What’s on my mind? Honey.

…And this scene, from the 1985 film, “Bliss” where the scorned lover sneaks about his beekeeping love’s bush retreat, secretly planting honey blossom trees, to send her a ‘love letter’ via bees.

The love letter that took eight years:

https://aso.gov.au/titles/features/bliss/clip3/

“To say Bliss was ahead of its time is an understatement: the bold metaphors and sharp satire weren’t appreciated by everyone in 1985. (Video excerpt 3.14 minutes This clip chosen to be G)”

#beeks #beekeeping #AustralianCinema #AustralianFilm

2 …People, I actually cried when I saw how terribly denuded our original hive had become from poisoning and illness, and they whimpered sadly for weeks, in a way they never had done before. Heartbreaking sound. I’m so glad they have a possible future!

At the pro’s suggestion today, that we might just destroy our original colony and let the strong new one in, I was aghast. I’m hopeless, I’m sorry, I can’t! So now we have months of ultra-babying of this sick colony back to health, ahead of us. But I feel hopeful. 😀

It feels like an analogy for so many things right now.

#beeks #beekeeping

Good beehive news, maybe?

We had a professional beek around today. We had been nursing our colony through multiple poisoning events, bad weather and sickness. Dead and dying everywhere, and then oh no, we suddenly had a tiny colony without a queen?

So… we ordered a nuc with the idea of merging it with our (literally only) handful of survivors. We didn’t even know if they’d be alive when he got here. But when our pro beek arrived, he found a recently hatched baby queen!

I was glad to hear that our efforts to keep them alive with feed and herbal medicines was validated. But it’s still not certain that our surviving colony will have the numbers to make it through the next winter…

Anyhow, we added the new colony to our usual Flow hive, and transferred our original colony to a temp corflute box nearby. We’ll nurse them, and watch and wait and see what happens.

We also learnt that our new colony is some kind of mongrel (poss Italian hybrid), while our original colony looks like really dark Russians. TIL! If they survive, they’ll be moving into a new Finnish Paradise hive in a nearby veg patch… 1

#beeks #beekeeping

Chilling with the #bees before the chaos begins. And I think there needs to be an #ObservationHive hashtag because I keep hoping there are more #Beeks like me out there (bee geek fyi). #BeeKeeping

The varroa mite situation this year is at levels I have never seen. We had one urban hive that had hundreds of mites on the bottom board post-thymovar. While the one next to it had none.

Anyone else has a weird season?
#beekeeping #beeks #beekeepers #savethebees.