Backyard Farming Forum
Bringing food production home

I started beekeeping about three years back, I was inspired by memories of my grandfather keepeing bees in "the old country" and the wild hive that is in a tree on my block.

I wasn't very knowledgable about how to care for the bees so did a WEA course here in South Australia run by Martin Gilbert of Gilberts beekeeping. They do several courses through out the year with both beginner and advanced classes.

From there I arranged to get a bees from a local keeper in my area and set about looking after them.
I have since caught two swarms, and rescued a swarm which had set up home in an old speaker box that a work colegue had ready for hard rubish. So now I have four hives.

Up until now we have only taken small amounts of honey from the bees as we haven't really needed that much. and usually done a crush and strain
Hoever the hive at my Mothers house is going gangbusters and even though its only a first year hive it already has a full box of nine frames of honey ready for extraction. I'm putting it down to the fact that where they are is generally warmer than at my place.

Anywho, this weekend I will be hopeing to extract said honey with my new extractor. I am hopeing to be able to produce some Mead from this batch and also have some honey for friends and family.

I will try and get some photos of my hives on here so people can see what I am doing.

FWIW, my four hives are Langstroth 10 frame hives, though I only put in nine frames in each box. I had thought of doing other hives such as the Warre or the Kenyan Top bar I decided against them for two reasons. The Warre requires that you lift the entire hive to put a new box on the bottom. All I could see was myself tipping the whole lot over and having a mass of very angry bees. The top bar hive I just don't like the look of, it just looks too much like a baby coffin.

H

Hi Himzo, we would love to have a hive, however i think our neighbours are just a little too close for comfort. They are amazing little creatures. We did research native bees many years back, but unfortunately hiving natives dont come down this far south.

would love to see photos.

Good luck with the honey extraction H

Burnsy is right into bees and I think he built a top bar type hive that looks good

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Yeah, it didn't happen... The weather in Adelaide on Saturday was less than pleasent,. I just had enough time to put on a another super before the bees started to get nasty and wanted the hive shut.. So the plan is to wait until the end of the montha nd do it then.

I've seen Burnsy's top bar hive, Nice timber and workmanship is very good but I can't get past the shape.

Himzo..

I had bees for a few years in inner city Melbourne.
I caught a swarm.
I had to sell them when I moved to an apartment.
Still umming and ahhring about getting some more.
Set up costs are pretty high when starting from scratch again.

If you build up slow and over time then you could spread the cost. So that by the time the next swarm season starts you could have a hive ready. Also if you go down the line of the top bar hives then you don't need an extractor as it's all crush and strain for honey production.

even if you don't recover any honey, it's somehow very relaxing just sitting and watching the front of the hive as the workers come and go..

H.

Ive been looking at top bar designs.
Might keep an eye out for some nice wood.
and yes I loved just watching them as much as the honey

I've only recently got a honey bee hive, picked it up as a nucleus before Chistmas and it's taken off. Just added a super to it last week, all going well I'll be extracting in no time.

Also have 4 native bee hives: 1 X Trigona carbonaria, 2 X Trigona hockingsi and 1 X Austroplebeia australis. My native bees are all stingless, they don't produce a lot of honey but they're great to help with pollination.

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Cheers,

LV aka Tony
My Blog

How are everyones bees going? Picked up two swarms locally in the last week through a gumtree ad so we (father and I) are slowly filling the empty hives that we had lying around. Four now and two more empties to fill, six should be more than enough to look after.

We have recently bought a hive kit from Guilfoyles, and currently putting it together. Italian bees are on order.....we are looking forward to adding bees to the menagerie!!

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Long time between posts work has kept me really busy so my garden isn't as good as it should be.


One of my Trigona hockingsi hives died out over winter, the honey bee hive has gone fantastic though. I have extracted around 65kg of honey from it so far. It's ready for a another 'rob' now, it'll have to wait until after Christmas.

I started a second honey bee hive from a swarm I caught in my neighbours yard, it powered on well for a while and then started dying off. I realised that the queen had died and got onto the local bee club that I'm a member of.

Got told to try adding some brood frames from my original hive to it to see if they would raise their own queen. This worked really well and I added a second super to it today, they had started filling the lid area with burr comb.

Having a lot of fun and still learning my way around bees in general.

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Cheers,

LV aka Tony
My Blog

Welcome back LV

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Why did the chicken cross the road? ... To have her motives questioned.

Thanks, good to be able to have time to surf forums again.

Also picked up another swarm today, a small swarm only. Now to see if it kicks off or needs a new queen.

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Cheers,

LV aka Tony
My Blog

I think that of all the things in my garden the bees are the greatest "time wasters". I spend far too much time watching them come and go and not doing my other jobs

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Cheers
Rob.

Both the swarms we picked up this year shot through a month back . Picked up another last week which is very late in the season, I think I will bolster it with a frame of honey and brood from anther hive to give it a chance.

Marri is in flower, pulled 15kg of honey from the hive that I caught last year and I have to rob the topbar hive in the coming week as it is bulging.