Honey thieves

I will write about christmas later on when I get some photos from people. In the meantime, Corey and I have left the kids with mum, dad and Emily for the holidays while we pack for the move and sort out the honey.

I've painted Jack's room and packed some but today was honey extracting day and so Cor and I suited up in our white shirts and long pants and donned our nets ready for an exciting day of stealing the bees honey! Things hadn't started off well considering we didn't get our hot knife in the mail before christmas which is what we had wanted. This morning, Cor repaired a blower his dad had given him so we could use it to blow the bees off the boxes of honey. When we got to the site however, the blower decided not to work again on and off. We got the first lot of about 9 boxes but then the blower packed it in for good and we got another two boxes but decided to leave the rest on their sides until late afternoon when the bees were bedding down for the night.

Unfortunately, as we discovered later, this wasn't a good idea. When we returned after setting up for the extraction at home, the air was thick with bees and we found that other bees were robbing the honey. In only a few hours they managed to fully tear down and remove most of the honey in 6 boxes! There was wax like sawdust from where they pulled it apart. Amazing really (yet dissappointing also).

All part of the learning experience I guess. We still managed to get around half a barrel of honey and were still extracting till around 8pm. Pretty tired now. I really enjoy this bee site, it's a travelling stock reserve and you often see kangaroos and many birds and lots of wildflowers. I got a great shot today of a tawny frogmouth owl pretending to be part of a branch.

More extracting tommorrow from the bees at our other site so hopefully all goes well this time.