Bees, Greenies, Black Cockatoos

Well it's been a full month since my last post on 28 Dec 19. I didn't have to to wait long to get some more tooth for my copper beech tree. A few days later a good size bit of tooth broke off a lower molar on the other side, leaving me with two broken teeth and picking food out with a toothpick every time I ate something. I went to the dentist Monday week ago and he filled one and said best to leave the other as it is, if I could tolerate it, as to fill it would not be lasting. He said he could do a crown if I wanted but I had decided some time ago not to take that track and just live with some jagged teeth, they'll probably see me out without all the expense of crowns which are no guarantee to be trouble free anyway.

I had a good break this season over the festive season with nearly all our customers taking a couple of weeks off. The three weeks since we resumed picking have been busy with beech the main attraction. Most of it is picked now and I'll be lucky to keep it up for a couple of weeks more till Valentine's day. Then a couple of weeks catching up on grass cutting and picking some rosehips and hawthorn berries before Lib, Gord and me take a couple of weeks holiday. Lib's talking Lake Taupo, NZ north Island and/or Adelaide again. We'll see.

I've had a look into the bees a few times. They started picking up in late November with the blackberries flowering after a bad spring (for bees), cold weather and wind and drizzly rain. Over the past year or so I had requeened with good quiet stock from a Qld breeder but the bees hadn't really responded after the bad weather and lingering chalkrood, sacbrood and small hive beetles. "Who would be a beekeeper?" old Jack Tonkin used to say when things weren't going well.

Such was the malaise of a small hive I requeened in the autumn that I blamed the new queen as being crook and bought another and replaced her in early November. The hive still struggled for a month and I was about to give up on that queen too when things started to improve with more settled warm to hot weather and incoming nectar. Probably with hindsight I was too quick to write off the autumn queen as the hive may have come good just the same.

A few weeks ago I was hanging out the washing and I heard the unmistakable chatter of a flock of green lorrikeets. These birds are not usually around Gembrook but are nomadic eucy nectar/flower bud eaters. It was a good sign to beekeepers in Qld when I was there if the greenies were about, meaning flowering nectar producing eucalypts are close. I hadn't noticed more than the odd messmate tree lightly flowering but I thought the greenies are not here for nothing.When I looked at the bees shortly after, yes, they'd improved out of site and were gathering honey, enough for me to put some frames of foundation into them at last. I had asked my friend Leanne to make these frames up, she's my apprentice, the bees are now hers, I'm just helping her till she's confident to do it herself. That's another reason I wanted to requeen with good quiet stock.

I looked into them again this morning. The hive at my house is a three deck almost full of honey. I took out two full combs and replaced them with foundation and took the honey in another box with empty combs to the small hive at Leanne's. It was doing really well, come from a small struggling nucleus in November to a filling double so with hot weather coming this week I put the third box on. There will be some honey to extract this year, the first after two very bad years, no surplus. As I walked back to my van I saw my loose veil on the ground, it had pulled off my hat on a twig as I walked to the hive. I had worked through the hive without a veil without even knowing I hadn't pulled the veil down - it wasn't there anyway, just shows what good quiet bees they are, and nectar coming in makes working them easy. Some beekeepers I recall, Linton Briggs at Glenrowan one, had such good quiet stock they usually worked without a veil.

Amazingly we've had rain through January also. Three times I've heard the squawking black cockies and three times these harbingers have preceded rain. Three of them flew across the road in front of my car today, so I'm hopeful that after this predicted heatwave of 40C plus Thursday and Friday there'll be more rain, but not too heavy to cease the honey flow that is current.

I killed my first European wasp nest for the season on the weekend, I suspect there'll be many over the next few months. Killed multiple jumping jack ants nests lately, at home. Can't leave them, dangerous for dog. Gotta watch out for snakes now after Pip being bitten last year. We had Rob's little dog Eddy as a house guest for three weeks till last Sunday, a real monkey if ever there was one, but fun. Rob and his mate were in Chile, Argentina and Paraguay. They were invited to a friend's wedding in Chile and made a bit of a holiday of it.

Nothing much else to report. The fires have been devastating over such a big area of Australia but somehow with the good rain we've had here there's been no worry for us here. Feb/March could be a worry though if, as is probable, the rain does not continue and the heat cranks up to blistering as it has in recent years.