Stef and Greg’s Newtown Hive

About two years ago I bought a native stingless bee hive and bees from Tim Heard in Brisbane, Queensland.

Some 18 months later Peter Clarke from Wild Things at Ku-ring-gai Council showed several of us how to split a native stingless bee hive and I put the second hive into the Asylum Seekers Centre in Surry Hills.

This month I’ve split those two hives and now there are four native bee hives in Sydney; the new ones are in Newtown (Stef and Greg) and Dulwich Hill (Judy).

After each split  the bees  have a big meeting.  They form a cloud of about a meter in diameter near the hive and fly around busily for an hour or more.  I’d love to know what they’re saying.  Is it, “Wow, what the hell was that?  One minute we’re in our hive minding our own business and this big thing breaks our house in two and now we have no idea where we are.”  Or, “Where’s the food?”  Or, “We won’t get tricked again.”

Next year I or the hive owners will split the four hives and there will be eight hives and the year after that there will be sixteen  hives . . . .

And so it goes when we roll up our sleeves, say, “I can do this”, and go to . . .

Bzzzzzzzzzzzz

M