Black Mountain Honey: Let's Talk Bees with The Bush Bee Man - Episode 18

Look at that.

So we are live, and this is probably one of my proudest moments on my YouTube channel so far because I have Mark D'Acco, the Bush Bee Man. And it's— what time is it there in the morning, Mark?

It's not quite half past 7 at the minute, Laurence.

So half past 7 in the morning there, and it's 4 minutes to 11 in the UK. And I still can't get over the fact that I'm talking to you and then like seconds, milliseconds later, you can actually hear me. So, John, uh, Mark, John, I've been talking to Mark's son constantly and I've been calling him John, so I've got it wrong within the first couple of seconds there. Mark, thank you so much, the Bush Bee Man, for coming on to my chat. Welcome. Do you want to introduce yourself to my viewers?

Yeah, cool. Well, thanks for having me on, Laurence. I'm Mark Decaux, the Bush Bee Man, from down here in Australia, little old South Australia. I reckon I'm in the desert and I think Laurence is in like a damp paradise, I would have thought, in comparison. Would that be a fair comparison?

Yeah, it certainly is. It is like probably been about 8 degrees today and it's rained, and that's pretty much par for the course that you'd get in North Wales. So I'm very, very jealous of your amazing climate. So I've got a few questions I'm going to ask you today. We're just going to have a little bit of a chat. I've watched so many of your videos, they're so much fun. You bring so much fun and joy to everything beekeeping and craziness as well, which is what I really love. So how did your— yeah, that's my favorite bit. So how did your channel start?

Oh, basically I started getting into beekeeping a bit more in depth. Like, I'd been playing around with bees for a while, and then I thought, I'm going to get a bit more serious about this. And my son John, who's into filming and camera and wanting to build a bit of a— I know, a new internet presence, I guess. And I thought, well, here's a chance. I can talk and he can film. Let's just Shoot some stuff and see what happens. And we did that, and I think we got, I don't know, four or five episodes sort of in the in the can or whatever. And he was showing his wife, who was rolling around on the floor laughing at our second episode, and decided, and then we kind of decided that this was a good idea. And I reckon if we can make her laugh, we can get anybody to laugh.

Oh well, you you definitely achieve that like all the time. I like I I love watching your videos, and they are so much fun. And it must be so nice doing it with your son as well. Like, what a nice thing to do to kind of bond.

Oh mate, it's incredible. Yeah, no, we've, we've definitely had some moments discussing him growing up. I think, I think that's probably the coolest thing is spending enough time together and we get to have an adult conversation and, and retrospect about, I guess, how he viewed growing up and how I thought it was as the dad. Yeah, it's fascinating, those conversations. I think when we're driving for hours to get to a B-side or something, there's a, you know, there's no radio reception, so you've got to talk about something.

Yeah, and you must— yeah, you just have like such good adventures. So what's the scariest thing that's happened there? Because we were just chatting before how things are pretty, pretty chilled out in Wales and not, not much happens and there's just a lot of sheep. But Australia, like, everything is pretty much killer in Australia, isn't it? So what's the scariest thing that's happened while you've been doing your channel?

Well, I don't know. I mean, this is— that is on— I know when you have your tourist card, it says all the things that are going to kill you over here. But like, I remember we had— I had some backpackers. I think they were from Sweden, I think, or somewhere. And they were nervous to get out of the car because they thought, man, there's going to be some spider jump on them or whatever. But we don't actually see that many killer things. I mean, they're all around us, but they're not really interested in killing us that much.

No, it's funny. On the BBC website this morning, there was an alert to say that there's a new disease from a tick that if you get it, it can just kind of make you a little bit sick. And that was like headline news in the UK that there's this new tick disease. I was thinking, in Australia, they just have like spiders that just kill you for fun. But I know, yeah, maybe it's not that bad.

No, well, well, there's still— there's a lot of us living here, so, you know, it's not that often. But I— yeah, you got to be a bit aware when you're out in the bush especially that you don't tread on a snake in the grass or something or other, as the saying goes.

Oh, definitely. So, right, so next question on my list is, is what, what is the stupidest thing you've done while you've been working with your bees or on your beekeeping channel?

Oh, I think the stupidest thing I had to do would have to be I don't know, about episode 150, I think we were up to. And I went and got a crane off an old truck, and I thought, ah, okay, well, if the truck starts, I'll drive the thing home. And I fooled around with it a bit and put some fuel in it and got a battery, and the bloody thing did start. And I thought, ah, here we go, that'll be all right, I'll, I'll drive it home and I'll take the crane off when I get home. But of course, the thing had been in this bloke's yard for 10 or 15 years or something, I guess. So I got about half an hour down the road and she overheated, and I thought, ah damn, that'd be right. I had actually filled up the radiator, but I think there was a hose that wasn't real well. Anyway, back in the day you could take a radiator cap off, like do just crack the first bit and you would get, you know, let the steam out. And anyway, I thought, well, that'll be right. I let it cool down a bit.

Did that.

But I'm in the cab with a rag and I crack the top of the radiator and boom. The bloody thing because the old cat was rusty and shit, and so steam and water went everywhere. And yeah, anyway, you can check that out. I don't think that's about episode 150 or something, but absolutely.

And what happened? You just got—you just got—I just got.

Luckily, I didn't get real burnt, just up the side of my face and bit on my arm, but nothing too terrible. That was definitely epically stupid.

Again, you don't—you don't get that in the UK. So one of the things that I—

You use radiators, don't you?

Radiators, because it's so cold. But yeah, if you break down, the worst thing you're going to get over here is a shocking cup of tea from a service station. So one of the things I noticed with your channel, and I know you're a good— you're a big fan of these, is your bee suit. So you wear the same bee suit as me, BB Wear Ultra Suit. So tell me about it. Are you a fan?

Yeah, oh mate, they're really cool. I mean, I reckon they're the one bee suit that I've got that don't actually get stung in. They don't because they've got the padding thick enough. I did read all— I'm gonna— I'm a terrible promotional individual, but they have got the, the actual webbing that's in between is nice and thick so the bee stings can't get to you. Is that— you would probably know more than me, Lawrence. You, you do that, you do the rap for me.

Yeah, well, it's exactly that. Like, I, I bought it because I was getting too hot in my other bee suit, so I bought it me down. And I'm exactly the same. The big selling point for me of that suit is the fact that you just do not get stung through it, especially like through the wrists or anywhere where it gets tight up to you. So I've got a couple of them now and I do love them. Yeah, you can't go back to a poly cotton suit. And this is what, again, we're in the UK, it's barely 20 degrees in the summer, but I can imagine what it would be like in Australia when you get some proper sunshine.

It's, uh, The overnight lows are higher than 20 degrees. Yeah, like it's 20 degrees in the middle of the night.

It's crazy. So on— so how many episodes have you done now on your channel?

Oh mate, I don't know, I lose track. We're over, we're over a couple hundred.

And, and do you have like any, any favorites or any that like stick in your mind? Like tell me about your best ones.

Probably this, probably one of the early ones when we were Doing some cutouts out of an old; it was like an outhouse, and we're trying to chase the queen around. That was rather fun. Listening to her piping in the inside the wall, and I think, "Yep, there she is," and try to catch her. But ah, that was early on, and I don't know. I don't do many cutouts now because it's jolly time-consuming exercise. Do you do cutouts and stuff?

So I've done a couple of cutouts. I've never done them on video, and. Yeah, I'd love to do more because I think, I think they do really well in terms of people watching them, especially if you, uh, especially if you plant them in like, I don't know, toilets or something like that. Not mentioning any names, any beekeepers that do that, but they do, they do tend to do very well, don't they, on, on YouTube. So I want to do more, but you can't do them on your own. You need someone to film you, don't you? Because I thought, you know what it's like with cutouts, like you just, you get so sticky. And you're just covering it and then you're trying to film yourself at the same time. So no, I just, I need to find myself a production engineer.

Yeah, that makes perfect sense because, yeah, mate, you're quite right, you need a special pair of gloves to throw away after that job.

Yeah, definitely. But I want to do, I'm going to do more and I want to do more swarms. The problem I have is I work full-time doing something outside of bees, so I have very limited time and I can't, so I can't be reactive to swarms and I can't be reactive to cutouts and things like that, so I'll have to— yeah, maybe when I retire. A few years yet.

Yeah, I reckon it's interesting when people do ring you up about a swarm and they'll ring you up and they'll go, oh, I've got a swarm at my house, could you come and get me— come and come and get them? And I'm sort of thinking, hang on a minute, this is November, I reckon it might not be a swarm anymore. And I say, how long's it been there? Oh, a couple of years. And I said, well, where is it? I said— they say, oh, it's in the shed. It's coming in and out of the little gap, and I'm like, well, it ain't a swarm anymore, it's something else now. It's an established home.

We get it a lot, and you can kind of tell throughout the time of the year what it is, and you ask the questions, and it's either like solitary bees. You get a lot of solitary bees when people say, oh, there's bees coming out of my wall. It's solitary bees. Get a lot of bumblebee nests, get a lot of wasps. Yeah, and then sometimes it's a swarm. So what I say to them now is, if it's a swarm, take a picture and send it to me, like WhatsApp it to me, and you know, if it's a swarm, it's a swarm. But even then, I've got a few people like who live near me who I just forward the message on to, and they're dead keen, and I'm jealous, and I'm at work and they're out having fun catching swarms, and I'm working.

Yeah, the joys of a job.

So tell me about your fish tank beehive. I was going through, like looking through some videos, and that was the one that stuck out for me. I thought, oh, that is so cool. So how How did that even happen? Did you, did you turn the fish tank into a beehive?

Yes. Well, I, I had an old fish tank and I thought, here's a, here's a cool idea. I'll, I'll make a top bar beehive out of a fish tank and then we'll be able to watch them expand and, and grow. And which worked really well. They did very nicely in there because I made the— made— I basically— what'd I do? I turned it upside down so I had the roof down the bottom, and then I took the seal out. So it was basically the walls in the end, not that— so I didn't have a glass bottom as such because I figured otherwise they wouldn't be able to breathe. And then, yeah, you know, as in a bit of air circulation and stuff. So it was really just an observation hive idea. And then we live streamed a fair bit of it, which was kind of cool during the— that was during when everybody was trapped inside their house. So people quite enjoyed sitting around. They had, well, I guess levels of boredom, so they were watching bees flying in and out and building their home. And then the bees eventually covered the cameras up, and then, well, anyway, we moved on.

So what, what happened? Did they, did they just swarm, did they, in the end?

Well, no, they filled the jolly thing up. They did so well, it was crazy. And then I thought, this is getting a little bit awkward to work on the veranda, because they're on my wife's veranda, which is even more exciting. So she started getting annoyed that there was sticky muck everywhere, so I thought I better transfer them into a manageable hive, which is what ended up happening. So now they're a Flow Hive on the veranda, which is rather interesting.

Oh cool, so what do you think, what do you think of Flow Hives? Because if there's one way to alienate— not alienate, be divisive between beekeepers— is to talk about Flow Hives.

Oh mate, isn't it a contentious little exercise? Um, I think they're— Well, I think they're a fascinating idea if you just want a couple of beehives and you don't want to have all the extractions and all the stuff. And, uh, I don't know, I mean, I think they're incredibly clever. That's what I reckon. And the boys have done a good job. They're really nice blokes. I've met them and talked to them, and they're down to earth, just a father and son duo that came across a good idea and made it happen.

So I don't know.

Ah, I wouldn't think you'd want to go out and have 1,000 of them, which is actually the interesting thing about the Flow Hive idea, was that they were going to create them for commercial beekeepers so that you couldn't— you didn't, you know, you could do in-field extractions. And of course, when it found out how much a jolly frame cost and the expense of it all, they went, well, maybe not. And then they had a few hobbyist beekeepers that thought Wow, that looks pretty cool. Maybe, maybe we could have that. And away they went. And so I guess there's a lot of pushback from the commercial people, and I don't know, maybe some of it's that they're jealous they didn't come up with a million-dollar idea.

Yeah, I'm, I'm jealous I didn't come up with the idea because overhead there's a lot. If you put like something about a Flow Hive on a forum, oh, the amount of people that just say they slate it and say it's rubbish. And then you say, well, have you, have you ever used it? And they say no. And then you're like, well, how do you know then? So I thought, I'm gonna have a go on one of these. So I bought, I bought Flow Hive and I had a good play around with it last year, and it was great. I had so much fun with it. And I was just, I, I remember sitting at the back of the Flow Hive and you turn the taps on, you see the honey come out. And I, I remember taking the first jar of honey to the, the landowner, and they live up there, this really nice estate.

Yeah.

I gave her the jar of honey and she was like, it's still warm, is that normal? And it was like, it's warm because it's just, it's literally just come out of the hive. And we sat there and just ate it on toast and it was so nice. And I do think it's just like the nicest honey that you can have. And you're right, if you just want 1 or 2 hives and you don't want to spend £600, £700 on an extractor, okay, the Flow Hives are a bit more expensive, but you haven't got to mess around.

Yeah, no, I just— yeah, I think they're— well, hell, I think they're a fascinating thing, the way they made it work. And if you hear their story about all the prototypes to actually get it to work, it's quite fascinating to get to the point where they ended up to make something that actually did flow.

So, but yeah, they're quite protective, I think, over, over the design of it as well, aren't they? I do, I do feel bad in terms of— I think a lot of people Copy the design.

Well, I think that on that, that is the other thing too. You want to be careful. A lot of, a lot of people get excited about them not being such a good product, but some of the products that you get aren't necessarily from Flow Hive themselves. They're some knockoff from somewhere else. And I figure if you've come— if they've— if you've got a Flow Hive turned up and it's got a bamboo excluder, it's probably not an original.

Definitely, yeah. You can go straight, straight on the fire, the bamboo excluder. So yeah, I reckon that's a hint. Yeah, so you've been beekeeping for years, so what, what, like, one piece of advice would you give to a brand new beekeeper?

Best bit of advice is try to follow your own instincts to a point. Like, let's watch us guys that know— well, apparently know what we're doing, but bees are— the bees are the best teachers you're going to have. Because you try not to be. I think a lot of new beekeepers are afraid of doing the wrong thing because there's so much information and so jolly, no intense, isn't it? I don't know. That's my opinion. Half the reason why I started a bit of a light-handed, hearted chat about beekeeping because when I was watching, trying to learn a bit of stuff, I thought, man, these guys are intense. They make you feel like you know if you have one bee get crushed under a lid, you're going to hell or something. It's kind of crazy. And so yeah, just chill out a bit and perhaps don't stick your head in the hive every day because, I mean, you know, the bees don't— they'll get annoyed with you after a bit. Just let them do their thing and go there and check them sort of, I know, every other month or something. That's usually a good start.

Yeah, it's good advice. I think the one thing that I always say to people is just like, don't accept what other people say, just try stuff, try different stuff, because there's so many myths that are peddled in beekeeping and so many people's views that— and they've got their own agenda and they're trying to say, well, don't do this because of that. But I just say, well, just, just try it all, right? You can do it a million, million different ways, and you might stumble across something new, or you might stumble across something that somebody else says is really bad but you like. So just, yeah, keep an open mind.

Yeah, no, I agree. I think I think that's definitely, definitely the go, is just— yeah, I think there's— for me, beekeeping, there's probably 50% of it is pretty solid and not too many gray areas. You know, you check your brood height, check your brood, make sure your queen's laying, you know, make sure they got some water and make sure they're not starving to death. And then the other 50%, well, as you say, you can pretty much have a crack at anything.

Yeah, uh, so, so there were my scripted questions. So you'll start noticing now, going to be unscripted questions. You don't know what's coming now. Yeah, what's the differences between like RB keeping in terms of honey yield in Australia? What would you get from an average hive in a year, like really average?

Well, the weirdest thing down where I am in South Australia, we can have seasons where we, you know, we don't really get a whole lot of anything because the girls are just producing enough honey to keep themselves alive. But up in New South Wales and Queensland, they have more tropical and better weather, so that's probably where a lot more, I guess, larger operations operate up there. But we would get, I don't know, probably on a good season, a couple of supers full. So like 20 frames out of a hive, out of a hive or something like that. Just depends because eucalypts are so weird. They'll produce some years and some years they'll flower and have very little nectar in them. And that's most annoying because they look spectacular. The girls are real busy, but nothing happens. Yeah, that would be frustrating.

Okay, so I don't think it's that different. We maybe get like a little bit more than that here, but we're wet, so I think that's probably the thing.

In Europe, you're probably— seasons are fairly like a lot quicker too, aren't they, for as far as when they're foraging?

Oh yeah, like for us here, like in terms of honey in North Wales, it doesn't really start until May and then it's done kind of. We've got like a bit of heather, but if you take the heather away, it's done by middle of August. Yeah, right, so it's not a long season. Yeah, that's it. And then there's only one or two weekends where you get any sunshine.

Wow.

To try and schedule it in.

Goodness gracious.

Yeah, I talk in jest sometimes about Wales. It is lovely on a nice day. But so what kind of honey do you get? What plants yield?

Mainly eucalypts are probably our biggest honey producers. But we do get some citrus when I go on the citrus orchards, which is nice. And then we do a bit of lucerne as well, which is to help the lucerne boys get some seed. Some sort of wildflowers, but yeah, mainly eucalyptus, like, which has kind of got its own unique flavor. If you want to, if you want to have Australia in a jar, that's the, that's the way to go. You can taste the, taste the basically the gum trees in the, in the honey. Oh nice. And we get different ones as well.

Yeah, I've never, I've never tasted any of those honeys, so I'm gonna have to get on, get on the internet and get some. Um, what was I gonna say next? Oh, um, so, so varroa. So it's finally managed to make its way to Australia.

I was going to ask you about that. How do you guys go with it?

We, we do fine. It's, you know, it's not that much of a nuisance for us. Like, it— you, you've probably been living bliss-free or blissfully and not having to worry about And I think over here we've had 30 years of managing varroa, and people are just accustomed and used to it now.

Right.

But a lot of people over here that won't treat, and they want to just do treatment-free and try and let the bees evolve some sort of mechanism to cope with it. And you see some quite like high-level bee farmers who do that with some of their colonies in isolated areas and seem to get relatively good success. But it's interesting seeing like what's happening in Australia. It was all over the news and it seems to have gone quiet from an international perspective now. So is it, is it, is it there? Are people seeing it?

Well, it's still here, and I, I think the powers that be are— I'm not sure. I mean, I'm a bit of a negative Nelly, so I, I don't know. I just look at the rest of the planet and I think, well, every other country it's landed in has kind of not managed to contain it. So I think we're at a point where it's— well, anyway, I might be wrong, but I, I'll probably have the jolly DPE, DPI ringing me up. Don't you— can't say that on the internet, we'll shut you down. But yeah, I don't know, I, I'm not, I'm not that hopeful that we're going to contain it, but I hope they do. But I feel sorry for the beekeepers that are getting destroyed over it.

But there's a People get they get are they getting any insurance? Is it like a case of they're getting I don't know like an insurance payment or they just saying you sorry we're coming and killing?

Yeah, well I think they're supposed to be paying people you know to for basically destroying their livelihood, but who knows honestly. I mean I haven't actually heard from from the actual people that are on the ground getting their hives burnt, so that would be interesting. Maybe they could maybe they could. Come on here and tell us what actually happened from their point of view.

I can't see how it can be contained because it's not something that kills a colony so quickly. Like, I think they did studies and it showed like most colonies untreated with a high varroa load will perish within like 3 or 4 years, but in the 3 or 4 years those still thrive and the colonies will grow and expand and swarm, and then you've got all the phoretic mites that are just sitting on the bees, so One colony that swarms will go and swarm, and then because you have such long seasons there, probably swarming like multiple times. So you've got one colony that will go into another swarm, and then 2, and then 6, and then 8, or whatever. And that's just from one colony. So unless they nipped it in the bud when the first mite was detected, which I doubt they— how would they have known that there was an infestation?

We were close to 6 months in before they even detected them, I think. From what I could read. And, and the other thing that I, I don't know, that researched a little bit about it, like, it seems that the, the drones, when they— because they'll go into any colony and be accepted anywhere, and if a mite jumps on one of them, well, then they can cart them all around to everybody anyway. So you only need one mite in the hive and away you go. And yeah, I don't know. And what do you do with all the ones that are in the bush? In, in— we got, we got bees everywhere, in trees and under Jolly Lounge Suites and God knows anywhere that they can find somewhere to be living. So what do you do with all of them?

There's nothing, because what— that's it. Once, once they're in the wild population, that's it. You can't, you can't get rid of them from the wild population because they're so prolific. And they will— they'll just like nip into a little drone brood and that's it. They're not coming back.

There we go. Yeah, so I don't know. Anyway, I've But I suppose it's maybe we're just wanting to raise the flag and say, oh, we're still, you know, varroa-free, but I think we're done.

But there's, um, there's, there's a business opportunity there somewhere, isn't there, for something in terms of selling something to Australian people, you know, in terms of like genuine methods and management for tackling and managing varroa. So I'm sure—

That's the other thing that I find amazing too, is across the planet where the little blighters are, everybody has a different approach. As— and because it doesn't depend a bit on the weather too, maybe, and the seasons. And because I think you guys in Europe are probably lucky because you have a brood break more often. Like with, as you were saying, you only get what, 3 or 4 months where they're really hectic. And then so when they're doing their wintering and they have a brood break and they So the varroa's got nothing to breed in. It probably helps control them a bit, but we don't even have that. We just keep breeding the whole year round, so goodness knows what it's going to look like down here.

So it's true, we do, we generally get a brood break kind of at some point like middle of November through to December, and then what people do with that is they double down on it and they'll do some sort of sublimation of oxalic acid. Tends to be the preferred one, which will give you a really good drop of all of the the phoretic mites, the mites that are living on the bodies, and then there's nothing in the brood. So I, I suspect there'll be some sort of queen trapping going on in Australia which will give you a forced brood break, and then you can do oxalic acid sublimation. I think that's what they tend to do in like, uh, in America. Uh, what's his name, Fred Dunn, did one, a video recently on that.

Yeah, yeah, no, that's— but what a fun game that's going to be with more than I don't know, man. I'm not looking forward to it. I'm thinking that'll be interesting to go to the yard at 120 hives and try to catch all the queens and try to keep them from getting damaged. And yeah, man, I don't know. I'm looking at it thinking, I don't know, I'm not, I'm not planning on expanding until they turn up and I figure out where I am.

It's going to be a struggle for you because I bet, I bet in Australia you get a lot of movement of hives as well. Like, do people take their hives like hundreds of miles to go to try and find forage, or are they kind of—

Yeah. Oh mate, it's hectic. And the, and the next worst thing is they're having a big fight here at the minute in the almond industry because a lot of the New South Wales beekeepers, uh, travel all around Australia to fill, um, you know, to pollinate the almond orchards. And of course, so beekeepers from everywhere, a bit like what happened in California, same sort of caper that went on there. All the beekeepers end up in the same place for a month, so you know you only need one beekeeper that's got some trouble and everybody's got it then. Yeah, so I don't know.

I'd love to see some sort of like data on it over the next few years in terms of where it where it first started and then where it's like plotted around Australia to see how it's traveled around. Like I'm sure that data will exist. Yeah, yep.

Oh, they've got some maps with their little red zones and blue zones and whatever else and. Me, I'm not. I don't know. I'm I would be happy if they do. If it doesn't get to South Australia, but I don't know. I'm not holding my breath.

I'm sure you'll manage it if it if it does get there. Yeah. So what what you up to today? What you got planned? I'm going to bed after this because it's it's half eleven in the UK.

That's fair cop. That's a fair cop. I'd probably be going to bed too. No, I'm actually trying to fix a piece of machinery on my almond orchard today because it's I've busted a chain and. I'm old, so I got to, I don't know, whatever it was, 5, 6 o'clock last night, and I thought, when I was a young fella, I would have stayed there and fixed it and got it all organized. And I thought, I'm gonna go home and have a glass of wine and go to bed.

Very nice. I can't believe that you've got your own almond orchard. It's amazing. Yeah, how big did you say it was?

It's about 50 acres, so it's only— in terms of almond orchards in Australia, it's only little. So, but it's good enough for me, keeps me out of trouble.

Yeah, but you don't like— but you don't like almonds?

Well, not particularly, no. I eat a few when I'm harvesting to make sure they're dry, but I wouldn't— I don't know, I wouldn't sit down to a bowl of them. But maybe if they were sugared. And my wife used to make really nice toffee almonds. But anyway, maybe I got too tubby for them.

So what's the— what's the bit of machinery that's broken? What have you got?

It's called a pickup machine, which is— there's— because there's 3 bits. You have a shaker A sweeper and a pickup. So it's basically 3 passes through the orchard, and this is the final bit that you're, you're basically picking up the almonds off the ground. And so there's heaps of sand and sticks and leaves and dust and crap going everywhere, but it's so— it, yeah, it wears out reasonably easily.

Yeah.

And so I'm a— I'm the, I'm the maintenance man because I'm only little. So gosh.

I'll bet you love it. I'm absolutely rubbish at fixing anything like that. I had my lawnmower broke last year and I spent like 3 hours trying to fix it and then gave up and got someone else to fix it. Absolutely shocking. I'd love to be good at it. I want to be good at it, but I'm not good at it.

Yeah, yeah. No, it's, it's sometimes it's a necessary evil because the joke— you ring up the bloke who's charging $120 an hour, you get motivated quick.

Yeah, and, and I guess there as well, like, I don't know, are you like quite isolated where you are, or have you got like a— are you in a town? Or because where we are, it's easy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, there's, there's plenty of people actually. That's— yeah, we've got, I don't know, 7,000 or 8,000 people in the little town where we— next to where we live. So it's not too bad. And we've got, yeah, mechanics and I know machinery shops. And my son-in-law who's down in the city always makes me laugh because he'll come in and he'll go, hey, there's a crash repairs. How does the crash repair make any money here? And I said, well, there is cars and people and accidents, and there's more than one.

Yeah, he's not just going around crashing into people, is he?

And then, no, it just finds it fascinating because he thinks we're in the middle of nowhere. Yeah, but that's all right.

It's good. Sorry, I'm taking the topic of conversation away from beekeeping. I'll get it back to you.

No, no, we've drifted away. I was going to ask you, how did you get into beekeeping?

Oh, so I had— I was playing rugby one day and I came back home and there was a swarm like properly up in the air in my garden. And I just stood there, I was just like, oh, this is like, that's it, the world is finished now. This is And then it settled on a, on a, on a tree outside the garden, and the beekeeper came around, and I was intrigued, but I didn't think— I didn't think this is, this is for me. And then the same day next week, I came back from rugby, playing rugby again, and the same thing happened. And I took it as a sign that this colony was meant for me. So, so I, I kept it, put it in my garden, and then completely lost my mind. And just, you know what happens with bees when you get a colony of bees. And then I had 1 and 2 and 4, and then within like 3 or 4 years I had 150 hives. Yeah, so it, it just, it got out of control very quickly. But I do—

Doesn't it just? And aren't they so addictive? That's the thing that I think people don't understand if they're not into bees. As soon as you get them, they're so fascinating. Every time you go to the colony, there's something different happening, and there are all these little creatures that are relying on you to make sure they're all right.

Oh yeah, I, I love it. I was talking to, um, Stuart Spinks, does like a beekeeping channel over here, and we were both agreeing in terms of how evocative it is. And I just had this last week, like the first inspection of the year, when you open it up and you pull out the frame and the smell of like the beeswax, propolis, and the honey. And like, I'm— I swear it's good for you because it just gives you this feeling of like, wow, it's amazing. But also for me, because I've got a desk, like I've got an office job, so I sit at a desk most of the time and just have meetings. But being outside in the countryside and where it's just quiet and the bees are flying, and it's just quite nice and peaceful, isn't it?

No, it's gorgeous. Yeah, definitely, definitely a different pace. And you've got to go at the bees' pace too. When you open them up, sometimes they'll go, we're not talking to you today. Then you're gonna go on to the next one.

Oh yeah, I get that a lot. Generally, I'm just taking my hood down, it's like bang straight in the face.

Yeah. Oh, don't they just know?

Amazing. So, so how do you, how do you manage your colonies for like for splits and swarms? Have you got like a certain method or do you just, you just leave them to it?

Uh, well, I basically— there's— well, it's both ends usually is what happens. I normally do my like the splits and swarm sort of mode Manipulation in the spring, and then I'm just coming into autumn, and then I'll, I'll still— I'll do some actual, um, requeening and do some little splits and nucs that I'll feed up during the winter. Just depend— it really depends what the season's doing. Like, this year's kind of coming a bit cool, so I'll see what happens. Just another couple of weeks, we're all sort of starting to figure out getting wintered down. So I don't know, but it's a bit different to your wintering down because the girls not Really sitting still. I like I watch the Canadian dudes and they put them in a fridge to keep them warm. I think that's rather interesting. It's crazy, isn't it?

Like we say it gets cold here. It doesn't. It's just like it's just damp. It's kind of like damp at about like one degree most of the year. But he gets proper cold. I always remember it. It's like minus. I think it's minus forty degrees is the one. It doesn't matter whether it's Celsius or Fahrenheit. It's just it's cold.

No, I don't know, you just— I just instantly freeze, I think.

Yeah, it must be difficult. And I just realized there that you're coming into winter, aren't you? Yeah, I think we're at the same point here, but no, because over here we're just coming— we're supposed to be coming into spring and we've just not got to it yet. Normally it would be like nice weather now and we'd be making our splits and getting straight into the season, and it's really slow this year. Got very, very cold. We had 12 inches of snow like 3 weeks ago.

Wow, okay, that's pretty late. Yeah, it's crazy, isn't it? I don't know, the weather's— I, I did hear that, um, in Europe some of the more, I guess, traditional flowering has gone a little bit, um, off-kilter. So you're not 100% sure what's going to flower at the right— at different times now.

Yeah, it went, it went weird back end of last year. There were lots of things that didn't flower properly, like, in the summer because it got too hot and a drought. And then you had this, like, prolonged summer, and then they flowered again, and then they got hit by the cold. And then we've had a really weird one now, like, we've got loads of cherries out, and I'm chatting to a guy who's doing cherry pollination, and it's just too cold.

Yeah.

And so the crops later on in the year are going to be really, really hit. hit quite bad, I think, for the early flowering fruit. But even, even picking up, it's only going to be like 16, 17 degrees. It's like, it's pretty cold still. So I'll just, I'll just have a look through some of the comments. Yeah, there's a couple of comments on here, so I'll just, I'll pick through a few of them. There's one from Claire saying that you have small hive beetle over there. So, so we don't have that here.

Yeah, we do. Yeah.

How does that impact your colonies and what do you have to do to manage Small hive beetle.

Well, luckily, luckily down where I am, basically in the desert, where the small hive beetle needs to go out and lay in the— in, well, out in the dirt to, to breed, and it doesn't do so well. But up in New South Wales, they have terrible trouble with slime-outs, and because it's a bit more damp and a bit more conducive to, to the hive beetle. So I don't have a lot of trouble. I have a few little traps that I put in and catch them a bit And squash them under the hive mats. And but they're not really a problem. I've never had a slime out. I've never had them get to a point that— the bit that it gets me going is when you do have— I mean, I have a big infection, I'll call it, like 5 of them, and the bees have got them all hurdled into a corner. And then you lift the lid off, and then the bees run, and then they jolly little hive beetles run as well. And you're like, yeah. So I don't know, the girls must keep them in a group or something. It's kind of cool from their point of view.

So yeah, yeah, it's something I really hope we don't, we don't get over here because it's just another thing that you have to put in place.

Oh heck, now what happened?

Oh, what'd we do? Heck, what happened then?

Uh-oh, what have I done? Lewis, I've lost you. What did I do? Where is this mouse gone?

Oi!

No! What have I done?

Help! Hey, Dad.

Hey, I don't know what happened.

Um, maybe did you— were you meant to be finishing? No. Oh, okay. Well then just wait for him to come back. Just start having it. Can you see the chat? Live chat? No. Okay. Well maybe start to talk about whatever you want to talk about.

Well, I'm just talking to myself. Yeah. All right. Um, just I'm— I think I'm still going, but I don't know where Lawrence went.

I don't know.

I think he got disconnected. Jolly upside down it isn't it? Tell you what, we were doing pretty good. I thought crossing the traverse of the river. Do I go in and out?

No, you stay. Um, I got the live chat. So should I take? Were you taking questions from the live chat or?

Yeah, that's where we were just getting up to that bit and then he then he disappeared.

All right. Oh, he he's coming back. So do you want Anybody got any live questions that we can ask in the chat? Then I'll feed them back to you, Dad. All right, let's go back and see what people have asked.

Look at you keeping an eye on me. Oh, here we go. He's coming back.

Ta-da! Yay!

Well, well managed. That is a that is a first for these streams that my camera my camera died. How much better? Yeah, and I think I think it might I think it might happen again. This is this is not this is not good. My battery's dead on there, so I'm gonna we're gonna try and wrap it up as quick as I can with this charger here. I'm so sorry about that. That's all right.

That's the joys of it all.

It will go off again, so I will wrap it up just because we've got a nice little neat one there. Thank you, thank you so much for coming on. I've really enjoyed the chat. We have to do it again sometime, and we'll maybe do it before the daylight saving time changes in Australia, and when I've charged up my battery on my camera. I'm so embarrassed, that's never happened before. You did very well, and I love the fact that John called you up straight away in the background.

Yeah, oh yeah, missed it. Yeah, he's always got his eye on me.

So there we go. I will, I will call it a day there. Enjoy your day fixing your almond machinery. We'll catch up again soon. Thank you so much for coming on, and and take care of yourself. But thank you for coming on. I'm sorry that camera went off.

No, no, too easy, champ. I'm glad, I'm glad I'm not the only one that has technical issues with all this technology. I think we did pretty good. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, no, I really enjoyed it. I'll close it down there. Take care. Cheers, Mark.

You too, Lawrence. See you, buddy. Bye.