Articles

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...

A Guide On Beekeeping This Autumn Bees work tirelessly throughout the warmer months to forage for nectar and produce honey. But as the days grow colder, bees are settling down for the winter, and a change in bee activity calls...

Bees, our food supply, and a clever supermarket campaign A Sydney supermarket recently stripped its shelves of fruit, vegetables and even coffee, in a bid to showcase what a life without bees would look like. And it was a shock...

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...

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...

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...

Protecting your bees from diseases and pests As a beekeeper, caring for your hive is the best prevention against nasty pests or diseases. But, it’s still good to know what to look out for and what you should do. We’ve...

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...

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...

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...

Learn How To Keep Your Hive Safe Stonebrood is a fungal condition that affects both larvae and adult bees. The name comes from its effect on larvae – when they’re infected, they harden, turn black and resemble small stones. As...

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...

How To Clean And Process Useful Beeswax After honey, beeswax is probably the best-known product made in the hive. Wax is made by bees to store honey and is extracted when honey is removed from the hive. It’s a natural...

How to Become a Beekeeper in Australia Plenty of people have idle daydreams about becoming beekeepers, but few leap to real-live hives. This blog will help you to understand some of the basics around getting started with beekeeping in Australia....

Inspecting your hives – when, why, and how often? Inspecting your hives is an essential part of beekeeping, helping you keep on top of how your colony is functioning. Do your bees have adequate food supplies and plenty of space...

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...

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...

Everything You Need To Know About European Foulbrood (EFB) While some parts of the world have been able to avoid European foulbrood disease (EFB), Australia hasn’t been so lucky. The bacterial brood disease is common in Eastern Australia and has...

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...

​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...

Chalkbrood in Honeybees and Leafcutter Bees Chalkbrood is a serious fungal disease that attacks brood as it develops in the hive. Honeybees are affected by the disease, along with the Blue Orchard bee and the alfalfa leafcutter bee. The disease...

Keeping Detailed Beehive Inspection Notes A hive inspection involves facing thousands of potentially grumpy bees, lifting heavy hive parts, handling a hot smoker – all while wearing a clunky bee suit to protect yourself. If you’re a new beekeeper, it’s...

Beginner Beekeeping Basics: Finding the Queen Non-beekeepers imagine that the queen bee is very obvious – not quite wearing a little crown, but definitely different from the other bees. Unfortunately for novice keepers, this isn’t the case. The queen does...

Everything You Need To Know About Beekeeping Safety There’s no way around it – caring for bees involves risk. Aside from the obvious danger of bee stings, there are other health and safety factors to consider. And as a beekeeper,...

10 essential pieces of kit to get you started Beekeeping isn’t one of those hobbies that you can start on a whim. Unlike jogging or knitting, you need to get set up with a fair bit of equipment before you...

Beekeeping gear – DIY or buy? Beekeeping can be an expensive hobby. There’s a lot of gear involved – from the hives themselves, to the suit and gloves, to all the useful little tools and accessories. New hobbyist beekeepers tend...

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 pesticides are one step closer to reality after breakthrough research A new study has found that insecticides could soon be developed that can target pests without harming beneficial insects such as bees and bumble bees. Pesticide use is a...

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...

Why Bees Are Aggressive – And What To Do Honeybees generally have a calm temperament. Usually, they only sting in certain situations – like when they’re stood on, crushed under a hand or they feel trapped or threatened. If you’re...

About Small Hive Beetle (SHB) Although the small hive beetle (Aethina tumida) is only 5 mm long, it is one of the most feared bee parasites because with a heavy infestation, it can destroy an entire colony within a very...