The Quack Shack

[Magnolia Ducks]

My sage is blooming and filled with bees, butterfly and hummers

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

It's sad with all the things blooming here I haven't seen one honey bee. Not saying there isn't some around but Just looking I haven't seen any.
We love honey.

Why don't you get a bee-hive? - Or ask a neighboring bee-keeper if she/he wants to put one of their hives into your garden. In exchange for some honey...

 

[Miss Lydia]

That's a good idea.

 

[Muscovy Wunda]

Don't worry, even i was laughing at the cowards!

Maybe you have a different kind of bees in Australia, the bees i have encountered in Europe, Africa and North-America cannot pull their barbed stingers back out. They rip the whole stinging apparatus out of their abdomen and die. So what has happened to me today was something really uniq. My forearms are covered in shallow bee-stings and look like a poison-ivy rash now. Fortunately i have some Lidocain spray to numb the pain.

As for the varroa-mite test, there are two "approved" test-methods here in the U.S., one is the powdered sugar roll, the other one is the rubbing alcohol bath. When performing the first one the result is ~300 entirely p¡ssed bees, the second one kills the same amount of bees. As i respect all life, i decided to p¡ss of some bees and let them live instead of overdosing them with booze.

I have no clue why the Australian government has applied a lock-down on bee-hives, varroa-mites are being transported form one hive to another by jumping forager-bees - similar to dog and cat-flees. The honey never contains mites of mite eggs and the mites do not attack the bees humon servants.
Maybe they are still in the zero-covid mindset and wanted to try a zero-varooa policy. Politicians! They don't even know which way to sit down on a toilet!

They are going for zero mites. The first hive they found with them (near the port of boat them came in on) they set up a bee iratication zone and all hives in the area had to be destroyed, and no one will be allowed to have hives there for the next few years. Any hives that were moved out of that area up to 3 months before mites were found, were also destroyed. 150 hives were destroyed not far from here because of that
Rule. That's alot of bees! I did see last night the DPI is allowing requested movement in certain areas after doing the alcohol baths you speak of. The pollies themselves have said nothing on it, the department of primary industries seems to have free rein on these things

 

[Muscovy Wunda]

I just stumbled upon this article:
https://www.sciencefocus.com/nature/does-a-queen-bee-ever-sting/
It says: »Queen bees have a sting that isn’t barbed and they can sting repeatedly without dying.«
So there is in fact a chance that there is a sort of bees native to Australia that has a non-barbed stinger and can pull it out of human skin.

Our natives don't sting. But maybe he was stung by a queen once?also if you want to see the cutest lil bee, search the Australian blue banded bee. Looks like a baby bumble bee

 

[Miss Lydia]

We have miniature bumble bees here. I don't know if that is what they are called but that is what they look like

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

They are going for zero mites. The first hive they found with them (near the port of boat them came in on) they set up a bee iratication zone and all hives in the area had to be destroyed, and no one will be allowed to have hives there for the next few years. Any hives that were moved out of that area up to 3 months before mites were found, were also destroyed. 150 hives were destroyed not far from here because of that
Rule. That's alot of bees! I did see last night the DPI is allowing requested movement in certain areas after doing the alcohol baths you speak of. The pollies themselves have said nothing on it, the department of primary industries seems to have free rein on these things

How is that with politicians »down under«? - Do you have a lot of, what i call college-kid politicians, who have never worked a real job, but have started their political "career" right after being done with college or have abandoned college for their political life?

Example:
A person has finished high-school, then studied political science and public law at the University for four years without achieving a degree, parallel working as a journalist for radio and TV-stations. After that, a one-year master course in public international law at the London School of Economics was completed. A dissertation on natural disasters and humanitarian aid at the Free University of Berlin was started but not finished. The political career was started by working at the office of a member of the parliament, followed by being an adviser on foreign and security policies for the parliamentary group. Raising through the ranks of the party by producing large abounts of hot air, that person became:

• The ruthless dictator of the whole country
• The foreign minister, representing the nation
• The office-manager of the president's office
• The receptionist at the party's office building

What do you think? :

Spoiler: Guess before unveiling the answer

The foreign minister!
The person i am talking about is Annalena Baerbock, see her "career" at wikipedia

She has no clue about politics at all, is unable to finish a sentence without stumbling and when she tries to speak English, English-speakers around her drop dead to the floor.

This kind of "politicians" seem to become more and more common and bad things do happen when people rule that have no idea about the department they oversee! I bet honey has now become a luxury item in Australia. Have the owners of the bee-hives been compensated appropriately? Including the loss of business they will experience during the time they won't be allowed to have any new hives.

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

Our natives don't sting. But maybe he was stung by a queen once?also if you want to see the cutest lil bee, search the Australian blue banded bee. Looks like a baby bumble bee

They look lovely! Sadly it is a solitary species which cannot be used for honey production. Imaging having a hive with 30,000 or more of these bees...

 

[rjohns39]

Good morning / evening folks

 

[Miss Lydia]

Good Monday Morning/Evening