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Your summer beekeeping checklist Summer is a busy time for bees. Long, warm days and readily available nectar supplies make for intensive honey production and increased egg-laying. Colony numbers peak and bees spend much of their time building and filling...
What It Means, And When To Take Action Bees are complex creatures. There’s a lot to learn – and even old-hand beekeepers need guidance from time to time. If you’ve noticed bees hanging around the front of your hive more...
The Important Role Of The Queen Bee In A Colony The queen bee is at the heart of the hive. She’s the mother of all the other members and the glue that holds the colony together. Without a queen, the...
Symptoms, Treatment And Prevention Tropilaelaps mites are external parasites that move quickly among honeycombs and feed on the haemolymph (blood) of bee larvae and pupae. They’re native to Asia, but pose a significant threat to beekeeping worldwide – if they...
Bee Friendly Garden - Tips When we hear about bees most of us think of honeybees (Apis mellifera) but there are many more bees around us. New Zealand has 28 native and 13 introduced species of bee. The bee’s most...
Choosing a hive and location for your bees On a macro-level, bees can live almost anywhere. You can keep hives whether you live on a huge farm, a small suburban garden, or a tiny urban property. In the wild, bee...
How To Identify them, And What They Say About Your Hive For anyone just starting beekeeping, identifying different cells can be a hard task. Knowing how to deal with them can be even trickier. If you open your hive and...
Your Guide To Modern Homesteading When you think of a homestead, you may imagine a glorious farmhouse sitting on acres of land with rolling hills, pigs in a pen, chickens in the backyard and an orchard full of fruit trees....
All the buzz on safety equipment and practices It’s unavoidable: if you’re keeping bees, sooner or later you’ll get a sting. It’s just what bees do: the safety of their hive is of the utmost importance, and they’ll use their...
So, you’re thinking about keeping bees? Whether you want 1 or 1000 hives, beekeeping can be a hugely rewarding hobby. Beehives take time; they need to be managed carefully, so before you get any hives, you should think about what...
Spring of Swarms – How To Safely Capture a Bee Swarm. Bee swarms have an undeserved reputation. They’re seen as dangerous, and non-beekeepers often find them pretty scary. In fact, bees are usually at their least threatening and most docile...
Rules and Regulations for Australian Beekeepers Beekeeping can be a satisfying and fruitful hobby, but it’s not quite as simple as taking up knitting or model-making. Because living creatures, food products, and potential hazards are involved, even hobby beekeepers need...
Protect bees, prevent stings – how to keep wasps out of your garden Whether you’re a gardener, a beekeeper, or just love the outdoors, wasps in the garden are less than ideal. Painful stings are the most obvious downside, but...
Preparation, placement, patience – safe beekeeping practices Beekeeping involves working with a large number of unpredictable living things. So of course, there are risks and dangers. But if you follow safe beekeeping guidelines, you should be able to minimise the...
Monitor, manage and minimise swarms Keeping your bees happy, healthy and swarm-free. Swarming may be natural bee behaviour, but it’s not popular with most beekeepers. When a colony swarms, roughly half the population, including the queen, leaves the hive in...
How to identify and help native Aussie bees When you think of a bee, you probably picture a classic, yellow-and-black striped honey bee, or its furry cousin the bumblebee. You’re probably not imagining metallic green, shiny red, or blue-polka-dotted insects....
Why beginners should join a beekeeping club 5 reasons to find your local beekeeping buddies Beekeeping isn’t something you get right away. Like any hobby, it takes trial and error to find out what works and what doesn’t. Newbie beekeepers...
How To Set Up and Fill Your First Beehive So, you’re starting a new colony? This is an exciting time for new and experienced beekeepers alike. It’s a chance to learn more about how bee colonies live and work, help...
Helping with the hives: children and beekeeping Kids and beekeeping may not seem like natural partners. After all, beekeeping involves being patient, methodical and calm – not quite what small children are known for. But if you’re a beekeeper with...
The fascinating world of honey bees We all know that bees make honey, but how many of us really understand the inner workings of a beehive? Honey bees are fascinating creatures, living in huge colonies with complex social structures. And...
Honey is great, but there’s more! Other wonderful things busy bees do for us You might think of beekeeping as being all about honey, but it’s a whole lot more than that. Bees produce honey, sure, but along the way...
A look into Australian honey varieties Our bees work hard to make honey, sometimes collecting nectar from more than one million flowers to produce almost half a kilo. The flavour of honey is affected by different flower nectars. While foraging,...
The dos and don’ts of honey harvesting How to take your honey from hive to jar Honey is the whole point of beekeeping, right? If you’re a new beekeeper, your first honey harvest is pretty exciting – but figuring out...
The future of beekeeping With honeybees responsible for pollinating 80% of our food, our future is dependent on their survival. But pesticides, modern farming practices and climate change are disrupting the natural environment that bees live in, putting their future,...
Your Guide To Feeding Bees Supplemental feeding is a controversial topic in Australia. It comes with a lot of conflicting information, which can leave you feeling confused about what to do. The truth is, feeding your bees in the lead-up...
Winter Beekeeping: Taking care of beehives in winter Keeping your bees cosy in cold weather Winter is a natural rest time for bees. After building up their honey stores through spring and summer, they’re ready to hole up in the...
When is the best time to start beekeeping? Starting your first hive. You’ve done the reading, visited experienced beekeepers, joined your local bee club and even bought hive equipment and a bee suit. You’re almost ready to start your first...
Know Your Queen and Why She’s Important In some ways, the queen bee is a lot like human royalty. Selected before birth, she is treated differently from the beginning and spends her life being waited on by her worker bees....
How to Breed Queen Bees Your bee hives already have a queen each – so why create more? Well, you might want to start a brand-new hive, re-queen a hive that’s lost its leader or even sell queens to other...
Spring beekeeping checklist Taking care of your bees this spring. Spring is finally here. For most people, that means warmer days, fresh green leaves, and adorable lambs. For beekeepers, it means eggs, larvae and honey production. As the days get...
Preparing your hives for spring Spring is almost here. Here's how to get your bees up to speed. Believe it or not, spring is on its way. It may feel cold and miserable where you are, but before you know...
What new beekeepers get wrong And how to get it right There’s a lot to learn when you’re a brand-new beekeeper. You have to get your head around hive positioning, inspections, feeding and harvesting, not to mention managing pests and...
Beekeeping in a hot climate Taking care of your bees in warmer weather As every Australian knows we live in an intensely hot, dry place – and climate change isn’t helping. Last summer was a record-breaker, with heatwaves and temperatures...
Rookie beekeeping mistakes – and how to avoid them New beekeepers face a steep learning curve. Beekeeping is part science, part art, and it can take some time to get your head around the process. Most newbies learn through a...
Choosing Bee Hive Frames - Wooden vs Plastic Frames When you’ve been a beekeeper for a while, you have your preferences. You might prefer to feed honey over sugar syrup, or not feed your colony at all, and gumboots fit...
Introducing your kids to beekeeping Safe, age-appropriate ways to get children involved Repetitive tasks. Long waits. Not to mention thousands of small, stinging creatures. Beekeeping doesn’t sound very kid-friendly on the surface. But if you’re a hobby beekeeper with children,...
How To Find A Local Beekeeping Club Near You Life as a beekeeper can be hugely rewarding. But if you’re just starting, it can also be daunting – checking hives obsessively, worrying about your legal responsibilities or questioning your own...
Essential beekeeping tasks throughout the year Bees are seasonal creatures, with predictable behaviour patterns throughout the year – from busy nectar collection and egg-laying in spring and summer, to hunkering down to wait out the winter. With that knowledge, it...
Beekeeping 101: The Ultimate Beginners’ Guide Beekeeping can feel overwhelming for beginners. Not only do you need to get the right beekeeping supplies, find a place for your hive and get your hands on some real live bees, you also...
Beekeeping 101: Super sizes If you have been beekeeping for a while, you’ll have developed your own opinions on common issues – where to place your hives, whether to feed sugar syrup in winter, how to split a hive. But...
Beekeeping 101: How to Stop Hive Robbing Robbing is exactly what it sounds like. During a nectar shortage, bees from outside colonies enter your hives and steal honey. They will fight your bees, tear open honey cells and cause serious...
Beekeeping 101: How to do a hive inspection Bees are secretive creatures. From outside the hive, you can’t tell if they are making honey, the queen is laying eggs, invasive pests are causing havoc or your bees are running out...
Basic Beekeeping Glossary Like any area of expertise, beekeeping has its own special language. Nucs, supers, brood, bee bread…much of the terminology is completely mysterious to non-beekeepers. If you’re a new or would-be keeper, it’s important to know the terms....
Beekeeping 101: Adding Another Super Non-beekeepers might think of a beehive as a static structure with a fixed layout, but it’s actually a complex, miniature building that changes to meet your bees’ needs. Beehives need space for the queen bee...
Bee-friendly blooms The best flowers to attract bees to your garden These days, everyone seems to love a low-maintenance garden full of succulents, cycads, and palm trees. Everyone except bees, that is. Both introduced honey bees and Australian native bees...
How To Feed Bees? Now that you learned why, when and what to feed honey bees, the next question we’re going to answer is “how do you feed honey bees?” There are many options for feeding honey bees. Here are...
When, Why and What To Feed Bees Are you wondering whether your bees have enough stores or are they getting enough nutrients to make it through the season? In certain situations, bees may need food to help the colony survive....
The Honey-Making Process – Ecrotek Beekeeping Basics Even small children know that bees make honey, but most people don’t really know how they do it. Bees make honey to feed themselves and their larvae through the winter – fortunately for...
The benefits of beekeeping associations What’s in it for bees and beekeepers? Promotion, support, connection, education – beekeeping associations do a lot for beekeepers and the industry as a whole. Whether you’re an amateur beekeeper or you’re running a professional...