Comments for VicHoney

Comment on Preventing swarming by Alf

Alf — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 09:21:07 +0000

You did the right thing John, the bees will find it easier to keep warm in winter now. It is a concern that there isnt any capped honey in the brood chamber, perhaps they will need feeding this winter.

Comment on Preventing swarming by John

John — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 04:25:37 +0000

Hi Alf,
We inspected our single hive a couple of days ago. No work had been done in the two supers. The bees had only just begun to draw out some foundation (a couple of square inches). In the brood chamber there were lots of bees and a fair amount of brood and nectar. There was no capped honey visible. Only about one and a half frames were not overly covered with brood or storing nectar (outer most frame … north side). In preparation for winter we removed the two supers .. Our question is: Did we do the right thing closing down the working space?

Comment on Late summer flowering report by Paul

Paul — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 10:13:54 +0000

Do you have any bees for sale now 6 march

Comment on Honey Shop by Harvesting the beekeeper’s elixir, sweet golden honey! | The Emerald Garden Blog

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 23:49:47 +0000

[...] can purchase honey and candles from [...]

Comment on Preventing swarming by Alf

Alf — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 10:15:50 +0000

Hi Joe, the best way of avoiding swarming next spring involves avoiding congestion in the hive by giving the queen lots of room to lay eggs and if you wish to you can replace the existing queen with a new young queen. Colonies rarely swarm when there is a new queen, so if you replace the queen in late September or early October {Australian late winter / early spring} and give her plenty of room, it is unlikely that the colony will swarm.
If you are happy with the queen you have now and do not wish to replace her, you must make sure that you give the bees work to do under the excluder by adding a couple of frames of foundation and if there are lots of frames covered in brood, shake off the bees and let the brood hatch out above the excluder.

Comment on Preventing swarming by Joe

Joe — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 17:11:55 +0000

What is the best way to provent my bees from swarming this spring. I have two brood boxes.

Comment on Website hackers by Alf

Alf — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 22:04:18 +0000

Thanks Julian and Rob. Hopefully, our website will now stay up so that everyone can enjoy our journey with the honeybee.

Comment on Yellow Gum honey flow by Natasha

Natasha — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 00:22:39 +0000

Hi sounds like you have gotten a pretty good honey yield, we have quite a few hives over here in the lower SE of SA, and so far we have had a bit of a slow honey flow… fingers crossed that it starts to increase soon. Often we think we have found various crops flowering, only to find small honey flow! it’s certainly not an exact science

Comment on The spring dwindle by Shane

Shane — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 03:51:57 +0000

I’m sorry to hear that. Hopefully the recent change in weather will turn things around. Certainly warm in Melbourne today!

Comment on Collecting a swarm by Steve

Steve — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 08:45:54 +0000

We have had honey from silver-leaf stringybark before, ( e. cephalocarpa I think), and this had a taste I thought of licorice cough medicine….I wasn’t a big fan, but my father thought it one of the best honeys he had ever had. Each to our own eh.