Dunbar Apiary

17/05/2026

Strategic planning for the upcoming season is underway, involving financial projections for apiary modifications, specifically on the underside of a new lid. Although experience dictates that unforeseen challenges will arise, thorough preparation is essential to mitigate potential setbacks.

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That’s what meta wrote. I wrote: planning the yard changes to work out the capital spend for next season, beekeeper style on the back of a new hive lid. But with bees that can all go to crap. They have a mind of their own, but you need to prepare anyway.

Think I know what I prefer.

05/05/2026

Had to move some of the girls on the weekend. They outgrew the yard and started to become a problem. Did some varroa checks and brood counts. Varroa was a bit higher than I like with 7 mites per 300 bees. I’ll start a treatment program this week. Brood count is good coming into winter. Nice solid laying pattern and very healthy looking brood. Still showing a solid drones but I think the weather will change this week and I’ll see some expediting happening. I managed to get a late batch of queens in and they hatched yesterday. I’ll check them next week for eggs and then move them to the new yard also. Sheryl took some notes for me because we wanted to see general health compared to earlier in the season. She also timed me and I was in each hive for less than 4 minutes which isn’t bad when you’re inspecting each frame.

20/04/2026

Out on a mine site offset property today and came across these guys fertilising a rehabilitated area. This drone can hold 50kg of fertiliser and distribute it without contact on the ground. They said they can use 6 of these drones for aerial spraying at the same time and it keeps up with an air tractor. But what makes it better for bee keepers is that it can be programmed to fly closer to the ground to prevent chemical drift. And it can be done at night when the bees are tucked up in their hives.

17/04/2026

Starting preparations for next years mating nucs. We have nearly 80 of these to get ready before August. The colour blue is because we’re trying to make it easier to recognise equipment. These hives are a full depth 10 frame box that we place a board into the slot that turns them into a 3 frame mating nuc. Our cell builder hives are pale green and our drone hives are white. We’re also planning on running mini mating nucs but the decision on that is still on the fence because it means extra gear that can only be used in those hives. Using full depth 10 frame equipment means that only one base, one lid etc need to be stored

22/09/2022

Another great video out today. Enjoy.

In this video I had a close look inside the valve covers of the C7 that is going into the boat. I am going to take the head off one of them shortly and get o...

02/09/2022

New video out now https://youtu.be/2w1H_ulCsTE

27/08/2022

Back working on Autonomy. Nee video up now.

23/08/2022

Just brushing up on my stainless skills.

16/08/2022

Deciding how to rip this out. Concrete in a steel boat.

25/06/2022

I tried going up to the boat the other week to shoot some decent video and it didn't really go to plan. My shoulder slowed me down a lot and I didn't get the content I was hoping for. I tried a bit of welding and I had no luck with the consumables so I bought it back home to see what was going wrong and decided to perform some testing on the wire. This is the result. It is a two-part video and I have linked the second video at the end of this one.

https://youtu.be/VOkddqOczrY

18/05/2022

I went up to the boat today. I had been feeling pretty down about it since the shoulder surgery. I am very happy to see that all of my work that I did prior to locking it up has not deteriorated at all. Made me feel so much better than I had about the project while I was unable to do any work.