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Welcome to the
Bee Zextra Pages
Quirks, foibles, snippets, sidelines and mis-quotes.
And a plethora of Bad Bee Puns and Batty Bee Bitz
that will simply confound you.
Have a play, as we indulge in Droning On.
Telling the Bees
Telling the Bees is a traditional European custom in which bees would be told of important events in their keeper’s lives, such as births, marriages, celebrations, deaths or departures and returns in the household.
CLICK HERE for an excellent blog.
CLICK HERE for ‘Telling the Bees-Mythology & Folklore’
Telling the Bees – CLICK HERE for some darkly crafted folk music.
The Circle of Life
A bee flies off to gather nectar and pollen for her hive. She doesn’t return. And the ants perform their role. Life goes on.
CLICK HERE for another pic in the series.
3rd Australian Bee Conference
The Australian Honey Bee Industry Council is proudly hosting the 3rd Australian Bee Congress on the Gold Coast from the 27th – 30th June 2018.
1st Australian Native Bee Conference
Beekeepers, farmers, industry leaders and researchers are invited to share knowledge at the first Australian Native Bee Conference. It will discuss issues required to increase understanding and unlock the potential of our native bees, a valuable but under-utilized natural resource.
The World’s Coolest Beekeeper’s Friend
CLICK HERE for a Donkey-of-a-Poster.
CLICK HERE for a newsy view.
Apiary Sniffer Dog
Use of a Sniffer Dog in the Detection of American Foulbrood in Beehives.
CLICK HERE for the RIRDC brochure – good stuff!
CLICK HERE for an ABC Rural News item.
CLICK HERE for a poster download.
Yellow Rain
Yep, us beekeepers knows exactly what we’re talkin’bout here!
Honeybee Suite Blog CLICK HERE
A Weird Story CLICK HERE
Kicked outta the Hive . . .
Going on holidays, or is life more cruel?
Drones initially seem a lazy, superfluous lot, being fed and pampered, and having little role but to ride the Drone Zones looking for a Queen to woo. How wrong we could be!
CLICK HERE for a Drone Zone story
CLICK HERE for the Role of the Drone Bee
Keeping on the Cliffs in China
These wooden bee boxes are balanced on the Karstic Mountains of the reserve in China and the beekeeper has to clamber on top of them to get to the next one. The reserve is a concentration of vital medicinal flowering plants, and the hive products are highly sought after. There is no flat / cleared ground in the key areas of the reserve.
CLICK HERE for posters.
CLICK HERE for a great website.
A River Journey
along our Mary River,
as told by Uncle Eugene Bargo.
CLICK HERE
Bikes and Bees . . .
CLICK HERE for bikes, bees and balance!
CLICK HERE to meet Bombus and Borage, a quirky duo of pollination-inspired performers.
How headbutts and dances give bees a hive mind.
Great article on how the entire colony, consisting of tens thousands of individuals, works like a single human nervous system, with each bee behaving like a neuron. When they make a decision, such as choosing where to build a nest, individual bees opt for different choices and they support and veto each other until they reach a consensus. They have, quite literally, a hive mind. Click on the button.
Piping, quacking and tooting.
Why, it’s gotta be a Queen Thing of course!
Here’s a great story from Honey Bee Suite on just what aurally goes on in a hive those moments before a swarm.
Ancient art of honey hunting in Nepal.
The Gurung tribesmen of Nepal are master honey hunters, risking their lives collecting honeycomb in the foothills of the Himalayas, using nothing more than handmade rope ladders and long sticks known as tangos.
CLICK HERE
Fallen comb.
A wild windy night in a Gympie side-street saw this spectacular set of comb fall onto the footpath from a nested swarm in a high tree. The path was frequented by children, so we were asked to remove it. But noted the classic curves of the natural comb. We did our best to save the hive.
Diagonal build.
A swam of bees moved into this empty 3 storey hive we had stacked on our property. The bees built this diagonal free-form structure in the empty top 2 supers.
CLICK HERE for more.