Saturday 29 March 2014

INGENIUS IDEA! No more back or shoulder pain





Dear viewers,

This short video explains the use of a simple thing - just a SCREW to be exact - which literally will revolutionize the way you remove bees wax cappings from your honey frames. This is not my original idea, but I cannot recall where I have seen it in the past. Check out the video to see what I mean. Absolute MUST for small home hobby beekeeper.


A little more detail:

1)
we recommend you use a stainless steel screw as you are dealing with a consumable food, and it is raw, unprocessed honey, so stainless steel is a must in our mind.


2)
use a screw that is at least 5 cm in length (2 inches), depending on your thickness of the timber cross bar, and the type of frames you are using. You can't go wrong by testing. Simply place the frame onto the screw, and rotate it in its fully vertical position. If it does not catch on the wooden cross bar, you got it just right. You may need to adjust by trial and error.


3)
We find this method is fantastic, simple, and saves you lots of back and wrist pains. You do not have to carry or continually counter weight the full capped honey frame, which can sometimes way up to 4 kilograms. However, having said that, it is still a relatively slow part of the honey extraction process and not suitable for any larger quantities of honey frames. If you have only a few hives, this is fine in a small hobbyist style homesteading environment, but the commercial decappers are far superior. Cost is probably the limiting factor, then space, and honey supply/demand that makes the commercial justification a little difficult to satisfy.

Please leave your comments below, we would love to hear from you, ask questions, and share your thoughts. We would love to hear from you.

We invite you to share our videos if you find them useful and quietly hope you can also click the subscribe and like buttons to help us grow this channel. Thank you in advance.

Enjoy your day or evening
MahakoBees


Music composed, performed and provided by Groovey - Adam Kubát a Pavel Křivák
You can visit their website on: http://www.groovey.cz/

Also, a big thank you goes to Kevin McLeod for providing his royalty free music Ïnner Light". We appreciate your kind contribution.

Friday 28 March 2014

INCREDIBLE feeding frenzy! Parrots as pollinators "swarming".





INCREDIBLE feeding frenzy! Parrots as pollinators "swarming"?



Hello everyone. We captured this short video clip of a large flock of native Australian parrots a little while ago and you may find it interesting. Especially in light of the short article below. Birds are better pollinators than insects. Interesting. Native Australian parrots

would definitely be one of them, and in this clip you can see how noisy they can be when in a feeding frenzy. Aren't they beautiful though, and not the least bit concerned about me video recording them. Enjoy, share, comment, or subscribe if you wish to see more great videos in the future.

MahakoBees




Interesting article:

Birds are better pollinators than insects

"Bees don't see red very well at all," Adrian told Australian Geographic. "By mapping the history of the flower evolution, it was possible to show that red flowers pollinated by birds actually evolved from flowering plants that used to be insect-pollinated."

A possible advantage of attracting birds, is that some insects can be inefficient pollinators. The change in colouring, Adrian says, "enables plants with red flowers to get efficient delivery of pollen to enable sexual reproduction, and avoid having nectar stolen by insects."

Professor Marie Herberstein, an ecologist at Macquarie University in Sydney, says the discovery about the interaction between plants and their pollinators is very interesting.

Marie says that while it has been known for some time that insects are attracted to blue, this is the most complete study showing that bird pollinators are attracted to red.

"This is particularly significant in Australia as we have more bird pollinators than any other continent," Marie says.

From: http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2013/03/red-flowers-the-trick-to-attracting-birds/

Thursday 27 March 2014

Can you spot the SNEAKY INTRUDER flying in and out of a honey bee hive





Dear viewers,

This was not planned, but during a quick visit to the hives, I noticed something strange yet wonderful. Can you spot the SNEAKY INTRUDER flying in and out of the beehive? Right past the guard bees? Its tiny, harmless and a very close relative to the honey bee. Leave your comments below. For those not searching, this is a clip showing honey bees up close at the beehive entrance fanning eagerly to cool and ventilate the beehive. You can also see some guard bees, and clearly not doing their job right, unless this is a unique relationship?

Thank you for visiting and watching. Please share this video and subscribe if you are enjoying our content.

Have a fantastic day

MahakoBees


Music composed, performed and provided by Groovey - Adam Kubát a Pavel Křivák

You can visit their website on: http://www.groovey.cz/


Monday 24 March 2014

A fantastic youtube playlist - all about honey bee close up videos

CLOSEUPS of Honey Bees - Beekeeping (playlist)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pU85oNHkSdA&list=PLfE6cWwwWKoiXEp4xSACAmvTHSrweW0nU





This is a new beekeeping playlist we have created which consists of all sorts of videos of our bees. This includes our Honey Been as well as our Australian native Stingless bees. Most videos are closeups or slow motion to give you an opportunity to really see the been in detail. So please, click though to flick through the videos, like them, and we invite you to subscribe for many more intriguing beekeeping additions in the future.



Thank you for visiting
MahakoBees