Thread: Native Bees

Look forward to your posts mate...would like to get into beekeeping at some point. When you say you bought a hive, are they in the conventional boxes? More info would be great. Cheers.

Originally Posted by Gordie

Look forward to your posts mate...would like to get into beekeeping at some point. When you say you bought a hive, are they in the conventional boxes? More info would be great. Cheers.

These are the stingless variety....and you don't get honey from them....well you can but it's hard work for not much honey

Hive is only small 250x250x300 high

Ask Bob 10, he's into bees, not sure what flavour.

my eldest daughter and her man have native bees on their 5 acre patch at Pomona.

they have a couple of hives setup hanging off tress etc etc

they tell me the hives can get fly blown

Hmmm, they can get flyblown(I have peeled enough skin off flyblown sheep) and they don't produce honey...in all honesty I think I might be going for honey bees.

Originally Posted by incisor

We need to work on our boxes.......the one I have looks terrible.

I'll take a pic tomorrow

Wish I knew you were interested. My hive is on holidays at the moment at a mate's place in Uki. I have a spare box that we're about to use to split the hive - you could have had one of them. I love the little critters, but apparently they're not that fond of yellow flowers, which meant I still needed to hand pollinate the Cucurbitaceaes. I hear they've become a fair bit more expensive than the ~$100 I paid for my populated hive...

There's 2 ways to split the hive (that I know of). One is quite dramatic, involving physically breaking the internal hive in half. This can be risky, and a bit traumatic. The other method is to place the boxes side by side, and join them with a piece of tube (conduit works fine). This allows them to eventually populate both hives, which you then move one away far enough so they don;t get confused and fly back to the other. This will be the method I use to split my hive.

Seek out literature from Tim Heard - quite the expert on native bees. http://www.sugarbag.net/

Originally Posted by V8Ian

Ask Bob 10, he's into bees, not sure what flavour.

Italian honey bees, Ian. Any one considering getting into honey bees should join a Bee keeping association, there is a lot to learn. I joined an association and helped out experienced bee keepers on their hives for 12 months before I felt I had the knowledge to look after my own. Now every hive has to be registered, and you have to apply for a bio-security number. Bio-security is being taken very seriously, with the problems bee keepers are having over seas. Having said that, bee keeping is a fascinating hobby, well worth getting into, which can turn into a full time job very easily , if you get carried away. As for native bees, there are two types, the social stingless and the solitary bees. The Northside Bee-keeping association has members who keep both honey and social stingless of bees, and are only too pleased to pass that knowledge on. Just a tip, the association has a number of professional bee keepers on its books, and when I asked one how long it takes to learn all about it, he replied he had been keeping bees professionally for 25 years, and was still learning. A link for social bees is here. All the information you'll need.

www.aussiebee.com.au