myself into.

Continue reading “Check your hives regularly!” →
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