west end apiary

[west end apiary]

hello,
 I am a first year beekeeper from Brisbane, Australia. I got my first hive in July last year and it swarmed within the month as I treated it like art work and watched it from a distance.
They swarmed and I freaked out to wonder if I had a queen and if I needed to get a new etc etc. but it all worked out fine and the hive built up quite well. I took a split off it in late november and bought it to brisbane and it happily requeened and grew into a double deep eight frame hive.
The hive on the coast swarmed again in late january and I looked at it a month or so later and still had no eggs, so freaked out and took the double to the coast to combine the two and double checked before I did it, only to find eggs, so now had two full hives at the coast and a split with all the flight bees in brisbane ( and eggs and nurse bees of course).

So my initial hive has swarmed twice and had essentially two splits taken off it. BUt overall pretty happy with how it has all gone, would have liked to caught the swarms but no luck.

Aiming for 6 hives by the end of summer this year, so almost half way there. Got sold 10 frame boxes recently so will probably sell them off this year, so that I maintain all eight frame supers.

any way that is my bee introduction, personally I am a final year vet student, with two dachshunds, a pyrenean mountain dog, a cat and a medium sized aquaponics system running jade perch.

Cheers and glad to be here,
       Nick

[Adrian]

very kewl!

[Meadlover]

Hey Nick, welcome aboard, glad to see another beekeeper in Brisbane on here!

Where abouts in Brizzy are you/your hives?
Out of interest which coast are your other hives on? Gold or Sunny?

With bees and aquaponics sounds like you have a great setup. I'd love to get into aquaponics in the near future, just need the time and space to get it going.

ML

[west end apiary]

Hey ML,
  Yeah good to see a few people with local knowledge around the place. My hives are in west end and the others are on the gold coast at Tallai. I am up to 4 hives and a nuc now so think I am doing well for a second year beek. Aiming to get to 6 this year and nucs full to go over winter. so will be 6 plus 4 nucs.

Where do you sell your honey? I have so far given away a lot of it but am hoping for a great summer so expecting a fair bit of honey around that I am keen to sell.

      Nick

[AllenF]

Welcome to the forum