It’s spring, and in the apiary world that’s the start of honey season, meaning we’re spending a lot of time in the field moving hives so they can capture the best blooms around the state and turn it into this year’s stunning honey.
We’ve upped the ante this season with plans to expand our hive numbers from around 1,800 to more than 4,000 over the next couple of years. Warral Maldon staff have been busy making hundreds of tailor-made components, including new frames, hive pallets, hive lids, clearance boards and our own queen breeding equipment to house 288 three-frame nuclei.
You can’t have hundreds more hives without thousands more bees, so we’ve partnered with Jody from Bee Scientifics to develop a queen breeding program that will give her queens to sell and bees to study, and for us to populate our new hives.
We’re aiming to get the first of our new queens and transfer them to our latest hives in the next couple of months, while Jody undertakes her own vital work in researching the effects and management of various diseases that can harm Australia’s bees. It’s a win-win-win: for us, for the beekeeping industry and for our customers who reap the benefits of ever-flowing Warral Maldon honey.