To bee or not to bee....

Peasants · **Posted:** Sun Apr 28, 2013 9:48 am

Burnsey: It is good to share

! We have been able to share some honey, which is great but sharing a frame/some comb is a great idea :thumb:

Faye: I am planning on making some lip balm first! Found a great, simple recipe- just waiting to get some suitable containers first! If it works I'll bring some to you!
http://snapguide.com/guides/make-beeswa ... 9945963-15

Peasants · **Posted:** Sat May 04, 2013 10:11 pm

Ok...here it is....lip balm made from cleaned capping wax and honey! Very nice it is too! 28 grams of beeswax made 155 ml of lip balm, just added honey and olive oil!

Simo · **Posted:** Tue May 07, 2013 12:08 am

very

Burnsy · **Posted:** Tue May 07, 2013 11:41 am

Very cool, can you post a link to where you got the containers from? My girls would love making that to give to friends and family at Christmas.

Peasants · **Posted:** Tue May 07, 2013 9:08 pm

Burnsey I got them from Silverlock in Canning Vale http://www.silverlock.com.au
I used their lip balm tubes (they come in black or white) and the 10 gram cosmetic jars (they come in clear or white). They do online orders too!
The recipe was http://snapguide.com/guides/make-beeswa ... -lip-balm/ and it was so very easy! It really doesn't need the peppermint oil it suggests. I am going to make it with some year 6 students in the next couple of weeks.

Peasants · **Posted:** Mon Dec 30, 2013 10:03 pm

Well, good and bad news re the bees…the original hive did not make it after winter :sad2:

However, we had already placed a second nearby and that is going well. We also caught a swarm in November and that is thriving too. Both are now ready for a super and it seems it may be just in time for the honey flow- the jarrah is flowering like mad as are a few others…fingers crossed!

Angel · **Posted:** Fri Apr 25, 2014 10:27 pm

Good evening. I have been interested in bee keeping for a few years now, it is fascinating to read about your success stories. The last time I looked into the legalities of it I worked out I could not have a hive as I am on a small suburban block, according to council regs the hive had to be so far from the boundary, so far from living quarters...hence it is impossible for Anyone in suburbia to have a hive (also we can not own poultry as similar housing requirements apply).

After that I stopped researching, however I have seen a couple of news stories on bee keepers over East who offer services which set up hives on other peoples properties and do all of the maintenance, the property owners get some honey in return. They had hives set up on top of high rises in the middle of the city, Melbourne I think.

Is anyone doing this in Perth?

Peasants · **Posted:** Sun Sep 21, 2014 2:14 pm

Time for an update! The two hives are going well...they both stayed strong over winter and now spring is here they are very active! We have already harvested two frames from each, and now we have added another super on each. It is go cool to see them going so well after the problems we had last year.
It is interesting to see that even though the hives are probably only a 100 metres apart, they produced honey that was a different colour. The 'kitchen hive' is close to the veggie garden and aquaponics system, and the 'billabong garden' is in a native bush area.
We have learnt so much by having the kitchen hive- it is literally straight in front of the kitchen window so we see it at all times of the day and across the seasons - it has been fascinating.

This photo (if it worked!!) is through the kitchen window, and before we added the second super yesterday.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

katmac · **Posted:** Wed Sep 24, 2014 5:02 pm

This thread, along with Burnsy's has definitely made me want a hive now.

I'm not sure that I have the room yet, but I will certainly look into it!

Thanks for sharing

Peasants · **Posted:** Wed Sep 24, 2014 9:07 pm

Thank you! We can highly recommend it!!

Perpetuitas · **Posted:** Fri Nov 28, 2014 3:54 am

Dear Peasants!

I could find a like button so I ill do it by a post: LIKE LIKE LIKE LIKE LIKE! Great absolutely wonderful!

Would you mind telling me the name of the plants you posted pictures of? I really like thos flowers!

Peasants · **Posted:** Fri Nov 28, 2014 9:03 am

Thank you Perpetuitas :wave:

The cream flowers in the photos are either jarrah (Eucalyptus marginal) or Eucalyptus patens or todtiana....it is very difficult to tell them apart!!

The pink ones are either Corymbia ficifolia or a pink version of Corymbia calophylla.......again it is hard to be certain!!

Perpetuitas · **Posted:** Fri Nov 28, 2014 11:06 am

Thanks a lot for your help!

I will then try to buy all 5 trees :-).

How you will thrive with your bees! Take good care of them as I had to sell mine before going to university.

Keep up the good work!

Peasants · **Posted:** Sun Sep 27, 2015 5:58 pm

Time for another update!
The hives have been going well, so well in fact we have way more honey than we can manage...so, we have reassessed. Our number one reason for having hives is to help the bee population because of all they are faced with these days. A great benefit of that is harvesting honey, but this isn't the main reason we became beekeepers. So... we have looked at other hive styles that are supposed to be more bee friendly or more natural for the bees, and we decided to experiment with a couple.
We had a Warre and a Topbar made by the Dunsborough Men's Shed group, and had a great trip down there recently to pick them up!
We decided to replace the Kitchen Hive (the Langstroth hive visible from the kitchen window) with the Warre, which is a bit tricky given the different sizes. It seemed a good time to do it at the end of winter before the numbers really increase.
We cut up some full frames and cable tied them to the Warre frames, rather than give them all empty ones.

Then we removed the top super and the queen excluder and added a Warre super on top of a wooden board (with an opening the size of the Warre but covering up the rest of the Langstroth).

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The bees managed really well, and are coming and going still from the original brood box, but have moved up into the top section. this has a perspex viewing window which is great for a quick check!

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We are hoping the queen will move up into the Warre as the brood box is pretty full, but are thinking of undersupering with the Warre if we need to.

Peasants · **Posted:** Sun Sep 27, 2015 6:18 pm

The Topbar we had made has replaced the old box we put a swarm into last year. This was fascinating inside! The bees were quite placid and had made amazing comb in the box, even on top of a yellow mat we had put in there. They were obviously really getting short of space so it was perfect timing to transfer.

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As cut the comb (some with honey and some with brood) and as with the Warre, we used cable ties to attach them to the bars. It was a very messy job, and some weren't successful but overall we managed to get enough in for the bees to follow.

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One week later and this is going gangbusters!

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We had a viewing window put in the Topbar too, and it is great to see how the bees are going without having to suit up and disturb them.

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