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Author Topic: What's flowering: Queensland  (Read 144210 times)

Offline Bee North

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Re: What's flowering: Queensland
« Reply #260 on: April 17, 2019, 01:43:23 am »
This is only my second year and its very different to last year.....but i went away for a month this time last year and came home to a full super mid May.

Looks like i may get the same this year too. I dont seem to get big flows but when the suns out they find something almost all year round.

But hay its only year 2 for me....lets see!

Offline eltalia

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Re: What's flowering: Queensland
« Reply #261 on: April 17, 2019, 11:34:28 pm »
Afternoon all

Welcome home...you certainly picked the timing, perfectly!

Quote

Im still dreading next swarm season...the girls have cups on standby just to remind me
of their plans!!! I believe its pointless tearing them down. There is nothing in them, 4 or
 5 in each of my strong hives. Am i right leaving them?

Rgds
Adam

Once built and 'closed' it is quite safe to ignore them.
That said I always take them down as seen as often the bees will repair the interrupted
comb around them return the space back to brood rearing. Entirely user choice there
is no impediment to leaving them.
By "'closed'" I am pointing to a clue on knowing play from the real deal.
Over time check the difference out. You'll see a pattern where the mouth of the play
cup is noticeably smaller than the cup waiting an egg. It is a way of training the eye
so as make quick choices in flicking cells off a frame, when you're tackling 20colonys
 before smoko...?.... accurate speed is essential.

Cheers...

Bill

Offline eltalia

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Re: What's flowering: Queensland
« Reply #262 on: April 17, 2019, 11:41:02 pm »
Took a drive to the outyard yesterday to do a startup (6frn nuc) and found as
zipping by the roadside a most pleasing sight with the wattlle holding tight
bundles of flowers about to burst open into full show. The bloodwood and
 ironwood both already out by about two days I reckon.
Bees in the outyard were going troppo....!.. woooohoo!

Sooo a bad patch done, getting through this one by the hairs of their
 chinny chin chins!

Cheers...

Bill

Offline Bee North

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Re: What's flowering: Queensland
« Reply #263 on: April 18, 2019, 06:32:10 am »
Hi Bill

Yes mate i timed it well didnt I....thanks for the feedback on the queen cups and i get what your saying regarding "closed", mine are like that. I had a really good look at them yesterday.

Great to hear you have flowers mate!!

Rgds
Adam

Offline eltalia

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Re: What's flowering: Queensland
« Reply #264 on: April 18, 2019, 10:50:21 am »
Hi Bill

Yes mate i timed it well didnt I....thanks for the feedback on the queen cups and i get what your saying regarding "closed", mine are like that. I had a really good look at them yesterday.
(edit)

..... brilliant maaate.!
/thumbs up/

Bill

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Re: What's flowering: Queensland
« Reply #265 on: April 19, 2019, 04:30:15 am »
Just back from the coast. It is raining down there and indeed here at Crystal Waters  - nothing heavy at this stage.

The Teatree is out on the coast. Not sure if it doing much for bees. Will try to find out.

Years and years ago we used to shift nees to the coast - pretty well were the Maroochy Airport is now. 1oo's of acres of teatree and sugar cane. Most of it is not gone. There are still good pockets around but I never liked the honey...

Offline eltalia

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Re: What's flowering: Queensland
« Reply #266 on: April 19, 2019, 05:53:18 am »
Just back from the coast. It is raining down there and indeed here at Crystal Waters  - nothing heavy
at this stage.

The Teatree is out on the coast. Not sure if it doing much for bees. Will try to find out.

Years and years ago we used to shift nees to the coast - pretty well were the Maroochy Airport
is now. 1oo's of acres of teatree and sugar cane. Most of it is not gone. There are still good
pockets around but I never liked the honey...

Yup, as they burnt cane to harvest - back then - the sticks oozed a treacle the bees loved.
Already a honey colour in it's raw form by the time it went through the  bee the capped
honey was almost molasses like. Throw in some tea tree and yes, not quality at all.

Cheers...

Bill

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Re: What's flowering: Queensland
« Reply #267 on: April 21, 2019, 08:13:50 pm »
Yes, I remember it well. In those day Nabour had a sugar mill. cane was burned and then cut. The mix of sugar and Teatree ( and getting stuck in wet-spot between sugar cane fields) never made it worthwhile to take bees there.

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Re: What's flowering: Queensland
« Reply #268 on: April 22, 2019, 06:35:45 pm »
Excellent rain here! We had just under 150 mm ( about 6 ") in the last few days.
The Blue Gum is budding. They flowered briliantly last season and it is very unlikley that they will do the same this year.

The rain is much needed - great for all Euc's and generally if we get good rain this time of the year and some follow-up rain the Clover produces well.

We need the Clover for early splits...but this is a few months off.
Making up Nuc boxes - just in case.

Offline eltalia

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Re: What's flowering: Queensland
« Reply #269 on: April 22, 2019, 08:00:48 pm »
Posted in a rush...more later, paddock calls.
This is a Melelucca (sp?) this morning,  and black dots you may see are our Hocks
at it -  there being hundreds of them and one lone Apis bee... not one of ours.

Cheers...

Bill

--

[edit] add pix




« Last Edit: April 27, 2019, 08:00:49 pm by eltalia »

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Re: What's flowering: Queensland
« Reply #270 on: May 06, 2019, 07:41:07 am »
I went up to west of Gympie today and the Spotted Gum was flowering.
More imortantly is that the Blue Gum  and Ironbark are budding.

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Re: What's flowering: Queensland
« Reply #271 on: May 09, 2019, 05:13:51 am »
Perfect weather and the bees are busy.
I opened a few hives and there is freshly capped honey in some frames. Indeed there would be some honey to take but with colder weather on the way I will leave it till Spring.
The smell of honey is really strong and I wonder what is out? Can't see much from here.

Offline eltalia

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Re: What's flowering: Queensland
« Reply #272 on: May 11, 2019, 10:09:35 pm »
Idylic here with a slow 5knot NorWestr bringing 22C and clear skys streaming down
the full 1200W/m2 I post to share this short story of a struggle to propagate bottlebrush
from cuttings using the humdibottle method. Three years, and today our first blooms
popped out - attached.
With maybe 29 in the ground the project is to plant a few hundred of these as they are
both Tet (native stingless bee) and butterfly friendly, plus the Apis get on them after lunch.
Wattyle stringybark, bloodwood and pentas are cracking on bigtime, so white wax is virtually
pushing the screws out of the box seams/joints!!
Happy Days indeed. ;-))

Bill




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Re: What's flowering: Queensland
« Reply #273 on: May 13, 2019, 07:41:03 pm »
Great!
Can't have too many Bottlebrush.
I have never tried to propagate them. We can get them here very reasonably priced as tube stock. They seem to last longer then the showy Grevilleas.
I planted many hundreds of Holy Basil - they seem to flower just about all the time and the bees like them. Never water them.

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Re: What's flowering: Queensland
« Reply #274 on: May 15, 2019, 07:17:27 pm »
We had light rain on most days and the place is GREEN!
Generally from May on we don't get much growth anymore as the night - time temps are dropping.

This year - very mild nights and things are still growing.

The fences around the paddocks near us and the road verges are covered in Sub-Tropical legume and they all are flowering.

The bees seem to like most Legumes and are having a field day.

Offline eltalia

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Re: What's flowering: Queensland
« Reply #275 on: May 15, 2019, 08:49:26 pm »
Yeah Max we do tubes also, it is maybe more of owned OCD in doing
propagation be it marcotting, grafting or cutting/seed raising.
In this instance (photos) we wanted replicas of the one tree that
was here on moving in, it's over 4m tall and drapes right to the
ground... something of a description none could guarantee we would
get from wholesale nursery. So we struggle on.

Today is somewhat clearer sky though still blustery from TC Anne
passing by further North bringing early 'winter' rains. We got just 10mm
over the two days at a rate of fall that barely wet a TallyHo paper!
Pi55ed bees off though as happens when on full bore flows it
gets cloudy and blowy - one of the dogs took two hits and I scored
three on my fat ar5e driving by on the ZT... n0t happy campers at all..!

I'll check out the Holy Basil, thanks... we got basil in small numbers but
it must be pagan as bees only go for it when freshly flowered, off it by lunch.

Cheers.

Bill

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Re: What's flowering: Queensland
« Reply #276 on: June 02, 2019, 07:10:31 pm »
Just back from a trip to Yamba NSW.
We travelled along the coast first and then turned West to Warwick and North via Gatton, Esk...
Along the coast the Teatree are flowering patchy. Some very well, othere have just finished.
Blood wood are flowering quite well.
We passed a field of Sunflowers with lots of bees on the flowers. Loads of Wild Mustard in fields waiting for rain. Indeed we travelled through some heavy showers but they need a lot of rain to catch-up.
They had some good frosts in the Tamworth area North I was told.
Cool mornings here but no frost.
Had 15mm of rain last night which is giving me hope for a Clover flow in some months.
I spoke to some beekeepers who keep bees in the Gibraltare range area and they were happy with the last season.

Offline eltalia

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Re: What's flowering: Queensland
« Reply #277 on: June 02, 2019, 10:16:27 pm »
First sunny day for a while now here Max, been getting regular 10mm
or so most nights and now the night chill has set in, low 16s...beanies
out, fire lit.
Loads of blooms around but no flying time and so the bees struggle on.
Certainly a different year!

Bill

Offline Bamboo

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Re: What's flowering: Queensland
« Reply #278 on: June 03, 2019, 07:58:54 am »
Attended QBA state conference last week and was chatting to a lot of guys from out Toowoomba way, absolutely nothing out there and they are moving them as fast as they can if they get a sniff of something flowering anywhere from NSW to up beyond Bundaberg to put the bees on to keep them going.
A big pollinator from down VIC was trying to get more pollinators from up here for Almonds as they will have shortage of over 100,000 hives. They are paying $117 per hive, told him that they need to start paying more like $280 then they will get the hives, the growers here still don't appreciate the value of the bees. Same in NZ a lifetime ago, Kiwifruit orchards were paying $50 now it is $300, they now know their crop depends on the bees and it is factored in as an expense just like the sprays, labour, packing trays you name it. US hives get $300 plus for Almonds.
All very well planting 1000's of hectares of trees for almonds and sitting down and calculating how much money you are going to make and not considering paying for the bees....they will come round when they don't get the crop tonnage.
I'm afraid some of the guys I spoke to haven't really done the numbers of shifting their hives down there, running their own trucks labour, feeding to get them ready for pollination. Their argument was "Well it pays my expenses for the season" I'm not saying they aren't smart businessmen.......buuut.
Meant to turn a bit chilly here tomorrow top of 18 and breezy. The girls will stay home and read a book or whatever they do when they don't go out!

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Re: What's flowering: Queensland
« Reply #279 on: June 04, 2019, 12:34:20 am »
Yes, cool here today and only a few bees venturing out.
Lovely day yesterday and they were super busy.
Polination prices need to be up-dated here as they have in the US.
With sugar prices so low more and more sugar farmers are moving into tree crops.
Up North ( Childers, Bundi ) the move is to Citrus, mac nuts and Avos and in Northern NSW they move into Tea Tree ( for oil, no flowers) and Mac Nuts.
In many cases there is no bush around meaning there are few if any pollinators and Honey Bees are the only option.

Interesting to hear the demand for Almond pollination - a shortage of 100 000 hives! Goodness! Were are these bees coming from?
I gather they are still planting Almonds with demand for the nut not knowng a ceiling so far.
Interesting times for the big beekeepers.
Meanwhile they need to keep the girls alive in between pollination.
Did they have enough rain in the Paroo area  for Euc's to flower?