Sweet Justice

22/11/2024

🐝Yep, worker bees can lay eggs, but all of their babies are male, and they're a sign of big problems in the hive!

Worker bees will only lay eggs if absolutely necessary, and the main reason is that the hive has lost its Queen.

☠Unfortunately, the hive can't survive without a laying queen, because she's the only one with fully developed ovaries that are capable of making girls and boys.☠

⚠️SPOILER: You can save this hive!

The infertile worker bee can only lay male bees and, as we've looked at before, males can't keep a hive going. Males (drones) can't collect pollen or nectar, and they're fully dependent on the female worker bees.

So, how do you notice it? And what should you do about it?🤔

The main sign is that all of the capped brood, that's the baby bees in their cocoon, are in drone cells. Huh? What does that mean?

🐝Well, hopefully you've seen the regular beautiful hexagonal style of honeycomb. Each one of those hexagons is a cell.

If it's a baby girl in the cell then the hexagon is the regular size, with a flat capping on top. 👼

If it's a baby boy, the cell is noticeably bigger and the cap bubbles up to allow room for the bigger males.🚼

🚨If most of the cells are big and puffed out, the hive is Queenless with an egg laying worker.

To save the hive you're going to need to:

1️⃣ Get rid of the laying workers. If you tip all of the bees out of the hive about 50m away, the laying workers will most probably be too heavy to make it back to the hive because of their developed ovaries. All of the other bees will make it home.

2️⃣ Borrow at least one frame of brood from another hive and add it to the brood box, and

3️⃣ Add a mated queen (buy one)

This is another reason why it's so important to check on your bees regularly... you might be able to save a doomed hive.🦸‍♀️

Photo by Wolfgang Hasselmann on Unsplash

14/11/2024

We don’t just teach in Youth Justice Centres! Claire and Paul are looking forward to running this 4-hour Intro to Beekeeping in Trentham.

If you’d like us to run a course near you please let us know via DM or email [email protected]!

Ever wanted to harvest your own honey? We have the class for you! Come learn all about keeping bees. Paul Fogarty from Sweet Justice will take you through everything you need to know to successfully manage your own beehives.

The cost of this class has been kept low thanks to generous sponsorship from the Hepburn Shire Council Community Grant Program.

Bookings: https://www.trenthamnc.org.au/service-page/beekeeping-for-beginners

14/11/2024

😴Despite having 5 eyes and no eyelids, bees do actually sleep. So, how?...

Cleverly, the bees build hives that are quite dark at the best of times, and most of the bees only sleep at night. All bees come home to their hive at night.

🐝The boys sleep the most, even though they do the least amount of work. 🙄

The younger worker bees, the nurse bees, are growing and working so they sleep the second most... understandably.🛌

The older worker bees, the ones that leave the hive to collect nectar, pollen and water sleep well at night, but not for as long as the others. Sometimes they'll rest on a flower, but only for a short period.

And the queen, who spends most of her life wandering around laying eggs, doesn't have a regular sleep cycle like the others. She rests briefly every now throughout the day and night.😓

How do bees sleep?

The bees enter a state called 'Torpor' where their metabolic rates slows down, their body droops down, and they don't respond to most external stimuli.

Like us, bees that are deprived of sleep are sluggish and struggle to complete the tasks necessary for their survival. So, make sure you're a good neighbour and tip toe around them at night!

🐝Sweet dreams bees. 🛌

If you like our posts, please buy some of our honey or your own bees from our website shop at www.sweetjustice.com.au.

Background photo by Dustin Humes on Unsplash.

07/11/2024

🐝Can bees starve when there's flowering plants around? Unfortunately yes, but how? And what can you do about it?...

🌼Bees need both nectar and pollen to survive: nectar for energy, and pollen for protein. Not many Australian plants offer both, and the best ones haven't flowered well this year.

To explain how bees starve around flowering plants, let's look at 4 weird facts:

1️⃣ Wattle plants flower every year, but are so low in nectar that bees get less nectar than the nectar energy used to get it. Some wattles even have low quality pollen.

That means some plants provide pollen but no nectar... and bees need both!

So, if there's no high nectar plants near the wattles the bees can run out, and they die!☠

2️⃣ Yellow box eucalyptus, one of Australia's favourite honey flavours, doesn't offer pollen to bees.

Yep, some plants are high in nectar (honey!) but have no pollen! If there's no quality pollen plants around there's no protein AND...

⚰The hive will die.

To get maximum Yellow box honey production, beekeepers feed pollen to their bees.

3️⃣ Yellow box again... nearly all of them aren't flowering this year. Ahhhh... no yellow box honey!

Unfortunately, nearly all Eucalyptus trees don't flower each year, and some only flower every 5-10 years... yikes.

4️⃣ Even if a tree produced nectar last time it flowered, it might give you nothing this time.

We recently saw a heap of Brown stringybark flowering near us... it looked so promising! But there's no juicy nectar in them this year, and the bees would starve if we left them there.

So, what can beekeepers do about it?🤔

🐝Visit your bees regularly to see if they've got enough honey, nectar and pollen. Then...

If you can't move your beehive to good flowers, please feed your bees. For energy you feed either fondant (wedding cake icing) or sugar water. Quality pollen can be bought from most beekeeping supplies shops.😋

Please leave a 'Like' or 'Comment', and follow us for more bee facts!

Background 📸by Claus Jensen on Unsplash

06/11/2024

🐝Got a Flow Hive but no bees? Here's your answer!

Fill your brood box with 8 frames of bees, plus a mated queen, for just $295!🎉

Email Claire and Paul at [email protected] or click "Shop Now" to go to our website for more details.

NOTE: The price of $295 requires you to return the bee box after moving the frames into your hive, for a $40 refund on the total price of $335. So the product to order from the online shop is the $335 "One-box hive with bees and a mated queen". (Apologies if this is a little confusing... feel free to ask us about it).

Pickup is from Kyneton, VIC or we deliver to Melbourne, Ballarat, Bendigo and everywhere in between.

📸by Oktavianus Mulyadi on Unsplash

Free pickup is available from Kyneton OR flat rate $150 local delivery (includes Melbourne & Bendigo suburbs within a 90km radius of Kyneton - for orders that include bees).

31/10/2024

🐝Did you know that you can turn nasty bees into nice bees in a few easy steps?
❗WARNING: The following contains murder, gluttony and a young one's ascension to the throne!

Yep, some bees are horrible! They attack anyone near their hive and give the beekeeper hell no matter how nice we try to be. But why? And what can you do?

It all comes down to the Queen! Her genetics determine whether the hive is:
🐝 naughty or nice,
🐝 able to produce a lot of honey or not,
🐝 able to resist diseases, and more.

So, what can you do if your bees are nasty?

Step 1️⃣:
Buy a mated queen from a queen breeder who is known to have lovely bees. (Yep, there's people whose job is to produce queen bees with great genetics!)

Step 2️⃣:
Kill your current queen and throw her down to the bottom of your hive so that the hive knows she's dead.

Step 3️⃣:
Place the queen cage in the bottom box of your hive. Yep, your new mated queen will be in a queen cage with a few nurse bees and a lot of fondant (icing) at one end for them to feed on and to stop her getting out.

🚨WARNING! Don't take her out of the cage because the hive will still be loyal to the smell of the old queen and will kill the new queen if they can get access to her straight away.

Step 4️⃣:
Wait 3+ days for the new queen's team to eat their way out of the queen cage via the fondant, while the hive tries to eat their way in.

As they do this the hive gets used to the smell of the new queen and by the time they get to her they have accepted her as their new queen.💞

Step 5️⃣:
Watch over the coming weeks as the hive's nastiness fades away as the children of the old queen are slowly replaced by the children of the new queen.
Worker bees only live for 30-45 days, and the new queen's eggs will begin emerging as bees in less than 4 weeks.

✨Voila, you have a lovely beehive! Beekeeping is fun again! 🎉🎊🎉

Leave a like or comment if you learnt something! Feel free to ask some questions!

Confession time: We don't breed queens! With over 1,000 lovely beehives, when we replace queens we leave the queen breeding part to the experts.🤝

Background photo by Eduardo Gorghetto on Unsplash

29/10/2024

🐝Our beehives are selling fast so get in quick for these great deals:

💥 Nucleus Hives for just $229! Only 5 left!

💥 One box hives (8 frames) for just $395!

And yep, they're Flow Hive compatible.

See all the details and buy our hives at www.sweetjustice.com.au.

📬Or email Claire and Paul at [email protected] if you have any questions.

You can pick up from us in Kyneton, VIC, halfway between Melbourne & Bendigo. 😁

🚚 Or, we deliver to Melbourne, Bendigo, Ballarat and everywhere in between.

We look forward to hearing from you,

From Claire, Paul and the team.

📸Background Photo by Damien Tupinier on Unsplash

Free pickup is available from Kyneton OR flat rate $150 local delivery (includes Melbourne & Bendigo suburbs within a 90km radius of Kyneton - for orders that include bees).

23/10/2024

🐝Can you find this blonde bombshell?

And did you know that different genetics create queens with unique looks? 🤔

🐝Some are nearly all black, like the gorgeous queen at Parkville Youth Justice Centre that the young people have affectionately named 'Black Betty'. Some have stripes while others are blonder than this girl!

👑About two thirds of our 1,000+ queens are blonde like this one, with the other third being an even mix of dark queens or good old-fashioned stripy queens.

If you can't find the queen check out our expert tips: https://www.sweetjustice.com.au/blogs/tips/how-to-find-the-queen-bee

Like, follow & comment below - where do YOU think she's hiding? 👑

All the very best from the SJ team.

17/10/2024

🐝Do you need bees to start your Flow Hive? Our nucleus hives are Flow Hive compatible... and they're only $229!

🐝The nucleus hives give you 5 frames of Italian bees with a mated queen that fit straight into your Flow Hive brood box. It's such an easy way to get started!

🐝Or maybe you'd like 8 Flow Hive compatible frames of bees, with a mated queen, in a brood box? These are $395.

You can buy these hives at www.sweetjustice.com.au. Or you can email Claire and Paul at [email protected] if you have any questions.

🚚We deliver to Melbourne, Bendigo, Ballarat and everywhere in between.

Or you can pick up from us in Kyneton, VIC (Halfway between Melbourne and Bendigo). 😁

We look forward to hearing from you,

From Claire, Paul and the team.

📸Photo by Damien Tupinier on Unsplash

17/10/2024

🐝Ok, we can't pretend that it's all fluffy bunnies when it comes to bees. Sure, pollination and honey are awe-inspiring, but let's look at the dark side of life in the hive...

Here's 5 things that bees never mention in their public relations campaigns...

😳 If a hive of bees feel that their queen is no longer strong enough for the hive to thrive, they make several new queens and kick the old queen out of the hive to start again elsewhere.

😳 When the new queens hatch they fight to the death and the winner becomes the new queen. Goodbye princesses!

😳 In the wintertime the hive doesn't need male bees so in Autumn the girls bite their wings, kick them out of the hive and leave them to die.

😳 If food is scarce the stronger hives will start stealing honey from the weaker hives, even to the point where the weaker hive is killed off.

And this next one is one that we haven't talked about before, and it's often the one that people find most alarming...😱

😳 If there isn't enough food available due to a lack of suitable flowers nearby the bees commit infanticide, or abortions. In this process they remove baby bees (larvae) from their cells and throw them out the hive. They know they won't be able to provide for the larvae, so this becomes the best option to prolong the survival of the hive.

These last two facts are surprising but understandable, and they are preventable for beekeepers. But how? ...🤔

🐝As commercial beekeepers, we move our beehives on trucks to ensure that the hive is in an area where it has enough food. Ideally, they have too much food so that we can harvest some honey.

Actually, these are also mains reason why the farmers whose crops we pollinate (eg. almond farmers) don't have bees all year round... their crops only flower for one month of the year and the bees would run out of food in the other months.

For backyard beekeepers remember that dead larvae or dead bees at the entry of the hive is a clear sign that you need to feed your bees.

So while bees may do surprising things, it is all for the purpose of allowing the hive to survive. Survival of the fittest... isn't nature awesome!

Background photo by Anil Xavier or Unsplash

10/10/2024

🐝Did you know that honey making is a co-operative group effort by the bees...

🍯The start of the honey making process is the one that we all see. An older worker bee, at least 20 days old, flies to a flower and uses its straw-like tongue to suck out nectar.

This goes into her 'honey/nectar stomach', but not all the way through to her digestion stomach - unless she's a little hungry.😋

🐝She takes the nectar back to the hive. That super star can carry nearly her whole bodyweight of nectar!

But, this is where the story turns a little ugly😱...

Back at the hive the older bee passes the nectar to a younger bee in a process that would be best described as vomiting from mouth to mouth.🤢

The younger bees keep passing the nectar around like this to begin removing moisture from the nectar. Why?

👩‍🔬The bees know that nectar has too much water in it to be able to store long-term, so they reduce the water content from about 70% to about 15% with a few tricks. If the nectar or honey is stored with too much water in it, it ferments and turns into alcohol (good old mead).

Their next step is to take it to one of their perfectly designed hexagon cells.

Some more moisture is evaporated out of the honey by keeping the hive warm and by little worker bees fanning the nectar/honey.

👌When the moisture level is down to the desired amount, (about 15%), the bees tick off that it is now honey, and they cover the cell with a layer of wax.

Having read all of that hopefully you'd still like to buy honey... We'd truly appreciate it if you tried our honey at www.sweetjustice.com.au.

Thanks again bees! Brilliant in so many ways. And please don't forget to hit the 'Like' button and to "Follow" us for more bee facts!😁

Background 📸 by Bermix Studio on Unsplash

09/10/2024

🐝Bees are brilliant, and making honey really is a group effort...

🍯The start of the honey making process is the one that we all see. An older worker bee, at least 20 days old, flies to a flower and uses its straw-like tongue to suck out nectar.

This goes into her 'honey/nectar stomach', but not all the way through to her digestion stomach - unless she's a little hungry.

🐝She takes the nectar back to the hive. That super star can carry nearly her whole bodyweight of nectar!

But, this is where the story turns a little ugly😱...

Back at the hive the older bee passes the nectar to a younger bee in a process that would be best described as vomiting from mouth to mouth.🤢

The younger bees keep passing the nectar around like this to begin removing moisture from the nectar. Why?

The bees know that nectar has too much water in it to be able to store long-term, so they reduce the water content from about 70% to about 15% with a few tricks. If the nectar or honey is stored with too much water in it, it ferments and turns into alcohol (good old mead).

Their next step is to take it to one of their perfectly designed hexagon cells.

Some more moisture is evaporated out of the honey by keeping the hive warm and by little worker bees fanning the nectar/honey.

When the moisture level is down to the desired amount, (about 15%), the bees tick off that it is now honey, and they cover the cell with a layer of wax.

Having read all of that hopefully you'd still like to buy honey, and maybe you'd even like to buy bees. We'd truly appreciate it if you tried our honey at https://www.sweetjustice.com.au/products/pure-victorian-honey.

If you'd like bees we're currently selling starter hives (nucleus hives) for just $229, and ready-to-go one box hives (8 frames) for just $395. Both types are Flow Hive compatible. Check them out in our shop at www.sweetjustice.com.au.

Thanks again bees! Brilliant in so many ways. And please don't forget to hit the 'Like' button and to "Follow" us for more bee facts!

Background 📸 by Bermix Studio on Unsplash

Free pickup is available from Kyneton OR flat rate $150 local delivery (includes Melbourne & Bendigo suburbs within a 90km radius of Kyneton - for orders that include bees).