Gidday
Honey bees have been a dream of ours for a while, one would think getting your hands on them is easy, but its not really. We could have bought some locally but wanted to try to harvest some wild bees, it was never on the priority list so it go put aside over and over again.
In preparation for moving to SnogrocK, Flash made a “Top Bar” bee hive while we were living in rental accomodation in Mudgee Mid 201o.
This kind of hive is bee friendly in that they are not living on top of each other and all accounts are that they live better as a community in this environment, this is the kind of hives used all over Africa, not like what we use in the West that require lots of antibiotics to keep them healthy.
So we have had this hive in the paddock now for three years, no bees. Last weekend a neighbour dropped a tree and it had a natural hive in it, he knew we wanted bees and gave us a call. We unsuccessfully attempted to harvest some bees and move them into the hive, it was fun but it didnt work.
We discovered its so cold on our mountain, that in the winter the hive gets rid of the drones and rebirths them in the summer, because for all intensive purposes they don’t move over the winter and dont need extra mouths to feed, basically no drones means they won’t move.
This morning Flash and the neighbour cut a 1.5 metre length of the tree trunk with the chainsaw, attached it to the front of the tractor and drove it across to our property and placed it next to our bee hive. Flash has covered the holes so they won’t drown if it rains and to keep the cold out and will let them settle for a couple of days and then try to relocate them into our hive.
Recycling at its best, if this works our fruit trees will be a bumper crop this year as the hive is settled on the outskirts of our orchard, well keep you posted.
