Aiden & Chloe's Farm

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Aiden & Chloe's Farm Starting our Farm page. Beef cattle, calves, fruit and vegetables marketing and sales
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Pretty slow on the updates this weekend. We are having a ball with Geoff and Deb visiting! I may be willing and as such,...
13/06/2026

Pretty slow on the updates this weekend. We are having a ball with Geoff and Deb visiting! I may be willing and as such, very able to post that I, Aiden, am a property king!

It's time for a round of 'what are we working on today?' This pile of anarchy are 5-frame nucleus hives that need to be ...
11/06/2026

It's time for a round of 'what are we working on today?'

This pile of anarchy are 5-frame nucleus hives that need to be assembled and stained. They're effectively 'starter homes' for new bee hives. There are 10 here on the table, 6 more on the way and we'll probably try to do an additional 5-10 before spring.

Our apiary growth from 7-13 was largely done with 'walkaway splits'. Once the bees are awake, active and growing in spring, we take 1-2 frames of 'brood in all stages' from a donor hive. We also take 1-2 resource frames and put in 1-2 fully-drawn (if available) empty frames. We then shake in a lot of nurse bees from the donor hives.

'Brood in all stages' means that the frame will have fresh eggs, larvae and 'capped brood' which will soon emerge as bees. The nurse bees will choose an egg and turn it into a queen bee which will end up ruling the colony. The nurse bees raise the donated brood and some of them will start foraging for resources. As they age and die, the capped brood will have emerged to replace their functions in the hive. By the time the donated eggs have hatched, developed and started working, the new queen will be developed enough and hopefully survived it's mating flight to then be laying it's own eggs for the colony to then be established and ready to grow. When they fill all 5 frames in the nucleus box, they're transferred into an 8-frame beehive to spend the bee-year building up their colony strength.The following bee year, they should be a productive hive.

Clearly, a lot can go wrong and they need a lot of attention to make sure that they don't starve, that the queen succeeds and that there is sufficient hatching brood to keep the colony running.

Last season all of our split hives survived, which was remarkable. I don't think for a second that the same will happen this year.

For our planned jump from 13 to 25-30 hives, I'm going to try 20 splits, providing that the donor colonies are strong enough. I'll also keep some surplus in case some of our colonies swarm and we are able to catch them. This is the gear that we have to have ready for the first day of spring. It is one of the important winter jobs.

Good morning everyone 🌞 happy Wednesday!! With love from Red ♥️
09/06/2026

Good morning everyone 🌞 happy Wednesday!! With love from Red ♥️

We had a few people at the market ask if we do creamed honey. That led me down a spiral of reading and as it turns out, ...
07/06/2026

We had a few people at the market ask if we do creamed honey. That led me down a spiral of reading and as it turns out, it can be done at our place as it has the same kitchen requirements as honey bottling.

To do creamed honey you need to start with a culture, like with a sourdough. We have a really finely crystallised jar of canola honey in the pantry so tonight we've started what will probably be a whole-winter experiment to see if we can keep working on it to make a decent creamed honey starter for next season.

If not, it won't be the end of the world - we'll find a beekeeper with a good creamed honey who will let us use it to culture our own and then learn how to do it.

It's a bit of a process but we will see how we go. Round 1 has been set up for a three week watch. The original finely crystallised canola is on the left and starter attempt (number 1) is on the right. In three weeks or so we'll know whether it has worked. If not, we'll use the better of the two jars to try the next attempt and we'll keep going until we have one... or we get to spring and need to buy one :).

06/06/2026

What a fantastic day! Thanks so much to everyone who stopped to say g'day. We sold a little more than expected so won't have enough honey to do another market until next season, but we'll keep doing our local deliveries and word of mouth until we're out. It has really pumped us up for next season when we're hoping to be able to be more consistent!

05/06/2026

Birds are chatty and awake! See you soon Heyfield

All set up ready to go!! :) already had a sale, a lovely lady was walking back with some bread from the bakery and poppe...
05/06/2026

All set up ready to go!! :) already had a sale, a lovely lady was walking back with some bread from the bakery and popped in to say g'day, looks like she going to have a great breakfast ;)

05/06/2026

Well, we are all packed and ready for our little table at the Heyfield market today. Aiden was responsible for packing... and for packing the car... so who wants to have a bet on what he's forgotten? It's a good thing that it's only 10 minutes down the road!!! It'll be 8am-12pm if anyone is heading down for a look at what's around

03/06/2026

This Saturday we're going to have a small setup at the Heyfield market. Nothing major yet (that's planned for next season), but we'll have a little table with the 400g jars and some 1.5 kg buckets of honey. Come down and help me procrastinate on finishing the assignment due on Sunday!

The finished product :). Chloe had fun with these photos.
31/05/2026

The finished product :). Chloe had fun with these photos.

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