Sweet Leaf Honey

16/06/2026

Nice winter honey!
We've been busy extracting today...nice little haul of winter honey (approx. 900kg). Its a nice mixed blossom. 🐝 🍯 😋

15/06/2026

Tiny little things....Varroa Mite....they have arrived in Bundy and we're super grateful we prepared for their arrival.
We spent time & money retro fitting our hives with mesh bottom and a pull out board. This was so we could use oxalic acid, a natural product, to treat our hives. We brought a vaporiser a few months back and started familiarising ourselves with our new tool and began precautionary treatments while the mite continued to travelled north towards us. A month ago before the mites officially arrived we started installing part 2 of our treatment plan, oxalic acid strips.
We also have another product we can use as a plan b, it to is natural, formic acid (from ants) but for now we hold the line using oxalic acid in its 2 forms - vaporisering & strip's.

Monitor, treat...repeat.
This is now beekeeping in Australia.

11/06/2026

Paperbarks are fantastic beekeeping trees, providing both nectar for the workers and pollen for the brood.

This one is a Red Paperbark. They're not as plentiful as the yellow varieties around here, but they're absolutely stunning when they're flowering.

You'll also find pink ones about, although they're often mistaken for bottlebrush trees.

Beautiful 😍 🐝

10/06/2026

Varroa has officially made it to Bundaberg. 🐝
Hold on to your knickers, folks — things could get a bit pricey from here.
Honey, pollination contracts, replacement nucs, and potentially food production costs all feel the ripple effects when Varroa arrives.

The challenge? If you don't treat, colonies can collapse. If you rely heavily on pharmaceutical treatments, there's always the risk of mites eventually developing resistance. That's why we're sticking with oxalic acid as part of our management program.

The next few years will be interesting for Australian beekeeping, that's for sure.

08/06/2026

The girls looking pretty bloody happy. They're chasing paperbark, so they really dont like to be disturbed (bit cranky). The whole site smells of ripening paperbark honey!

04/06/2026

A follow up to yesterdays bee truck roll over out Roma way........
a team of 8 fellow beekeepers went out to help. All up the truck was carrying 360 hives with there winter honey stores on top. The audio is the Vice President of the Queensland Beekeeping Association who was one of the 8 that went to help save any remaining bees and reinstate any hives that could be out of the wreck. They said they managed to save a large portion of the load and the bees have now been loaded onto another truck heading for some tucker.
I surmise they will given a few days to re-settle and during that time they (the bees) will be very busy fixing up the inside of their hives repairing combs, laying brood (if there nest have been destroyed) and foraging to reestablish their stores.
They will be pretty cranky too, but once settled they will be checked one by one for evidence of a queen, if they have stores or need help, if their boxes and frames are damage free. Big job....

How fantastic to see the help roll in like that, well done to all and good luck with recovery effort.

03/06/2026

I tell ya....every beekeeper thinks about this moment but we don't speak about it. Am glad no one was hurt; not a great time for this to happen to our fellow beekeepers with everything happening in the beekeeping industry. We wish them luck with there recovery; i imagine suits with duct tape around every seam for this clean up job; hopefully they can save some of their bees and equipment.

A swarm of angry bees are buzzing around a truck carrying hives after it crashed of the Warrego Highway this morning.

03/06/2026

Beautiful winter morning, skies are blue and the bees are doing there morning chores! 🐝 🐝 🐝

Steve & I are out doing out checks - we check for honey storage room, signs of pest, the health & size of brood nest & lay pattern of the Queen, and the trees, we can't forget to look up at the beautiful trees to check for buds and blossoms! After all, no tree's, no bees!

🐝

28/05/2026

Nothing humbles a beekeeper faster than dropping a brood frame and immediately wondering if you just lost the queen 👑🐝💀

Watch/hear the bees ploom up in confusion!

21/05/2026

Just a beekeeper and their honey tornado 🍯 🐝 😋