Comments for VicHoney

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.

Comment on Conditions, conditions, conditions. by Steve

Steve — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 08:30:06 +0000

Always a difficult decision to make, especially after a newly collected swarm is established. Do we take the chance that the colony will survive with good summer conditions and requeen early, the gamble will pay off handsomely if the conditions are good, with quick build up of populations and a lovely sea of golden Italian bees. If conditions are not so favorable as you point out, I find the new queens struggle with tough conditions, especially early, and at 20-ish dollars each, can be an expensive exercise.

The other thing to consider when deciding to requeen early, is that a black queen in a small swarm is far easier to locate than waiting a year while a small feral swarm builds to a large skanky feral swarm. Nothing more frustrating than having to dump a large swarm outside a hive to come back in through an ideal box and queen excluder to trap the queen in the small bottom box.

I’d love to hear from other readers with other tips and tricks picked up from their own requeening experiences.

Regards

Steve

Comment on Collecting a swarm by Alf Brugman

Alf Brugman — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 08:26:02 +0000

Hi Ron, if that honey is the one I gave you a few years ago, I do remember where it came from. I know that I didn’t particularly like it because it was so dark and strong and you loved it. It came from a garden in Pakenham which actually had a lot of plum trees, but considering the bees fly so far, there are so many exotic species in suburban gardens that the honey could be a mixture of several different nectars

Comment on Collecting a swarm by Ron

Ron — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 07:24:20 +0000

Hello All

Topic: The different tastes of Honey.

I came across a honey a couple of years ago that was very dark, almost blackish and had sight taste of dark plum and licorice. Would anyone know what produced this lovelly taste?

Thanks
Ron