Spring In Honeybees Garden

Hairy Flower Wasp

This spring has been quite an eventful one here in the Honeybees garden. With the warmth increasing it has seen the arrival of new and old visitors to the garden in search of food, shelter and mates. The native bees are out and buzzing, already building nests and laying bubs in this years bee hotels. So far, we have a beautiful Blue-banded buzzing busily around, various leaf cutters snaffling pieces of rose petals and someone I have yet to identify who enjoys helping me dig holes.

We've also got quite a nice collection of hoverflies appearing and multiple native wasps!

Another little visitor, sitting and waiting for tea on my tagetes lemmonii.

It's also been busy structurally! Due to the increase in chicken and duck numbers, the fence was pushed to high priority. Over a weekend, I got our mostly repurposed timber fence built. I say mostly as unfortunately I was unable to find posts and horizontals, but all the panels/ pickets are from old pallets or from curbside collection. It was quite a challenge but it's almost done, I just need to attach  the gate, (kindly donated by curbside) and the fence will be complete! Next step will be assembling the new coop, which is roughly 3 meters by 2.5 meters, hopefully allowing enough room for everyone. I'll use re-purposed timber found in curbside to create a two tiered bench of nesting boxes.

It's also snail galore!! Snails are out in force trying to eat anything they can get their tiny mouths around. Within 12 hours of planting I'd lost my only crystal apple cucumber, and they'd quickly moved on to the silverbeet and were attempting my pea and corn seedlings. Usually I would leave them be, but due to the sheer amount of them this year I have had to apply a wildlife friendly pellet.

I made my first birdhouse, for a first attempt I'm pretty happy, I went with a small to medium size hole to appeal more to my smaller birds currently flitting around eating the nectar from the trees. It has a door that unchain and opens to make it easier to clean after each resident, but remains secure from predators.

Above beds are wood, and about 30cm tall. Below beds were originally fruit crate-like that I sawed in half, built a front onto, added a lip to rest punnets or seeds packets on, and added trellis, which both will have soon. These beds will be used to grow my berries, giving them plenty of room whilst keeping them more contained.

The veggie beds are wood, (except one) again from roadside collection. Inside is a mix of spent mushroom blocks which were locally sourced, compost, and cow manure, all mixed together for the top layer. To fill the bed partially and compost down, I used spent wood shavings and straw from my chooks and ducks,  with a nice smelly addition of poop, along with grass cuttings and mulberry leaves from pruning. This combination is breaking down nicely and encouraging worms and micro-organisms, along with working very well to suppress the grass and weeds beneath.

Its been a busy busy spring time, but the growth in the garden, the diversity of fauna starting to appear and the peace it brings to the soul makes it all worth while.

Oh and did I mention our first honey harvest?.. Maybe next time. Happy gardening everyone.