21 Feb A Shaky Season But The Marri Flow Has Come!

This season has not been a great season.  We had grand plans to get the bees up and running in early spring and start queen rearing for people.  As is often the case, mother nature had different ideas.  We took about a dozen hives up to the Canola early spring (up north near Moora) and these hives did really well after picking up a good hit of nectar and pollen.  However, back at home, in Kelmscott, the Flooded Gum (Eucalyptus rudis), which normally does quite well, didn’t put on much of a show at all!  The spring flower also wasn’t great, and the weather seemed cooler and wetter than usual; this might have something to do with the La Niña this summer.

There’s been a lot of feeding of hives this year with sugar water, just to help them through.  We have some hives at a friend’s farm in Jarrahdale also, which have eaten through supers of honey from last year and have also been fed; it’s been a tough season!

We’re now coming to the end of this season, with the red gum (Marri) in flower, this is an exciting time for the bees.  Looking in the hives today there seems to be a good flow of nectar and pollen. The queens are laying well now, with some great brood pattens seen for the first time in the season. We’re hoping to get enough honey in to see the hives through the coming winter.  We’re starting to add supers to the strong hives, with some of them starting to build under the lids.  Hopefully, the flow continues for the next two to three weeks and the supers fill up!

I know some of the friends we’ve made from our classes have had a much better season than us, particularly those in suburbia.  Hopefully, some of you reading this have had a good season too. We’re just starting to get organised with a website and a Facebook chat group – Heathers’ Beekeeping Chat (an extra resource for those that have been on our courses).  We’re hopeful this Facebook chat group will bring people from our classes together a bit more and help share ideas and problem solve issues people might have.

www.facebook.com/groups/heathersbeekeepingchat/