Splitting our native bee hives. The good, the bad and the ugly!
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 ก.ย. 2024
- Watch as we split some of our Australian native bee hives.
has been over a year now since we got our off-grid property. This is our narrated and chronicled in-depth experiences, challenges, inventions, aspirations, and ways of living off the grid. We have chosen to transition and radically re-invent daily life in a dramatically innovative but also quite traditional way.
For those that are new here - Last year our family bought 140 acres of land off the grid in Australia and we call it Chimney Creek Farm. We are currently camping in and around our shed, and dream of building a more sustainable and peaceful life.
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Tim Heard’s Native Bee book:
www.nativebeeb...
Wow excellent guidance for someone thinking of getting started - admire the effort and committment to providing a great environment to natives. Tip on predation was really cool advice. The hives pollen load was incredible as was the honey harvest. Enjoyed it.👌
Thank you for watching! Glad you enjoyed it. We love our native bees and are still learning after all these years! The honey is so good and they are cute little creatures :)
We have been beekeepers for European bees for many years. But natives are something special and what a great video on splitting them you have shared.
Thanks so much for watching and commenting! Yes, my grandfather and father were beekeepers for European honey bees too, they are all so fascinating!
Thanks for video 👍👍😊🇦🇺
You’re very welcome! Thanks for watching :)
So interesting to watch, again! I was surprised by the "lemony" taste, it must be a fantastic flavour. I wish I could have bees too one day, let's see... It was a very nice sharing, thank you! I'm pleased I learned something new.
Glad you enjoyed it! The native bee honey is very tangy and sometimes takes on the flavour of whatever flowers are around. Do you see bees around your garden? Thanks for commenting 💕
@Tinachimneycreekfarm many bees, yes! Well, in this period just a few of them. Especially bumblebee which is the one that hung out during winter too. We've also many "xylocopa violacea"...I try to provide them many beloved plants 🪻
That’s awesome!
You just explain everything so well
Thank you! Tim Heard’s bee book is really helpful as a resource.
I keep European honeybees. This process is so different, but at the same time relatable. The honey is stored in the top for both types of bees. Also, hive splitting is very similar. I just couldn’t imagine working with such tiny bees. I would be afraid of crushing them all.
Haha well, many do get crushed in the process sometimes unfortunately! It’s still the best way to help them produce and multiply though. My dad and his dad looked after the European honey bees so I grew up with them. I used to always get stung because I was always running around barefoot! Ahh the days of being wild and carefree! My grandfather had a big honey extractor that spun all the honey out of the frames and we had a tap we could just turn on to get the honey 😋 I must say that we did sometimes just stick our tongues under that tap!
It's good to see inside these hives. Our Tetragonula bees are in tree hollows and I've wondered what it was like in their hives.
Australia has six species of Tetragonula. The Cabonaria and hockingsi nests look completely different, so depends which type you have. These ones are the carbonaria ones :)
Interesting video. Tip: use an ice block on the honey super to get all the bees out. They will naturally go into the bottom of the hive. There may be a lot of ‘walkers’ in there that cannot fly back. There is also sometimes an unmated/virgin queen in the stores. It is also good to leave the hive sealed for a short period of time to allow the bees to repair. Another less intrusive method is eduction or budding- but this is personal preference and Tim also talks about this in his book.
Thanks for the info!
Awesome video thanks for sharing TrickyTrev 👍🐝🍯
You’re welcome! We’re still learning so much about our bees after all these years!
@@Tinachimneycreekfarm yes I’m still learning too, been working with ours for several years. Also have worked with honey bees as well. Thanks again 👍🐝🍯
Hello I'm from Brazil. Here we have more than 300 species of stingless bees. I can tell you that there are management techniques with Inpa bee boxes that harm the swarm much less.
Hi and welcome! That is a lot of species of stingless bees!
Interstimg 👍👍 native bee
Very interesting little creatures!
Do you guys know if Carbonaria survive the 3 month cold spells in lowland NSW?
I’ve heard that the native bees go all the way down to Nowra in NSW. They don’t like the inland areas, the tablelands or highlands are too cold for them. We live in a colder climate now and we don’t see them around. We do see the blue banded bee and the European honey bee here though. We still have heaps of native hives around Brisbane though.
Does it take time for bees to begin working again when the split has been more destructive as in the first example ?
we are seeing no bees entering or exiting at all - suspect our first attempt of a split was a failure as the quite a few dead bee inside now
Yes, I believe that all the bee activity slows down for a while so that the bees can rebuild everything inside. So I guess, the more damage, the more work but if you aren’t seeing any bees at all, yes your split could have failed. It needs to be a really healthy , full and heavy hive before splitting and you need to make sure you get enough brood for it to work successfully as well. You have to follow the rules in Tim Heard’s Native Bee book :)
@@Tinachimneycreekfarm I guess we will wait and see - and keep finger crossed
Another oddity the bees seem to have built upside down compared to all the other videos we watched
The brood was in the mid and top sections and the honey pollen store in the lower
Your hives look lovely! We purchased one hive to get started and it died over the winter :(
Oh no! Yes we found that many species die in areas where it gets too cold. I know your winter temps are similar to our off grid property in Tenterfield and they seem to die there too but we have lots in and around Brisbane that do exceptionally well. Maybe you could put one at your mums!
@@Tinachimneycreekfarm I had thought because we only dropped low briefly we’d be ok and I discussed it with the guy who sold them to me and he still sold them :(. Bit sad! Mum lives in a unit so no yard or anything there and we didn’t get them for honey we wanted them for pollination purposes, we seem to have a large population of leaf cutter bees though!
Oh okay well maybe some bee hotels would be a good addition? I saw that the leaf cutters were eating some of your plants too :(
How is the first split going, where the brood didn’t seperate?
We probably won’t find out how they went until we go to split them again in September. They are on the property of friends of friends so we only see them when we split the hives, once a year.
Can we make food for it as soon as possible?
Not sure what you’re asking here.
@@Tinachimneycreekfarm Is there a way to make artificial food for them?
what is the size of the colony box
We use the OATH measurements roughly.
What is the species of your bee? what is the measure of you box?
These are Tetragonula Carbonaria bees and we use a variation of the OATH (Original Australian Trigona Hive) bee hive design.