Collingwood Children's Farm Apiary

17/03/2020

The apiary is jointly managed by the VAA Melbourne Section beekeeping group and the Collingwood Children’s Farm.
The apiary is usually open on the second and fourth Sundays of each month. Email enquiries to [email protected]

21/12/2019

21/12/2019

Today we had even more fully capped honey frames than two weeks ago. Some hives had very little space left to store honey. To provide more space a total of nine frames were removed, stored in plastic bags and frozen for two days to kill any wax moth or small hive beetle eggs. (Six frames were collected the previous fortnight.)

21/12/2019

The exceptionally prolific flowering of the River Red Gums is starting to bear fruit. Honey supers are quite heavy and most have a number of fully capped frames.

21/12/2019

As well as re-queening seven hives and checking for honey production, we also celebrated the Australian Pollinators Week.

21/12/2019

As part of the Collingwood Children's Farm's 40th anniversary celebrations, the apiary team delivered a "Bees and Beekeeping" presentation.

21/12/2019

Like the previous fortnight, today's inspections were focussed on inspecting the supers, including those to which a box from hive 2A had been added a fortnight ago.

21/12/2019

With most swarm prevention procedures already completed, today's hive activities focussed on assessing how much honey hives contained, particularly in supers that had previous been been brood boxes. The large amount of budding in nearby Red River Gums indicated that the apiary might produce a good amount of honey this season.

20/12/2019

While visiting the apiary to undertake swarm prevention procedures, we noticed a very large swarm on the ground at one end gf the apiary.

20/12/2019

The nearby River Red Gums continued to be in full bloom although. Some trees had very few buds that were yet to open.
Today, the main task was to ensure that there was sufficient space in honey supers for the bees to store additional honey. To achieve this 12 frames of 95% capped honey across the apiary was removed and replaced with empty frames.
The removed frames were placed in plastic bags and frozen for two days to kill any wax moth and small hive beetle eggs. Honey will be extracted from them in the apiary's main honey harvest at the end of February.