Each year, we "close down" our beehives for winter - which is bee talk for reducing the volume of the hives to make it easier for the bees to keep warm during cooler temperatures.
That does not mean they are not still foraging - they will do this any time it is over 12-14°C.
We have checked they have reasonable honey supplies for food, and reduced hive area to 1 or 1.5 boxes to make it easier for them to keep the internal temperature constant.
We won't open the boxes again until we start getting 18-20°C temperatures in spring.
Interestingly, there were still drones (males) present - they normally get booted out of the hive as winter approaches (life is hard for male bees).
There was also still quite a lot of brood (baby bees) being raised - this slows right down as winter approaches then ramps up again in spring.
We ended up with some frames either completely or partially full of capped honey. We extracted this with many thanks to Michael from Cooramook Produce for lending us his honey extractor.
We ended up with almost 8kg of honey, which has been taste tested for quality by our members - the result is delicious!
If you're interested in learning more about the basics of beekeeping, contact us and we can keep you in the loop when activity starts to pick up again.
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