Author: Alf Brugman
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Yellow Gum honey flow
Yellow Gum or Eucalyptus leucoxylon has been flowering throughout the winter in the northern country of Victoria where we have some hives. It has been yielding nectar freely and is expected to flower until the end of November. Last week I visited the hives and found that each one had up to three boxes full…
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Requeening day
This morning we picked up a post bag containing 15 Italian queens from our local post office. They came in the little queen cages which are about the size of a matchbox and contain a young queen and about a half dozen workers as attendants. We immediately went to our home bee yard and started…
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Conditions, conditions, conditions.
There is a perception among beekeepers that commercially bred queen bees are essential to achieve very populous colonies and therefore large yields of honey. This is not necessarily always the case because local bees which are endemic to an area for several generations can also be very successful. Colonies which have been hived from swarms…
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Honey to feed the people
Yesterday I read an article in the Melbourne Age that gave me optimism about the future survival of the honeybee. Jaqueline McGlade, executive director of the European Environmental Agency says that our cities have the potential to become a major supplier of honey. “City honey is cleaner than country honey because there are fewer pesticides”,…
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Melbourne’s super bees
A few years ago, I was having a conversation with a Victorian regional apiary inspector who referred to “those super Melbourne bees.” At the time, I didn’t pay much attention to his words but subsequent experiences made me realise that there was a lot in what he said. Migratory beekeepers may not all be aware…
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Preventing swarming
As the daylight hours become shorter in the late autumn, the bees consolidate the brood chamber. The queen lays fewer eggs and the brood is confined to the middle frames. The remaining frames are filled with honey for winter survival. The queen starts laying again from about mid august onwards and as the new bees…
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Pollination hives
This week we supplied 6 beehives to a blueberry farm to pollinate the flowers and ensure a crop of berries. Blueberry plants will not produce fruit without honeybees to spread pollen from flower to flower, so the hives are vital. Our bees have helped this farmer to produce large crops of organic blueberries for many…
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Collecting a swarm
Today I collected a large bee swarm from a fence in a suburban back yard. It was a large swarm and must have come from a large colony.