Inspecting a frame for eggs
Thursday and Friday we were into some serious bee keeping work. We went out to an Apiary near Yumali that has over one hundred hives where we had to lift the honey, giving space for the bees to fill up some more supers (hive boxes) with sweet sweet honey, and put clearer boards on under the honey boxes so that when we came back they’d be bee free. The Volkenburg boys were doing the same work at a newly acquired Apiary nearby. The bees had been working the nearby Canola crops and combined with the cool weather they weren’t too happy to have us opening up their homes to the elements. We all copped a few stings, I got mine before I was suited up. I’d read that swarming bees were quite non-aggressive so I went to check out a large swarm of bees hanging from a tree and was greeted by an angry bzzzzzz one: in the neck, bzzzzzz two: through the hair at the back of my head, bzzzzzz three: another in the neck. However it wasn’t all stings, Fraser and I had the treat for the first time of tasting fresh honey directly from the hive. Awesome.