Line up

 

Long ago I used to put off folding my washing because there were so many tasks to complete. Now I do it very quickly.

One of the changes I made was to make all of my socks the same - it is no trouble to pair them up now. A sock can pair with any other sock. 

Attack

 

It's high summer, my bee hive is under attack. The flies (which are imitating wasps) are laying eggs in crevices hoping that when the maggots hatch they can sneak into the hive.

Tasty

 

I got together with some friends. We all have native bee hives. 

I helped to extract some honey. Then demonstrated how to split a bee hive into two.

We laid out samples of our honey and compared tastes. 
Left     - Sweet with mild flavour
Middle - Well balanced flavour
Right   - Very strong flavour

The reward

 

This is native bee honey harvested from the hive of the previous post.

The hive produced a total of two jars like this, about 1 kg.

The native bee honey is less viscous than european honey bee honey. The taste is sweet with a citrus tang. Like honey bee honey the taste varies with the plants used to make it. Because the honey matures in pods made from a mixture of wax and resin it has favours and substances contributed from the resin. The antimicrobial activity of Tetragonula carbonaria honey has been measured to be higher than the famous Manuka honey.

It is delicious.

Drip, drip

 

The honey super has been flipped over to drain the honey out. The bees are still calmly wandering over the hive.

Next the honey is strained through a mesh sieve.

Can you smell the sticky sweetness?

Honey! Super!

The honey super - upside down

 Here I have placed the honey super (ie top level) from a native bee hive on a table and I am poking holes in the honey pots with a bamboo skewer. Soon I will flip the honey super over to allow the honey to pour out.

I intend to leave most of the propolis (mixture of bee wax and tree resin) so the bees can quickly rebuild.

The bees are still very calm - they are crawling around the hive and not flying in a defensive cloud.

The Hive

 

Open native bee hive (bottom section) - Tetragonula carbonaria 

These stingless bees build their brood  area in a spiral.

When weighed this native bee hive was over 9.5 kg. This meant that it was full of bees and full of honey.

The hive is made to be split in half to make two hives out of one.

The brood area was built as a spiral which is characteristic of Tetragonula carbonaria. The other stingless honey-producing species is Tetragonula hockingsi whose brood area is more higgledy piggledy. 

Around the brood area are pods made of propolis (a mixture of tree-resin and wax). In the photo some pods are broken showing either liquid honey or yellow pollen.

In this particular hive the honey pods are near the  main entrance (bottom of photo) and the pollen pods are towards the rear (top of photo) - This is the opposite of the usual arrangement. This hive was positioned so that the small rear vent was in a sunnier position for some of the year - the bees then preferred to use vent as the  as a main entrance.

I do not remove any honey from the bottom brood chamber. I only remove honey from the separate top chamber called a honey super.