Australian Native Bees | News & Info

Bee Open Day 2018

Above: The honey wall. A display of all kinds of bottle shapes and different coloured honey. (Honey Bee honey).

Valley Bees held another excellent Bee Open Day at Imbil Qld Aus. It’s an expo for all bees, Honey Bees and Native Bees. They also attract a few other regular market sellers. I went along, stalked and chatted to a few people about their weird and wonderful products. Warning, this article contains the words “Adult Candles”.


 

Above and below: It’s funny how things go in the Native Bee World. There’s a few people that work on their own projects with no contact with each other and you find out that they’re doing similar things. Nick Powell has been working on some native bee honey frames and at Bee Expo I see Doug Irvine with his own version. Dougs frames are up-side-down compared to Nicks though. Doug uses two different thicknesses, the thinner version is designed to hold one layer of honey pots and the thicker version might hold two or three layers. The honey pots are pierced and then the frames are placed in Dougs home built spinner. It looks pretty flash too!


 

John Klumpp and Bill gave a very educational presentation about “Eduction” or Budding. This is where you can connect an empty hive box to an existing hive box and create a new colony. Bill had a few boxes set up as an example. It sounded like Bill was mad keen on his Eductions and has quite a few set up all around his yard.

Below: One box had two new empty boxes connected, intended to create two new colonies at the same time.

 

Below: Johns display of his lightweight concrete tube native bee hives. I liked the sun dial one, bottom left of photo.


 

Jae and her Husband Dave create some interesting candles from Bees Wax. The different colours of wax come from different locations, as the colour is effected by the pollen that the bees collect. Jae will take a silicon mould of something she likes and then recreate it using Bees Wax. I thought it was all innocent til she casually mentions Adult Candles. I’m not quite sure of the connection there but she said she makes both types and different colours. To avoid a flood of enquiries to me, her facebook page is Js Beeswax Candles


 

Above: Glenbo and his Dad, creators of the Honey Bee Frame Index System

Glenbo and his father have created a complete index system guide for educational or referral purposes. Each frame is filled in with an accurate life size photo showing different examples of honey bee frames so if you’ve got a problem or aren’t sure of something you can look it up using the index system. This could be useful for clubs or groups.

Above: Left is Mr Gympie Times, so there might be an article published soon.

Below: The system is presented on a large rack, with instructions on how to use at the top


 

Above: Tom and the Gympie Woodworkers Club. They always have a large display and quite a few machines going so you can watch them making things.


 

Above: Caedmon was quite happy to chat about his locally hand made jewellery. Some very nice pieces and worth a look.


 

Jay had some great displays, the native bird habitat logs and also some very large native bee logs. He was hoping to sell a few so he didn’t have to carrying them home again.


 

Above: Tim holding a general chat and Q and A session.

Tim talked about a national society for native bees. Everything seems to have an association and it’s probably natural progression that the native bee world could have some kind of national society.

Tim also fielded quite a few questions about native bees, like where to place hives and how bees navigate.

 

Tim and Ace at the Sugarbag Bees table. They had some Australis Bees in an observation box so anyone could have a sticky beak inside.


 

 

Above: Trouble makers, …..and myself

Below: I jokingly told Tim how to pose for a photo “Gut in, chest out”

 

Below: a short video from the day…

 

Overall another great bee day out with plenty to look at and do if you’re in to chatting and wondering around.

Check the Valley Bees website for other info: https://www.valleybees.org.au/

 

 

Hivecraft - Australian Native Bee Supplies

Native bee boxes available at www.hivecraft.com.au

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