Thread: Native Bees

Originally Posted by weeds

Yes I paid quite a bit more but apparently well under market value. The guy had 30 or more and doesn't sell to the public, just friends of friends...my brother in law lives next door to him.

He suggested doing it his way of splitting 'cutting' in half which generally works just fine.

Over XMAS I'm helping a guy who is expanding from ~30 honey hives to 600 hives.

Gee whizz, 30 to 600 is quite a jump!! I reckon 30 is too many for a hobby, and not enough for a job. 600 would be very hard work indeed......

Gumnut

Originally Posted by Gumnut

Gee whizz, 30 to 600 is quite a jump!! I reckon 30 is too many for a hobby, and not enough for a job. 600 would be very hard work indeed......

Gumnut

Yeah big effort, his brother is invoked as well....he is making all hives himself, has purchased a CNC router to speed the process up.

We have native bees here but they are in the hollow trees, which work fine for us

Mrs hh

They are great, last season we got half a jar of honey from the them (you can get up to 800 ml per year), it's a little hard getting the honey and you destroy half the hive in getting it. Splitting is easy as long a the hive is strong and in good shape. The box seems to be the secret, good timber and the exact same size. Here in Sydney you can sell a hive for the price of two bfg's.

Had a local native bee enthusiasts drop around today.....

It appears mine is not ready for splitting and the box is quite poor....so we made plan for September 2018 to split the hive and start to transition to a better designed hive which includes a third section for harvesting the honey without disturbing the main part of the hive.

I also got him to look at out fence where there has been a seam of native Bees everyday for the last few weeks. We located the hive in a garden statue in the neighbors garden. Tomorrow morning we are going to relocate the hive into a new box.

Went from no hive to two in short time.

Job done......

Cutting out the hive
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Bees in their new home
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Harvesting the honey
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Tasty
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Just letting the honey drop out before we put the hive back where the statue was
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Tonight we will relocate the hive (more than 1km from home) and leave them locked inside for 48hrs so they can sort out the mess. In two weeks we will bring them back to our yard.

Oh the honey is delicious

We will tradition our other hive to the same design as the hive we purchased this morning for the relocation as it allows the honey to be harvested, it bigger, has a roof and is well insulated.

The honey is nice, innit? Very strong flavoured, so you don't need much. I remember back when I bought mine honey was fetching up to $125 per litre from high-end restaurants. What is also amazing, is the viscosity of the honey. Even after being in the freezer, it's still runny like normal honey at room temp.

I think the top honey part of the hive is called the super. Looking forward to splitting mine which is on holiday down at Uki.

He, super that's what he called it.