It is happening all over the state this year. I am getting many reports of dead colonies and it is a very sad loss. The owner of this hive was understandably upset. With the poorest season and the most chaotic flowering for a decade, bees are dying. Some people are reporting losses of 4 to 5 hives from a 10 hive apiary, others 1 in 3. Many beekeepers are combining hives in an effort to strengthen hives for winter. There is a natural process that happens in colonies where food sources are poor. The bees sacrifice themselves for the survival of the colony. Given poor sources of food in Autumn a ..read more

I was sent this outline of a hive that needs to be prepared for winter. In a cool climate the bees need as much warmth retention as possible so each box needs a honey frame at 1 & 8 (for 8 frame boxes). They need the empty spaces removed so they can cluster close to honey and be able to maintain all the comb. Bees are happiest on fresh comb, so removing older comb is beneficial. As a rule, 1 year comb is fresh wax and sometimes with honey, 2nd year is honey storage, 3rd year is brood use and then it is replaced. In a natural hive the bees get wax moth to chew out the brood comb as a natur ..read more

Warre Quilt for Insulation can be used on Langstroth hives I was going to call this post 'Lifting the Lid on Winter Inspection' but was concerned someone may open a hive in winter! Unless you live in a warm climate then you could be making a big mistake. The cluster in a hive needs to maintain warmth of 32 to 35 degrees C. That is some achievement in a cool climate. As you move away from the cluster the temperature can drop quite dramatically. Near the end of winter, the bees have been nurturing brood and are working hard to maintain these high temperatures. Below 15 degrees C the brood ..read more

I have just answered a query about stopping crosscombing in a Horizontal hive and thought others may be interested in my response. Oh crosscombing can be difficult sometimes. We have a kind of rule when dealing with natural comb. Firstly of course, you would be aware that comb in the brood area should be renewed every three years to reduce disease and keep you bees a good size. So every spring, I add a frame or two at the brood end of the horizontal hive. We place our entrance at the side about four frames in from the edge. The bees will always put their brood over that entrance area. So we s ..read more

Using a Japanese saw to cut the frames Transferring bees to a new hive in Autumn is a tricky business in a cool climate but here is how we did it. The bars in the Top Bar Hive (TBH) were much longer than the bars on a Layens, so we had to cut each end off to ensure the comb fitted centrally in the new cavity. The owners had set up the new hive close to the original hive with the entrance facing the same direction. This preparation makes the move so much easier on the bees. We started on the end frames that had no brood and fewer bees, and cut 3 frames at a time. The bees coped well with a slo ..read more

Bees, bees, bees I’ve had several calls from concerned beekeepers wondering why they have masses of bees when they know things are often slowing down before winter. This is not unusual when we do the mathematics. So the longest day of the year was a few days before xmas and the queen would have been laying the maximum number of eggs. If there are spare cells as well as plenty of pollen and honey she may lay up to 3,000 eggs per day. Given they take about three weeks before hatching, then there are many new house bees about three weeks after that (mid January), then many more forage bees about ..read more

The old TBH with a temporary cover to protect the bees Recently I assisted some new beekeepers in checking their Top Bar Hive (TBH). I was concerned the moment I saw it and my concerns deepened as we checked out the bees. Like many new beekeepers they had done some research and clearly wanted bees to be on natural comb. A TBH is an attractive option and has been a favoured hive for those wanting bees to live as naturally as possible. In the earlier days of permaculture living and organic gardening the TBH was sometimes the only option available. The difficulty with this hive is its use in dif ..read more

Reading a Swarm Some of us just love collecting swarms. They are part of my bee services and I find them forever fascinating. Let me share some of my experience so you may understand swarm behaviour. Swarming is a natural process of reproduction driven primarily by the abundance of good forage in any year. The first swarm from a hive is a large primary one with the old queen. Following this, the original colony may cast smaller, weaker secondary swarms. The swarm first assembles close to the hive and settle into one clump. The bees will be calm with low amounts of activity on their surface. S ..read more

The Swarm at Bathurst St Dec 2018 By popular demand, I am posting the video I put together for the TasTAFE Humanitarian Students who look after the Bathurst St bees. One of their hives produced this beautiful swarm which I had the pleasure of collecting and placing in a hive. Hopefully, this will inspire you to collect hives and provide homes for them. Natural Beekeeping Tasmania & 40beessouth show the hiving of a swarm from the TasTAFE Humanitarian student's hive in Hobart into a Warre Hive ..read more

I am often asked about the pros and cons of different hive types, so here are a few things to consider. In a different b blog I posted about horizontal and vertical hives in our cool climate, so in this section I will just consider the 3 main vertical options - flowhive, langstroth and warre hive. Flowhive A Flowhive is a Langstroth (Lang) box with a smart piece of plastic technology on top. In Tasmania, this hive requires a little more work than an ordinary Lang. The advantages are they look good with their gable roof and nicely machined boxes, and the bottom box is a deep one with the capac ..read more