beekeeping

[Siggor]

http://www.aussiebee.com.au/abol-003.html

http://www.aussiebee.com.au/infobooklets.html

http://www.bobthebeeman.com.au/BeeMan.htm

http://www.australiannativebees.com/N_main.php

[San Rainbow]

So Native bees.. the'yre claimed to be endangered and need help.. and big underrated resource..

have others researched native bee keeping?

It would cost you over $300 for a 20cm hive with bees :S

These bees can be multiplied by a factor of 2 nearly each year,

(meaning from what I understand, the hives just copy and split themselves)

so that anyone who has native bees in a decent place, could probably have shitloads of them.

So is $300 a conservation price?

Even the c.s.i.r.o 'booklets' total $70-80 or something, for enough information to get going.

No bees equal no planet, more or less. So why the F are these dudes with 60-100+ hive not sharing the love?

Shouldn't all this be 'free'?

Isn't there as much honour amongst beekeepers, as mushroom growers? Thats one of my fave things bout herbs and shrooms.Ppl usually know where the loves at, and they share freely.

This is just pissing me off a bit. what do u guys think?

 

I am down for some free love!

[shortly]

It would cost you over $300 for a 20cm hive with bees :S

These bees can be multiplied by a factor of 2 nearly each year,

(meaning from what I understand, the hives just copy and split themselves)

so that anyone who has native bees in a decent place, could probably have shitloads of them.

So is $300 a conservation price?

Even the c.s.i.r.o 'booklets' total $70-80 or something, for enough information to get going.

No bees equal no planet, more or less. So why the F are these dudes with 60-100+ hive not sharing the love?

Shouldn't all this be 'free'?

Isn't there as much honour amongst beekeepers, as mushroom growers? Thats one of my fave things bout herbs and shrooms.Ppl usually know where the loves at, and they share freely.

This is just pissing me off a bit. what do u guys think?

 

I'd love to have some of your TC's, multiplying by a factor of 2 nearly each year.

Everyone else can only split a hive every other year & even then its not 100% And if you actually want to rob some honey you can pretty much count on skiping splitting the hive for another year if you dont want to risk losing the hive the following winter.

Plus most of the guys with 80 - 100 hives are running commercial pollination services, their hives are their livelihood.

Most of my mushrooms on the other hand (when not floating around after tropical storms) double their mass every week or three.

Edited October 14, 2010 by shortly

[mutant]

I got a very good friend who's doing it as a profession here, so I know I couple of stuff and have gone with him a couple of times, including feeding, honey and royal jelly harvesting.

A very interesting thing I learnt with bees is that bees and wasps sense, 'smell' human fear like bigger animals. I have also had this with dragonflys which were acting agressively. If you fear they will most probably come after you at some point, especially the more agressive wasps.

If your calm and chilled, with bees, it's as if your not there, unless you're stealing their honey, which is when even the most experienced beekeepers put protection.

I have also made a short film on beekeeping a couple of years ago with/for my friend as a mini promo for an exhbition kiosk he made.

[mud]

Thankyou shortly, for the other perspective.

So the answer is no, regarding honour? j/k

Still my thinking goes..

"So, better a few beekeepers survive.. than insuring against global earth system malfucntion?"

All I know is i've found some nests and when i've split some hives,

the queens are going out like spore prints.

Thing is, I do appreciate all your points- and I still wonder about how we could do the right thing for ALL, rather than just the right thing for a few, you know?

And really, the bees do most if not all of the work hey?

See the European bees came to me for free. They bought a message of pure abundance.

The experience hasn't made me wonder how I can make big money off them, but perhaps how EVERYBODY could, were the important info's and resources and correct MARKETING more appropriate and available.

Edited October 15, 2010 by mud

[shortly]

If you've been finding wild nests then wheres the problem? just box them up & your off, you can start the ball rolling.

As for the Apis, its only a matter of time before we get Varroa and then the pure abundance will be rather short lived along with any concept of being organic & any wild hives that we have all come to rely on, since ALL wild hives will be destroyed by the DPI and all domestic bees will have to be sprayed regularly with miticide to control the mite.

I've known a few apiarists over the years & not many of them have made even an average wage out of it, most either do it part time or have sold up because they couldnt pay the bills.

Edited October 15, 2010 by shortly

[San Rainbow]

Is there an organic way to deal with these pests?

[shortly]

Other than fire unfortunately no.

Other than destroying the host no one has ever managed to eradicate the little sucker. Varroa is just about the ultimate bee parasite, it would be beautiful if it weren't so scary.

And like it of not within a week of Varroa being discovered here every hive in Australia will have to be registered & its exact location noted & then the inspections will start to determine the extent of the incursion & the call will be made if & where to draw exclusion lines & all hives inside the exclusion zone will be destroyed in an effort to contain & hopefully eradicate the mite before it becomes established.

Basically the protocols for Varroa are a scorched earth policy.

Of course if its too far spread it will simply be a case of all hives will be required to be sprayed with miticide & treatment certs provided to the local DPI with the annual registration as well as the usual random inspections that rarely ever happen.

Thats why so much has been spent by biosecurity on reports into pollination services & the effects of varroa across australia in the past couple of years.

Edited October 15, 2010 by shortly

[Mt.B]

I've read dusting with icing sugar is practised in the northern hemisphere as a non mite/pesticide measure against Varroa coupled with strong healthy bees.

[mud]

.

Edited October 15, 2010 by mud

[mud]

I'll just keep on bee-leaving

or not

"Nature always finds a way."

[San Rainbow]

since ALL wild hives will be destroyed by the DPI and all domestic bees will have to be sprayed regularly with miticide to control the mite.

 

That will be the wrong approach, This quote was taken from a site devoted to organic sustainable bee farming.

The only way to have a sustainable system of beekeeping is to stop treating. Treating is a death spiral that is now collapsing. To leverage this, though you really need to raise your own queens from local surviving bees. Only then can you get bees who genetically can survive and parasites that are in tune with their host. As long as we treat we get weaker bees who can only survive if we treat, and stronger parasites who can only survive if they breed fast enough to keep up with our treatments. No stable relationship can develop until we stop treating.

The other problem, of course, is that if we just stop now with the system of beekeeping we have, the genetically and environmentally weakened bees will usually die. Even if they are genetically capable of surviving in a clean (uncontaminated) environment, we have to get to an environment they can survive in or they will still die. So what is that environment?

The other side of helping bees with treatments of pesticides and antibiotics is that you keep propagating the bees that can't survive. This is the opposite of what we need. We beekeepers need to be propagating the ones that CAN survive. Also we keep propagating the pests that are strong enough to survive our treatments. So we keep breeding wimpy bees and super pests. Also for years we have bred bees to not rear drones, be larger, and use less propolis. Some of these make them reproductively challenged (less drones and larger bees hence larger slower drones) and some make them less able to handle viruses (less propolis).

this is the site

http://www.bushfarms.com/bees.htm

So our feral bee colonies might get our apiarists out of the shit.

Edited October 15, 2010 by San Rainbow

[shortly]

Right or wrong we don't get a say in the matter, all these things are decided by biosecurity with consultation of industry & experts.

The wild hives are to be the first to go, they are to be destroyed to prevent the spread of the mite.

I'm sure given time Apis mellifera could/will evolve to cope with Varroa, but with so many commercial crops dependant on commercial apiarists who's going to say lets sit back & let the strong survive. Yes it would almost certainly work but it would be suicide for the politicians & bureaucrats who did nothing, not to mention the multi million argibuisnesses that would go to the wall when the banks wanted their $$ back.

So like it or not its looking like the downward spiral.

A bit like the citrus canker out break up here, every citrus orchard & backyard citrus tree in the exclusion zone was destroyed. although that battle was won, bugs are harder.

From what i've read Varroa destructor has only existed for a few decades & the bees are way behind in the biological arms race, not that they wont, just that commercial agriculture cant wait for the bees to catch up.

As it stands there are already more than a dozen serious bee pest & diseases working their way though wild & domestic Apis in australia, & Varroa would be a vector for many of them, so the bees not only will have to evolve to cope with a new parasite but an assortment of viral, bacterial & fungal invaders all at the same time, big ask.

Edited October 15, 2010 by shortly

[shortly]

I knew i'd find these if i persisted, A good simple and occasionally effective method for attracting a new trigona swarm, for those in the tropics & subtropics.

& yes i know they are in portuguese but the principal works just as well for our local species.

 

 

 

[San Rainbow]

Nice one mate

Howz the Cheezy tunes

Edited October 15, 2010 by San Rainbow

[shortly]

Oh forgot to mention,

the PET traps the Brazilians use are just wrapped in paper & plastic which is fine for anyone rockvegas & north but the rest of us probably want a bit better insulation if they are going to spend any more than the summer in there.

Having the PET bottle inside an olive oil can packed with vermiculite will do the trick. probably plenty of other ways to, but that's the one i've seen done successfully.

Edited October 15, 2010 by shortly

[San Rainbow]

Whats the stuff inside that attracts them?

Sorry for my noobness?

[shortly]

Wax & cereum from an existing hive dissolved in alcohol the evaporated off, if you can locate a wild hive like the one in the carpark at the bird sanitary you can scrape some from around and inside their entrance without doing too much harm.

There are more trigona hives around than most ppl realize, they aren't particularly prolific or aggressive like Apis but there are hives around that are decades old.

theres one in the bisbane botanic gardens thats been there since the mid 60's.

The trick is to be observant, not every smallish black thing that flys is a mozzie or blow fly. and the resin & cereum around their entrances are a dead give away.

Edited October 15, 2010 by shortly

[San Rainbow]

Cool, Might just go and have a look in that car park!

cheers

[mud]

Does the waxy stuff around the hole stink, or smell sweet like honey?

One of the spots iv found is amongst quite resinous acacias and eucalypts.

I'm having a bad run for warm days to actually observe these guys.

Tho I may have just found some solitary ones? I dunno, they seem to hang out in large enough groups.

It takes me a bright sky behind them to often see them at all. They're great at 'disappearing' too. little ferrari's with wings.

[shortly]

They can be pretty good at disappearing into the under growth, but not that quick.

Doesn't stink or really smell of bees, more of tree resin than anything.

Depends where you are Mud, if its below 18 -20 they wont fly, that's why many of the Sydney keepers either cant rob their hives or the few that do have to artificially feed to help boost the hives.

I thought you'd already found some nests and split some hives mud?

[Torsten]

I paid $200 for my TC hive and they are doing well. While I don't agree with mud that all things should be free, I am a bit pissed that rescued bees cost this much. The log I got would have taken almost no time or care to obtain so is abit ridiculous that it cost $200. It was dirty, split, and 2.5m long! It was also a very small population so the collector did not follow collection protocol. I don't mind paying $200 or even more if someone actually put some effort into it - after all the best way to make sure these producers keep going is to make their business viable.

As mentioned, there is a protocol for collection and vual seems to have forgotten about that in his post. TC can't find the entrance to their hive if it has moved more than a few metres since they exited it. The best collections are done by plugging the hole at night before the tree is cut down. The other option is to leave the hive till dusk as near as possible to where it was and hope that at least a few workers make it home. Arborists are rarely aware of this, so most hives are collected with only 10 or 20% of their workers in them and require a year or so to build up to full size again.

[shortly]

I recon you got jipped Torsten, the guy who sold you your log/hive should have sat it in a paddock for a year or so first to build back up before selling it, to do otherwise is just shoddy.

Are you going to try to get them into a box at some point? Education perhaps?

Your spot on with the collection protocols, unfortunately quite often first time the arborist spots the hive its on already on the ground or worse yet split open.

Better to rescue a week hive than just see it go through the chipper.

[mud]

Yeh I like that all things should be free but I dont like that its not free to like that.So how would anyone recommend some balance with that? Because while the Trigona that I thought around here are only hover flies I have found wild Apis Melifera nests that I wanna catch ad hive to sell (so I can afford to have this opinion on the internet at all..)and if anyone else did it for $500+how much is the 'right' price? Cos I think about this a lot. It all confuses me a bit. The space between value and conscience, for one.

Edited October 22, 2010 by mud

[shortly]

If your in a temperate region its not surprising your trigona turned out to be hover flys, trigona don't occur much south of Bega & even then they are few & far between from what i gather.

Between $200 to $400 plus freight depending on weather its in a box or not & if so what kind of box seems to be the going rate for Trigona.

I wouldn't have a clue how much an Apis hive costs these days let alone worth, I do know the cost of dealing with SHB has been pushing up the price up here. We can probably look foward to seeing asian honey bees in the not to distant future

If your south of sydney i wouldn't count on robbing them without killing the hive.

& if your in SA or Tas i believe its kinda illegal to import them into the state, not to mention way too cold for Trigona.

I found another TC hive this arvo in a big old poinciana tree a coupla streets over