The Stingless Bee workshop held at the Nundah Library started off with a slideshow session where Tim Heard shared plenty of information about all kinds of bees, including Honey, Solitary and Stingless Bees. The information session then followed by a practical hive splitting demonstration. Tim is very enthusiastic and that always creates a great positive vibe in the workshops.

For some reason I like it when things don’t go to plan.. In the first splitting demonstration the brood did not split and all stayed as part of the top section. This is easily rectified by separating layers from the brood and placing it in the split section. This shows that things don’t always work out perfectly and that’s ok, you just have to be prepared for that. If you’re splitting your own hive and something like this happens and you’re not comfortable with it, you can just put the boxes back together and split another day.

In the second splitting demonstration there was enough brood within each box to proceed without issues…

Below – It looks like most of the brood is in the base, but should be enough brood in the top section along with some queens cells to progress successfully…

Below – Tim dishes out honey and pollen for everyone to try…

Below – Displaying the Honey Super. It was found that there was a lot of Pollen within the honey super so not much honey was extracted. Sometimes bees just don’t co-operate with out systems do they!

Below – an example of the transportation entrance tube. A small tube with some steel mesh attached to stop the bees escaping….

If you’re new to stingless bees or an advanced keeper, i’d highly recommend getting along to one of these workshops as there’s always something to learn, and what a great way to spend a day!