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Author Topic: Beekeeping in Your Area  (Read 922 times)

Offline Ben Framed

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Beekeeping in Your Area
« on: January 18, 2022, 03:15:51 pm »
Tell us about beekeeping your area. For instance; How long is your season and what is the average return (in weight) from a hive in your location? Do you place your bees over crops? Are you a pollinator etc?  Tell us any other unique things about keeping bees in your area.
As Lesgold and TheHoneyPump has discussed; We are fortunate to have beekeepers from all over the world.  Your experiences will received with delight.

Thanks,

Ben Framed,
TheHoneyPump, and
Lesgold
« Last Edit: January 18, 2022, 03:28:31 pm by Ben Framed »
2 Chronicles 7:14
14 If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.

Offline Lesgold

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Re: Beekeeping in Your Area
« Reply #1 on: January 18, 2022, 05:11:05 pm »
Thanks for starting the thread Phillip. I?m really interested in hearing how people run their bees and what processes they follow to get production from their hives. In my personal situation, I only keep bees as a hobby and don?t have to rely on an income from them. Therefore the way that I manage them is not indicative of what the professional beekeepers in my area would do. I live on 2 acres of land and am surrounded by natural bush land. I run around 30 hives and never move them. (About 20 on my place and the rest at another location) The main nectar source for the bees is eucalyptus trees. I have around 9 different species of eucalypts on my area and their flowering cycles vary from once a year up to about once every 10 years. (About every 3 years is the average) Seasons therefore vary considerably as far as production goes. In 2019 we had a bushfire go through on the last day of the year. September 2021 was the first time that I pulled any honey after that event.  I live in a temperate climate and the bees will continue to forage throughout the winter. Our coldest nights occasionally get down to as low as 0 degrees Celsius. Winter daytime temperatures can get as low as 9 or 10 degrees.  Pollen is available to the bees for 12 months of the year. Good supplies of pollen are available just prior to spring build up. Nectar is available every year for bees to collect in the last month of winter and early spring. I consider myself really lucky as the environment is conducive to keeping bees. My bees never get fed any sugar water, pollen patties or supplements. I have occasionally used sugar water to help weak hives build or if I am given a swarm late in the year during a dearth. As you would expect, honey production is low and unreliable due to my situation and methods followed. In a poor year I would normally produce about 20kg per hive and a really good year  80kg + per hive is possible. So far this year I would be averaging about 30kg per productive hive. This year the spotted gum will be flowering during the winter and I will be extracting during the cooler months so I would expect to double what I have now. That?s about it for me. What do you guys do? Tell us about your operation.

Cheers

Les

Offline Oldbeavo

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Re: Beekeeping in Your Area
« Reply #2 on: January 19, 2022, 05:22:39 pm »
Basically a migratory bee keeper, we use a ute and trailer with 50 hives per load.
Bees are Wintered in a dry warm, 12-15 C, area about 200 mile from home. They go there in late Autumn and spend all wither there.
August 1 they go to almonds for 4 weeks, then about half go to cherries for 4-5 weeks, balance come home to canola.
Most strong hives are split for swarm control, this produces nucs for sale in late Spring.
After cherries and canola the bees are on the road to where ever the trees are blossoming, mainly eucalyptus
Our configuration of hives is very basic, full depth 8 frame, single brood box, queen excluders, plastic foundation in wooden frames and the use of bee escapes/ clearer boards to remove harvest honey. We run 230 wooden hives and 120 poly Paradise hives.
Mainly run as doubles, for lifting of full supers and for weight for transport.
Marketing of honey is through Farmer Markets, canola is wholesaled to big packers.

In our general area our configuration of hives is common though some run 10 frames. A few BK's are running WSP honey supers just for lower weight

 

anything