Honey Harvest

We managed to find some fine weather between torrential rain and cyclones to harvest the honey from one of our hives. We took four frames from the hive and brought them to our honey house to extract the golden honey.

It was wonderful to be able to see our own home grown honey coming off the frames and into the extractor.

We then packaged it all up in shiny glass jars, added some labels and we're ready for our first local markets.

When we get another opportunity, we'll get out there and do the rest of the hives, but in the meantime we have our own honey in the kitchen and plenty to give as gifts to friends to celebrate our first batch.

Cheers,

Sonya

The Novice Beekeeper

the bees are here!

We picked up our four new beehives last night!

Finally we have bees - and very (very!) soon we'll have our first harvest of honey.

It was quite an event picking them up - we packed our beekeeping suits, gloves and boots - bought plenty of straps and emlocks for the hives.

We charged the torches and headed off at 4.30pm. We arrived and helped wrap the straps around the hives, we waited until just on dusk and then the owner tacked in a block of wood over the hive entrance to lock them in for the trip home.

We packed up the trailer with four hives and we packed four wooden stands, two honey storage buckets and boards for the tops of the hives in the car.

Strapped in tightly so they wouldn't move, we headed off to try to get home while there was still a little light left.

I had also copied the phone numbers from the DPI Queensland site of local beekeepers who will come out and help if you break down or heaven forbid have an accident while transporting bees.

I was really pleased to see that at the place where we picked the hives up from that they had a native bee hive in among the European bee hives - and had done so since 1987! So they can co-exist - which was great to see as I was a little worried about our native bees being pushed out or attacked by the honey bees.

Anyway, we arrived home after a slow trip and suited up, lit the smoker and started unloading them. It took a couple of hours to do - each hive had to be strapped onto a sack truck and carefully transported cross country to the bee pad my husband had built for them.

They were very, very heavy - already loaded with honey so we'll be harvesting that soon.

We finally got back inside at 8.30pm, exhausted I must admit. I always find it stressful to move things like that - I worry about everything that could go wrong, but with some good planning (and emergency phone numbers in my pocket) we were fine and it all went well.

Although it was hard heavy work and had to be done by torchlight.

My husband only suffered one sting (on his hand) - which I thought was very good given we are absolute novices, it was dark, there were four hives and we had sweat running into our eyes within our suits - don't get me wrong, the suits we have are excellent and I've highly recommend them.

So our beekeeping adventures have begun in earnest. I'll keep you posted on our progress.

Cheers,

Sonya

Another day spent learning about beekeeping

Yesterday was spent doing some very hands on learning about beekeeping. My husband and I got up early and headed out to meet with the beekeeper and we were straight into it spending the day checking the hives and harvesting honey.

We got there early because it was going to be a very hot day with a storm predicted for the afternoon (this is mid-summer in the subtropics) and we needed to tend to the bees well before that started to impact on them. Apparently bees get cranky when storms are coming and we didn't want to be disturbing bees when they were cranky.

We suited and gloved up, got the smoker going, got all the tools and spare hive pieces ready just in case and headed out. (Can you spot the Queen in the photo above?)

We smoked the hives, carefully removed the lids, checked the small hive beetle traps, killed any live beetles we saw and gently lifted the frames to see what was happening - was there enough honey to harvest or not?

You can see in the image above that there are no capped cells - they are all open. So this frame was left in the hive.

BELOW - you can see in the frame below that some of them are capped - when about half are capped, they were removed from the hive, the bees gently brushed off of them and then put in a spare super (the top box of a bee hive) which was in a wheelbarrow with a lid put on them to keep the bees out of them ready to head to go to the honey house to extract the honey.

We were shown how to methodically number the frames to ensure they are returned to the same hives, systems are important in beekeeping, recording honey flow, strength of the hives (population numbers and bee-attitudes) what's going on with broods, queens, pests and bee-activity in general. It helps you manage your hives and also lets you know what to expect when you crack open that particular hive lid.

ABOVE - The landing platform for the bees to access the hive and launch themselves from in the search for honey.

A frame after it has had the caps removed. You can see (and you could smell) the golden honey within.

The uncapped frames are then placed in an extractor where centrifugal forces draw the honey from the cells. This was an electric four frame extractor - we have a hand driven two frame one for our hives when we get them. We bought it at a 'tip shop' from one of the rubbish dumps here.

And there it is - the beautiful sweet golden honey, ready for straining and bottling. No heating, no processing, just pure honey straight from the bees.

The cappings are also collected and these are melted down to produce wax for cosmetics, candle making and for other goodies like furniture polish.

We also learnt how to put our nucleus hive together (it arrived in a flat pack with no instructions - nothing like a challenge!), so now we'll assemble this, paint it, choose the perfect place to locate it in the garden, prepare the site and set it up for it's new Queen and her colony.

It was a bit of a puzzle when it arrived and we had an idea of how it might go together, but we weren't sure. On the day we do assemble it, I'll take lots of photos and post them here in case anyone else has the same problem we had.

We'll get our new bees around October, so in the meantime, we'll keep learning as much as we can about beekeeping, how to do it properly, how to really care for the bees and how to do it all organically and wholistically.

There is a lot to learn, but if we can get a quiet hive that will be tolerant of a couple of learners we should be okay.

We'll also work on creating a bee fodder calendar to ensure we have food for them year round on our block.

Cheers,

Sonya

The Apprentice Beekeeper

Nucleus Hive arrives

Very excitied to find a note in the letterbox that I have a parcel at the post office to pick up.

Marked 'Beekeeping Equipment' I took the package home and unpacked
1 x Nucleus Hive
4 x new frames
4 x foundations (the wax that goes in the frames for the bees to start working on)
1 x smoker - went for the good stainless steel one
and 1 x belt so now the hand-driven extractor we scored at the dump works properly!

Next steps - undercoat and paint the box - in a light colour to help keep the bees cool, put the box together using strong wood glue, galv or stainless steel nails, find the perfect spot for it in our garden and get some bees.

Cheers,
Sonya

Bargain find at the Tip Shop

We were lucky enough to hear about a great beekeeping find at the local tip shop. Like a lot of rubbish tips nowdays, there is a resource recovery shop attached, where saleable items are resold back into the community - this is where we found our treasure.

We called up to make sure it was still there and got them to put it on hold for us.

So - here's the bounty...
1 x hand driven two frame honey extractor (needs a good clean and a new drive belt)
2 x pairs of leather gloves (need new elastic in the sleeves)
1 x heavy duty hive tool
1 x normal hive tool
3 x veils to fit over hats
1 x capping bag to fit the extractor
1 x bee brush

All that for only $50!

To buy all this new, it would be over $800.

What a bargain, we're very happy with ourselves indeed.

And, we visited the local DPI beekeeping section and got hold of this book.

Next steps, a nucleus hive, a full beekeepers suit and a smoker.

And some bees of course!

Cheers,

Sonya

Backyard Beekeeping Part 3

And so it continues… more from the day spent with Max Lindegger learning about bees and how to keep them healthy, happy and productive.

This post I’ll cover;
Hives
Frames
Honey extraction
Hands on practice
Where to find resources, information and materials

HIVES
Max took us through how hives are constructed, set up and what the best materials are. You can get budget boxes, but it seems that good quality material like Hoop Pine is the way to go.

Like anything, you get what you pay for and its important that your hives can stand up to the harsh elements. Last thing you need is the hive rotting out because of cheap timber, falling over and all your bees leaving in an angry huff.

Hives consists of a base, two supers (the bottom one is a brood box, the top one the honey box) and a lid. You can have two honey boxes on top of the brood box, but it’s getting high and heavy to lift – pays to keep it manageable, again you don’t want to be dropping the super or the frames – bees really don’t like being dropped - they get, you guessed it, angry!

New hives can be bought as a flat pack and put together at home and painted up. Max recommends an undercoat and then four top coats of a good quality outdoor paint. We plan to use an eco-friendly, low fume exterior grade paint for ours.

Hives are often painted white, but any colour that will reflect heat and keep the hive cool in summer is fine, I'm thinking a splash of lemon and lilac.

It’s best to use galvanized or stainless steel nails for construction too – again to avoid cheap nails rusting out and the hive falling apart. Also a good idea to use a very strong wood glue too.

The lid also must have ventilation holes for the bees to breathe and to prevent condensation.

You can also add a layer of insulation to the lid too, and they are sometimes made out of galv, then painted so you can write on them to keep a record of what that hive is producing. Keeping records is an important part of beekeeping too.

Between the brood and honey supers you’ll need an excluder (see BELOW). This keeps the Queen and the drones in the brood box, only the worker bees make it up to the honey super and the do all the honey collection.

Everything needs to be well built and strong – honey is heavy, honey. The base could even be made out of Cyprus Pine to prevent termite problems too.

FRAMES
It pays to number and date the frames, that way you know how they are circulating through the hives.

An average super box holds 10 frames, but some bee keepers like to have eight or nine in there instead.

Frames need to be cleaned and repaired when they have had the honey extracted from them. This is done in a honey house – a place that keeps the bees out as robber bees will come looking for the honey if you take it away from the hives.

Cleanliness and good management are important in beekeeping, particularly if you intend to sell the produce. Aim for the highest quality and level of production in your ventures.

Rewiring the frames (ABOVE) and melting on another foundation sheet of wax (BELOW).

BELOW - frames ready to be cleaned up and rewired

HONEY EXTRACTION
The frames are uncapped using a hot knife. Either an electric one or a normal knife placed in hot water to heat up. With raw honey, this is the only time heat is applied.

I’m thinking of getting together with some other locals who want to keep bees and starting a co-operative to buy the machinery, so we can share it rather than all buying our own.

BELOW - hot knifes, drainage and other tools for uncapping the honey

Once the wax caps are taken off the cells, the honey flows freely and Max then places the frames in the centrifuge to extract as much as possible from them. The honey drains out a tap at the bottom of the electric machine (SEE BELOW) and runs through three strainers – just to remove the bee’s knees – before it is bottled in sterilised jars ready for market.

You can get a hand operated extractor for about $200.

HANDS ON PRACTICE
We then put on our protective suits, hoods and gloves and headed out for some hands on practice.

We lifted the lids, removed frames, held them and felt the weight, worked with the bees buzzing around our heads and we also had a go using the smoker to calm them before we made any moves.

BELOW - more hands on practice

WHERE TO FIND RESOURCES, INFORMATION AND MATERIALS
The Queensland Department of Primary Industries and Fisheries has a lot of information about beekeeping and is a good place to start.

http://www.dpi.qld.gov.au/cps/rde/dpi/hs.xsl/27_124_ENA_HTML.htm

A good info sheet is here http://new.dpi.vic.gov.au/notes/agg/ag1146-hobby-beekeeping

Check with your local equivalent agency.

A recommended supplier of beekeeping equipment is John L Guilfoyle Pty Ltd. Unfortunately their website isn’t working at the moment, but their phone numbers are:
Brisbane – (07) 3279 9750
South Australia – (08) 8344 8307
NSW – (02) 9623 5585

The next post will be on how I intend to get started…

Happy beekeeping,

Sonya