I found a native bee hive!

 I was so excited to find a native bee hive in a tree on our property. It was purely by chance as I was looking at a branch at the base of a dead gum tree and there was the beehive at my eyeline!

It's a very busy hive, and I assume they are the bees that were frequenting my flowers before I brought my hives here. The tree it's in is long dead, the neighbour told me it was hit by lightning. The old termite nest above it looks like it is being used as a nest by rosellas. I've popped an arrow on the photo pointing to where the bee hive is.

Native bees on begonia

 The native bees were absolutely loving the begonia flowers one sunny day. Normally they are enjoying the marigolds and violas in this planter and previously, I've only ever seen the odd bee visiting the begonias.

It is a keeper for our garden simply because our toddler loves eating the flowers, but it's even better knowing the bees love it too!

Without my little bee watcher who likes to get a really close look at flowers, I would have never noticed them on the anemone flowers. I've tried to choose the photos with the most noticeable bees on them. Red has one at the top, purple has two at the top left and pink has three.

My native bees are here

 My sister-in-law looked after our bees for us until the weather cooled down as I was worried about the heat here as we don't have a nice cool spot for them. But now they're finally here so that means we're officially moved in (we really should finish unpacking the shed)! Don't mind Archie in the background - he's loving all the sticks that fall on windy days.

This is the coolest spot in the yard thanks to the existing small trees and next doors lovely shade trees. You can see a few of my orchids as well - a good spot to keep orchids is also a good spot to keep native bees! I plan to add in bottle brush, geisha and my finger limes in between the existing trees. It should create a nice curved green wall and give us some privacy as well. I'm sure Archie will also appreciate the extra shade and shelter from the strong winds we get.

I've shared photos of our bee garden at our old house. They should be happy here as we've seen plenty of stingless, blue banded, resin and leafcutter bees, plus lots of different wasps and hoverflies - even those beautiful cuckoo wasps.

One sunflower bloomed

 One of the first things I planted when we moved was a whole heap of sunflower seeds, and the rabbits ate most of them. Only one survived long enough to have a full bloom free of nibbles, then it got chewed one night, leaving just enough stem to put in a bottle of water.

Thankfully it is still happy enough and the native bees are absolutely loving it - obviously my next project is some fencing around the flower pit!

Bee Themed Birthday

A cute little girl turned two last month and I chose a bee theme for her party this year.

As much as I love this fabric, boy is it hard to photograph - it just doesn't want to focus! I opted for size three as I was worried it would be too small, but I was wrong - at least she won't grow out of it anytime soon!

This pattern is Nottingham from Little Lizard King and the fabric is one I bought from Spotlight while I was pregnant (along with many other bee fabrics).

I found the cute bee cupcake toppers on Printables and printed them on the 3D printer.

I have been saving lanterns and fans since our daughters 1st birthday, just added in some blue and yellow this year, plus some cute bee decorations.

The cute little hexagonal bee box was from Thingiverse - I just printed the top section in yellow which looks great! I added sunflower seeds from The Seed Collection.

Sunflowers

 It seems like all the bugs like sunflowers, not only the pollinators loving the flowers, but also whichever critters enjoy eating them as seedlings. Needless to say I was very happy that these two have bloomed - and one of them has lots of extra flowers on it's stalk.

Since photos weren't showing all the cute little native bees I thought I'd try sharing a video.

Now that the seeds have formed, the rosellas have been enjoying the free feed, although I bet they wish the dog would stop noticing them!

First Honey Harvests

Awhile ago we harvested two frames of honey from the brood box before we put our super on using the crush and strain method. I made a huge mess but we got just over two litres of honey and a nice chunk of beeswax as well! It was my first time harvesting honey and rendering beeswax and I had fun, but I'm sure it would get monotonous after awhile.

Last week I got to harvest from the 2 of the flow frames for the first time. We ended up with 1.9 litres from the first frame and 2 litres from the last frame. So much easier, far less mess and no wax to render when you have flow frames!

I also made up some little jars of honey to give away at Christmas and they look so cute!

Pyrography Nativo Bee Hive

I did some wood burning on another native bee hive, this one is a Nativo hive. I still need to revarnish it as I sanded it all off before I started burning, it's possible to burn while varnished but I prefer not to. Once I've varnished it I'm going to use it as an eduction on my TC hive, this will be the first time I try them so we'll see how they go!

Flow frames are being filled

 At the start of the month we added the super to our Flow Hive and were expecting the bees to take awhile to get used to the flow frames. Surprisingly when I checked a couple of days later they had started filling the gaps with wax. I did another peek through the windows today and they have started filling the flow frames with honey!

Sorry about the glare on the perspex, I hope you can see the honey filling all the pots, it is rather exciting. Once they have capped the cells it means the honey is ready to be extracted, then they can clean it out, seal up the cracks and start again! Next time it will be ready alot faster as they can reuse the wax that is already there.

We added the super to our Flow Hive!

So back in July I shared a photo of our beautiful Flow Hive with the bee nucleus we got in April.

Our bees have been busy all winter and I noticed they were starting to beard on the front of the hive. Being that we have only just hit spring, it wasn't because of the heat so I opened them up to find they had started building comb between the frames and the lid as they had run out of room for honey!

I saved the honey from the clean up of the lid and it is delicious! We have heard that the bees can take a while to start using the flow frames for the first time. With their hive being so full we pulled out a frame of honey and gave them an empty frame they can start on until they're ready to use the flow frames.

Now they have plenty of room and they are as busy as always! It's not the best photo sorry, I had bees bouncing off me while I was standing in the flight path. It was overcast and windy, it still surprises me how busy European bees are in bad weather. Our natives bees are much smaller and don't leave their hive on days like this!

We chose the flow hive so we didn't need honey extraction equipment.As we mainly want honey, the flow hive made the most sense for us, especially since we can only have one hive. Which means, for the frame we removed we will be doing the mash and strain technique. We will use this technique whenever I need some wax for my homemade hand balm.

I'll let you know how we go with our first mash and strain experience, and hopefully soon we can share our first flow harvest with you!

Honey Bees

For my birthday last year we ordered a Flow Hive so we could finally get our very own honey bees! We could of course get honey off our native bees but it is a lot of work for little reward and I prefer the taste of the European bee honey.

Our long awaited hive arrived right when life threw us lots of lemons. So as is my way of coping with grief, I stop creating. I had plans of a beautiful wood burnt hive but instead it sat in its box unassembled because it's so much easier to do the pyrography before assembly.

I tried making myself get it done so we could get bees sooner but I just could not focus on doing the design. And when that was finally done I just didn't feel like even starting to burn.

Gardening became my distraction except it was way too hot in summer so I retreated to the air con and slowly worked on the hive in the middle of the day. And it was finally burnt, assembled and oiled. We bought bee suits and all the gear we needed. I fenced off a spot to keep the chickens and Archie away from the bees. Then covid restrictions started happening and we weren't sure when we could get bees. Thankfully we were able to buy a nucleus and we have now been the proud owners of European bees for 3 months!

We won't be able to add the honey super until Spring, but in the meantime we get to observe, learn and get to know our bees until we can do our first harvest.

Pyrography Native Bee Hives

Last year, before life threw us many lemons, I got the chance to do a collaboration with Steve from nativebeehives.com who makes beautiful cypress native bee hives. H trusted me enough to decorate some of them with pyrography, along with one of his ukuleles.

I have wanted one of Steve's hexagon hives since we first learnt about native stingless bees. Now I think it is too lovely to put outside in the weather and it sits proudly on display, safely inside. One day I'll find the perfect spot to keep it protected from the elements and where I can see it through the window.

Steve gave me an octagon hive and in exchange I got to burn on two of his other hives for him and he also let me do a burn on one of the ukuleles he makes. These are by far the nicest woodworking pieces I've ever burnt on, I was so excited and but also a little terrified that I might make a mistake on such beautifully made hives. Luckily I didn't mess them up, and I'm really happy with how they turned out.

The only thing that needs to be condsidered when doing pyrography on native beehives is if you want to split them later on - the top two levels will be separated from the bottom level so the design can't continue through the levels.

Steve makes a lot of creative and fun native bee hives that are incredibly high quality so please check out his website - he also has an online store if you're interested in buying your own hive. And if you'd like to read the article he wrote about my pyrography you can check that out here.

Native Bees

I found out about native bees many years ago and have been a little obsessed with them. We have planted lots more flowering plants and I have planted a small vegetable garden with flowers in between each crop.

Two years ago I started making a dedicated bee garden and we bought our first stingless bee hive from a local man who really knows his stuff! His hives are so well made and they look lovely in our garden.

Tetragonula Hockingsi

Then a few months later we bought our second hive in a huge log, to go in our completed bee garden - next to the chicken coop. (I love my crazy paving using random bricks and pavers)

Left to Right - Tetragonula Hockingsi, Austroplebeia

Then last year I extended the bee garden across where the chickens were so I could make room for yet another hive!

Left to Right - Tetragonula Hockingsi, Tetragonula Carbonaria, Austroplebeia

And then, once the hives are full I can add an empty hive to the front and hopefully end up with a new hive. This is called an eduction, the other way is to split the hive.

The bee garden has also become my orchid garden as they both enjoy shady summers and more sun in winter. I have shade cloth over this area that I remove once the weather cools down.