| | | Start Beekeeping with us!
| | | | | Bees are now producing around 1500-2000 eggs a day as the queen bee goes into full laying mode. If your bees have quality sources of nectar & pollen at this point they can be at honey production levels by middle of September.
Ensure you have hotspots like avo, litchi, macadamia, lemon, citrus, blue gum, sunflower, onion, borage, lavender and more lined up for making honey or pollination. |
| | Honey flow can come from numerous sources and right now it's from citrus, macadamia and avocado about now...
P.S. Bees are much more inclined to trek or relocate from areas with low food sources to those with high food sources!
The simple way to make your best chance of catching or luring a bee swarm into your catch boxes or brood boxes is place them in high quality food source apiary sites. Read on for details!
The bees are on the MOVE now!
With no time at all honeybees are arriving everyday at our apiaries! - Continue to place catch boxes out
- Start checking on colonies that survived the winter as they begin to produce honey on nectar flows
- Make sure you continue to service apiaries and keep clearings cut and trim around hives and especially hive entrances
- Due to the drought and fire risk ensure clearings are maintained
- For ants, consider hive stands with cups on the feet.
What's the task list for October? - Find sites. Blue gum, sunflower, lavender, citrus, macadamia, avo, litchi and lemon are key sources of honey & pollination
- Arrange for splits if you want to increase your apiary size
- Purchase extra supers if you want to produce honey on a production-ready brood - 8 frames or more
- Inspect wintering hives (hives that made it through winter) especially if they have had access to nectar flows over the last 3-4 weeks
- Get a honey extractor in order to extract honey much quicker and more efficiently than crushing it
Honey Extractor Case Study:
If you have 20 beehives that made it through winter they should fill a super completely by mid-October at the latest.
Using a honey spinner to extract the honey would mean getting on average 9kg per super (honey) chamber x 20 = 180kg
By harvesting the honey over 24-48 hours and placing the super chamber (wet super from leftover honey) back on the beehive the full capacity of the honeybee colony in a flow can refill the 'empty' honeycomb cells within 5-7 days!
If you 'crush' the honeycomb to extract the honey and in doing so remove the entire comb the bees take 3-6 weeks to rebuild it before they can refill it!
By using the honey spinner you could recover at least 2 more harvests in the time it would take the bees to rebuild.
The numbers look like this: 180kg the first harvest plus at least 2 more harvests in a max of 6 weeks (nectar flow dependent - the bees need food) means another 2 sets of 180kg totaling 540kg @ a retail price of R100/kg = R54,000! (wholesale prices vary dramatically)
The investment on a 6 frame manual honey extractor is valued at R7500! Just the first harvest (180kg) would already cover the investment of a 6-frame honey spinner...
An electric honey extractor which can take 8 brood/super frames at a time takes an investment of R11,500 excluding shipping.
Spring updates:
What else can you do? - Come on a bee course to start beekeeping now!
- This is the best time of year in the southern hemisphere to start keeping bees...
- Set up pollination contracts for crops and fruit growers.
- Generally, crops and fruit orchards require varying ratios of hives to hectare > a rough average is at least 3 hives per hectare
- Pollination rates in SA vary too from R350-R500 per hive per 10 day period or thereabouts. {No honey is produced when pollinating}
- If you do splits of colonies make sure they are fed with sugar water or old honey for at least a week.
- Use extra queen bee cells to propagate multiple new colonies at the same time as long as you have enough brood and worker bees to share amongst the new colonies and feed the bees. Use only catch boxes for this and provide at least one brood frame of eggs, one of sealed brood and one of nectar for each new queen.
Our next Easy Buzzing Beekeeping Course is on 1 October in Midrand.
This course will be facilitated by Cillene & Martin with practical hive session after lunch. |
| | | For anyone who is about to start beekeeping here's some things to consider:- It's really awesome working with bees
- It's scary working with bees
- But it's honestly amazing!
- Care for them and they provide honey, wax and other products of the hive
- A starter kit is R3315 all-in! Big discount!
- A bee course is R850
- You kuier lekker met die Bye!
So treat your hubby, loved one or friend with a beekeeping gift today! |
| | | | Got a farm and growing crops? Bees can pollinate your crops and usually contribute to more than 50% of the pollination of most crops over and above that of butterflies and flies.
We will be posting to FaceBook the actual pollination effects bees will have on crops in South Africa and elsewhere over the next week. Be sure to visit our FaceBook page for that info.
Here's a challenge: Which crop enjoys 300% increase in yields when 2x hives per hectare are utilised when flowering takes place? |
| | | | Can you spot her? The queen bee [above] is the only fertile female in the Scutellata colony and therefore the only bee that can properly lay eggs of either male or female workers. |
| | Online Bee Store!
The Centurion Shop is open for business Monday- Friday 9:00-16:00 and on Sat 09:00 - 12:00!
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| | | | Amazing beautiful hand poured pure beeswax candles available online & in-store in Centurion!
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| | | | | | Keep reading articles, bee books | | | | | Over the course of the next 6 weeks we will be sending you tips, articles and news about beekeeping that will help you to better understand the benefits of bees for all of us! | | We will be sending you tips, articles and news about beekeeping that will help you to better understand the benefits of bees for all of us!Our recommended first steps are that you get hold of the blue book, Beekeeping in South Africa which is available on our website by mail order or if you collect in Centurion. Southern Hemisphere: Work on getting apiary sites with haste! The Spring is upon us all!
Focus on finding apiary sites that are rich in nectar flow and pollen. Preferably nectar for honey with medium pollen. Bees need both to survive and they need high quality sources of it to thrive.
Make sure you have cleared your apiary sites where they wintered or new spots you go to to avoid the risk of fire damage and losing your entire beekeeping business up in smoke. High winds and dry conditions make for perfect fire hazards.
Purchase extra supers if you are producing honey ie no pollinating. The bees will very quickly fill a super during the spring and will need harvesting and a second super can be added in the meantime while removing and extracting honey.
A honey extractor is also beneficial to speed speed this process up and can literally pay for itself in one harvest with a small apiary operation of 15 hives.
Northern Hemisphere: Take advantage of late blooming crops and fruit trees especially avocados, tomatoes, borage and onion.
Ensure you squeeze the last days of summer flowering... Soon it will darker earlier and cooler in the evenings and mornings too.
Ask Questions & Visit our site to get info on bees, equipment and like us on Facebook! | | | | | | | | | | Love bees but cannot make the bee course to get started? Get our Bee Book called Beekeeping in South Africa for R360! | | | Watch our bee videos on keeping bees, harvesting honey and bee info | | | |
Online Deal! Our Manual 4-Frame honey extractor ONLY R4250! Order [11 units]
September Deal!Our double-walled honey heating tanks ONLY R9300! Order [7 units] 3- Frame extractorsAvailable for R3,500
8-frame extractors Extract for R11,500 Electric, Reversible includes honeygate tap
12-Frame Extractor Selling for R15,000 Electric & Reversible Programmable includes honeygate tap
20-frame extractor Electric, reversible Programmable! includes honeygate tap R27,000
24-frame EXTRACTOR R32,000
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Please note that prices have increased in January 2016!
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