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”Happy new year everyone! We have a few exciting changes coming in 2019.
Eastern Australia is experiencing another drought. Droughts are normal and are becoming more frequent. This drought is one of the worst in several decades. 100% of New South Wales has been declared in a drought. Many farmers struggle through droughts, doing whatever it takes to survive until the rains come. Lots of awareness is raised about livestock and produce farmers. The obvious farmers running sheep, cattle, grain and vegetable farms. These make news headlines because farms that were once green pastures are now brown dustbowls. Such images invoke emotion and sell news. Beekeepers are farmers too. Beekeepers raise bees to produce food (honey), bees (for pollination and to sell to hobby beekeepers) and to sell the raw materials bees produce (wax and propolis). We are also hard hit by droughts. This article looks at how the drought affects beekeepers.
This post briefly describes our 2018 winter successes and failures.
We started winter with eight hives (our top bar hive, one single deep wooden hive, one single deep plastic hive, four double deep EPS foam hives and one triple deep EPS foam hive). Our goal was to over-winter five or more hives. We reached our target and managed to get seven hives through until spring. Only our own feeding mistake prevented us from a 100% over-wintering success rate.
This month we have compiled a list of bee related articles that were in news recently.
