February 2026
15/1/2026 – I have been away for a break two very hot days I have noticed scorched leaves on Eucalypt trees in exposed positions. Fortunately, locally the Red Gum has yielded heavily where it has been well budded, and has lingered on. Most days the scales recorded 1.6 to 3 kgs weight gain, but a 5-kilogram day was a surprise and I wondered if someone was playing a trick by adding a brick on the hive. It has been the best Red gum honey flow since the 1980‘s with over 50 kgs and hives still have more honey to take.
Grampians Yellow Box has yielded well after a very slow start due to the cool weather prior to Christmas, but was finished by end of January.
Western Australian Red Flowering Gum is planted throughout Geelong and country towns. It is flowering nicely and the bees are eagerly working the flowers. I notice nectar being stored in the combs. It yields very good pollen and is excellent for raising queen cells.
Pyramid Tree, Norfolk Island Hibiscus, Itchy Powder tree all are names for this impressive tree which is grown around the streets of Geelong and Barwon Heads. It has flowered through January and can yield heavily a light honey and pollen in abundance. In the Norfolk Island, if you sit under the tree you may get wet from the dripping nectar.
Sweet Bursaria is flowering and the bees are working the flowers. More of this plant seems to be growing now as Landcare plantings often include it. So far, I have not seen any of the green honey in the combs.
Over summer lucerne can yield a crop of nice light honey very quickly. Unfortunately, due to the dry conditions the farmers seem to be grazing it off before the bees can gather the nectar from the flowers.
Moonah is starting to flower but I doubt it will yield unless some rainfall occurs.
Sugar Gum appears to be very variable in it budding, dependent of the area. I have often observed you don‘t have to have a heavy budding on Sugar Gum to make a good honey flow. It is the warm dry weather during flowering that is more important. The buds have swelled up very quickly, most likely due to the dry conditions and the trees need to make seed.
I have noticed that after opening a hive the hive activities must be disrupted and that night‘s report of the hive weight will be less than previous days, and possible a few days more.
Hives in the Grampians produced better than I expected especially as one bee site had the last years fire burn out the shrubs and singe the trees. Any Manuka that survived the fires are very dry and almost dead; it will be very unlikely that any Manuka will be produced.
Fortunately, I had not placed hives on a bee site where the Mt Mercer fire burnt. I doubt there will be enough trees left to make a honey flow. I am told that a generator on a wind tower started the fire. Better fire breaks need to be made around the wind towers.
If your bees are on bee sites within a mile of the state forests and public land you are required to have a fire extinguisher and fire rake with you. This is an old rule that does not seem to be enforced any more. If you cause a fire then you have a problem. A beekeeper learnt the hard way when, while lighting the smoker the head of the match flew off and under the ute. The dry grass caught fire and he shifted the ute first, but the fire got away and burnt a few acres of grassland. The fire trucks contained the fire but a later court appearance cost him $5,000.
I find customers ring on hot fire ban days requesting new queens. I guess they are using their smokers. This is not permitted without a permit to allow the shifting of bee hives. It is not good for your bees to open them on very hot windy days.
As I watch the hive scales reports, I conclude the strong winds have a very large impact on the productivity of bees. Especially along the coast. Cool wind off the sea curtails foraging.
As I get ready for varroa, which I have yet to find in my hives, I have been improving the bamboo screen bottom boards by adding a corflute tray to keep the hives warmer and a way to look for varroa that drop off. The problem is the hives drop so much debris that wax moth and small hive beetles start breeding in the residue. I will now only use the corflute when testing for varroa and let the debris fall out and be taken away by ants.
Reports are the Early Flowering Ironbark at Tarnagulla has started flowering. But the trees are finishing flowering very quickly. Although the amount of honey that can be collected is amazing there is no pollen or breeding, so the hives become weak very quickly.
Grey Box is also budding around Bendigo and in northern areas.
Messmate has a patchy budding in the Otways but the bush fires are still a risk. Smoke has a greater effect on the bees than we realize.
Varroa update. Aluen Cap is now approved Varroa treatment and I think this is a very good way to control the mites and not contaminate your honey. Stock will be available April 2026. A customer rang wanting to purchase Formic Pro. This treatment cannot be used when the temperature is over 28 degrees, so not applicable for our summers.
Beekeepers in central Victoria are finding larger numbers of varroa in their hives especially if they have not been using approved treatments. I have been told of a couple of commercial beekeepers who made their own treatments copying You Tube videos and as a result they have many queenless hives and drone layering queens. Overheating Oxalic Acid turns it into Formic Acid and this is very harmful to queens. The varroa treatments may exacerbate the problem but I think it more likely old queens, poor spring weather which hindered the making and mating of quality queens.
My friend in Mildura is finding great variability between hives in the numbers of varroa in the washes. Often not finding varroa in the wash, but when a brood uncapping takes place, he finds some varroa. He concluded in the early stages that it is best to do brood uncapping to find the varroa. Due to many days of hot weather exceeding 40 degrees, it will be interesting what affect it has had on the varroa.
A beekeeper with bees in the northern Grampians discovered Varroa in a hive on the 28/12/2025. The hives are located in 3 distinct groups due to lack of clearings in the National Park bee site. The upper bee site in shade has a hive with 6 mites in a 300-bee wash and 2 weeks later the count rose to 25 mites in a 300-bee wash. The middle bee site initially had no mites but on the second visit one mite was found in a drone brood uncapping. The lower bee site in full sun so far has no mite detections. He ordered Bayvarol varroa treatment and had to wait 2 weeks for delivery of the order. He has since discovered the supplier now has a 30% discounted price. Not happy!
A New Zealand beekeeper reports that at times Christchurch gets hot north winds and the bees on the Canterbury Plains can reach 40 degrees. It has been observed that this is a natural way to reduce varroa numbers as they cannot stand that temperature.
A Queensland queen breeder said that queens being sold as bred from a ―special resistant queen‖ have been performance tested and are terrible. It will be many years before we see varroa resistant bees.
Varroa is spreading very quickly through Queensland.
22/1/2026 – Took the honey off the bee hives in the lower Grampians. The first site has a lot of Yellow Box with Red Gums in the farm paddocks. The honey was lifted over clearer boards a week prior and an Ideal of frames with starter strips of foundation (used for making honeycomb) placed under the clearer boards to give the strong hives somewhere to cluster. The Ideals were mostly 60 to 80% drawn and filled. But the honey flow is slowing down as the trees are finishing flowering. The first flowers are opening on the Manuka but the very dry weather and limited number of Manuka plants left since last years fires will be unlikely to make a honey flow.
The second bee site is all Red Gum trees with big trees in farm paddocks and partly scorched trees in the National Park. The flowering is coming to a finish, but the hives have done better and the best hives have almost completely filled the Ideal placed under the clearer board. The best producing hives will be selected for making queens.
As I have been going around the bees, I have found that despite the good honey flow from the Red Gum the drones seem to have mostly disappeared from the hives. At the home apiary at Mt Duneed very few drones are present.
Presently I have hives with queen excluders on the bottom box and supers above. Due to wanting the bees to make brood for nucleus hives I also have triple decker hives with no queen excluders. It is interesting to note that both ways the bees produced the same amount of honey and it is far easier to harvest the honey off hives with queen excluders. Using Ideal size boxes for honey production makes a lot of sense, especially now that hives will need to be managed for varroa control. An 8-frame full depth box has enough room for the queen during the honey production time of the season. During spring removing frames of bees and brood controls swarming and improves the colony with quality new frames.
Hot weather can be a problem to bees. Shade and a water supply are important. Strong hot north winds are a killer and dead bees can often be seen at the hive entrance after such days. Bees located in city areas get shelter from houses and trees etc. Whereas hives located in open paddocks can suffer badly. Locally the extremely hot windy day in the first week of January saw the bees eat the unsealed brood for moisture. Placing a spare lid on top of the hive can break the heat. When very hot the bees may cluster outside, or if using screen bottom boards underneath the hive. Often, they reduce flying to a minimum until the cool change of temperature in the evening. I think they are inside the hive fanning to cool it. Bees are difficult to organize watering spots and prefer to make up their own minds. A damp garden, a bird bath with stones in it, under the shade of a tree, or a dripping tap seem preferred places.
It will be interesting to hear how the bees cope with consecutive days above 40 degrees, especially after 48.9 degrees in the Mildura area.
28/1/2026 – I checked hives that were in an open area at Ocean Grove. Many dead bees were on the ground in front of the hives and the hives had lost strength from doubles to a single box of bees. The queens were laying nice new brood and some new nectar was being stored. I suspect the hot and strong winds of the January 9th day and lack of a honey flow damaged the bees strength. I looked at the flowers of the Western Australian Red Flowering Gum and they were covered in foraging bees but they must have been too efficient as I could not see any nectar in the flowers. Some years the nectar is so prolific and thin that dead bees can be seen under the trees as the nectar ferments in the flowers, thus making the bees drunk.
I predict the Almond farms will experience a large shortage of bees this coming spring. Poor breeding conditions due to the very dry weather and lack of autumn flowering plants, compounded by the increasing varroa. Less hive numbers will be the most likely outcome. I was told today of a beekeeper with 1200 bee hives and due to not paying enough attention to the varroa suddenly 400 bee hives have died. Hives will need to be fed to be strong enough for pollination. This is a costly exercise and Almond pollination fees will need to increase.
The bushfires over the past few years have also had a huge impact on forest bee sites. It will be many years before these areas return to productive flowering. A beekeeper had a look at his Banksia bee site at the Little Desert and could not see any Desert Banksia seedlings. Another beekeeper said many seedlings have germinated at his bee sites. I guess it depends on where the thunderstorms have fallen.
In South Australia queens were purchased from a major Queensland queen supplier that has varroa. The Departmentt of Agriculture became aware of the purchase and told the beekeeper to kill the queens. Unfortunately, the queens had already been placed in the bee hives.
My friend enquired about purchasing a breeder queen from a reputable queen supplier. The current price is now $800 each. He did not have any available, but offered a queen of very good genetics but missing a back leg at a discounted price. He purchased it but the bees killed her shortly after introduction.
John Edmonds