Russell Zabell
The Swarm in the Chaff Bag: How Bees Became a Life's Work
A beekeeper hands his life's work to the next generation, finding purpose in stepping back.
Kintsugi Studio
Russell Zabell
A beekeeper hands his life's work to the next generation, finding purpose in stepping back.
Russell Zabell has worked with bees for more than 50 years, starting with a moment of pure chance. His father spotted a swarm hanging from a tree near Forest Hill in the late 1960s, grabbed it in nothing but a chaff bag and string, then tipped the captured bees into an empty box at home. Russell was a teenager when the stings started, repeated welts on his eyes, nose, and lips. Instead of developing an allergy like most people do, his body adapted. He became immune.
By the time he turned 20, Russell had built 99 hives from scratch, teaching himself carpentry to make the boxes and frames. A hobby became a trade, then a business. He moved his family to Far North Queensland in 2005 to teach Indigenous men how to make native bee boxes and harvest wild bees. In 2012, he and his wife Janine left his work as a carpenter-teacher and started a beekeeping business together, growing it to 400 honeybee hives and more than a thousand native bee colonies at its peak.
Now at 67, Russell is stepping back. He and Janine are keeping a small number of hives as a hobby, loading up their motor home instead. A young workman named Diego is taking over the work. It was not an easy decision to hand over something that shaped his entire adult life, but Russell knows the bees will outlast him, and passing them on means they will keep going. He speaks about bees the way someone speaks about a life they have lived deeply: with specifics, with quiet respect, and with the knowledge that what matters most is what comes next.
“All we had was a chaff bag. So we drove down the road under the swarm, grabbed the chaff bag, and put the chaff bag over the branch. Luckily it was a single branch, and tied it shut with string.”
“The figure eight dance, they can actually tell the other foraging bees the direction and the distance that the food supply is, which is absolutely amazing.”
“You don't have to water them. You don't have to feed them. You don't have to take them to the vet. You can go on a six-month holiday. They'll still be there when you get home. Whereas honey bees a lot more work required.”
The hero, today
Russell became immune to bee stings over time rather than developing an allergy, because he was stung repeatedly on his eyes, nose, and lips as a teenager and his body adapted instead of rejecting the venom. A queen bee can lay fertilized eggs that become female worker bees or unfertilized eggs that become male drones, which means a drone has no father but does have a grandfather on his mother's side. Native bees are suited to suburban backyards because they fly only half a kilometre and find reliable food in garden flowers and stable temperatures, whereas honeybees tolerate a far wider range of conditions. The varroa mite has now spread to every country in the world, and beekeepers in Australia can no longer produce truly organic honey because they must use chemical pest strips to manage the pest. Starting with native bees means splitting the colony every 12 months to create backup hives, because if you keep only one and it dies after 10 years, you have nothing, but if you propagate regularly you always have a second colony.
Yes. Russell Zabell is a real person who shared their own story in their own words. Kintsugi Heroes is a not-for-profit that shares first-person stories of overcoming adversity, told with the person's consent.
Kintsugi Heroes, a registered Australian not-for-profit. Every story is shared with the hero's own consent and reviewed under Kintsugi Heroes' trauma-informed content standard before it goes public.
Russell became immune to bee stings over time rather than developing an allergy, because he was stung repeatedly on his eyes, nose, and lips as a teenager and his body adapted instead of rejecting the venom.
A queen bee can lay fertilized eggs that become female worker bees or unfertilized eggs that become male drones, which means a drone has no father but does have a grandfather on his mother's side.
Native bees are suited to suburban backyards because they fly only half a kilometre and find reliable food in garden flowers and stable temperatures, whereas honeybees tolerate a far wider range of conditions.
Welcome to another episode of Animals and Us, where we explore and honor the awesomeness of animals and our relationships with them. Today, we're heading to the Lochia Valley in southeast Queensland where our guest Russell Zable is a beekeeper, teacher, and native bee specialist who's been working with bees for more than 50 years. In this conversation, we'll explore how bees shaped Russell's life, what day-to-day life with bees actually looks like, including how often he gets stung. We'll also hear his advice for anyone wanting to start a hive, and what we as gardeners can do to make our backyards a better place for bees. Hello, Russell, and welcome to Animals and Us. You're statue, Natalie, and it's great to be with you. Russell, let's start with your childhood. Can you tell us where you grew up and how bees first entered your life? Sure. Well, I guess I was in Milwaukee Valley in a place called Hatenville and uh Hatton was between Brisbane and Tumba rather on the highway and we live out on the highway because my parents built their first service station in 1963 and that's where mom and dad um developed their business and included produce as well. So one day, probably the late 60s, we went in the truck to collect some grain from a farm near Forest Hill, loaded the truck, and the farmer said, "Stand, there's a swarm of bees down the road hanging on a tree." So dad said, "Yep, we'll go get it." Uh, all we had was a chaft bag. So we drove down the road under the swarm, grabbed the chaff bag, and uh put the cha bag over the branch. Luckily, it was a single branch. and uh tied it shut with string. Uh left it on the back of the truck and we drove home. And then we hopped in the car, went up to my grandparents place. They had a couple hives there which they always had for honey on the table. And we got an empty box, a bee smoker, and some frames of brood from my grandfather's hives. And we took it home, set up the box, and dad simply opened the uh chart bag up and literally tipped the bees into the box just like they're ingrained into a feed pot. And uh you turned it inside out. All the bees come out. All the bees were flying around in the sky like crazy. And uh because we had got the queen in the box, all the bees were attracted to the queen and they returned or went into the after half an hour or so. So it was truly a miracle. Magical actually. Yeah. Amazing. And were you or your or your father stung at all that day? Not that I recall. Although I think dad did have the smoker going and smokers used to pacify the bees and we were I guess doubly lucky in that we had the smoker going. Uh so the smoke causes the bees to think that their tree is on fire and they have to abscond and um they get a big belly full of honey. But uh also supporting that was that because it was a swarm, a swarm was uh half the bees were moving to a new home and were taking supplies with them. So they were doubly full of honey and um you know really really uh pacified. But in saying that, over the weeks that went by, I would get stung many times on the eyes and nose and lips and my eyes would swell up and um but over time I become immune to stings. Mhm. That's that's very fortunate. I know normally it goes the other way around where people uh in their youth get stings uh and then later in life they become uh allergic to stings. So I was that one around in fact. M yeah. So it sounds like you are the third the third generation really of of people who handle bees and true. Yes. So my grandfather would had honey bees from maybe the 40s or 50s and dad had bees even before I was born. And then uh in this period either late primary school or early high school I got all excited about these honeybees. Uh what a magical arrangement where you know tens of thousands of bees can coordinate themselves into a social uh colony to to unite and do all the things that a hive requires of them. So absolutely amazing. So when you first encountered them that day with your father with with a char bag, did you was it an instant fascination? I don't know. So I was uh had an interest in nature and I love uh you know uh flowers, plants, um trees. Uh the zables are always known to be planting trees around the place and bees and trees seem to go together quite nicely. So yeah, it was good. So that was a beginning of what became very quickly became a hobby through your adolescence. How many hives did you Yeah. Did you accumulate as an as a teenager? Yep. So during my high school times, I was making my own boxes, nailing frames together. But it really was when I left school and became a carpenter that uh I really picked up and run with Box making and and um populating hives. And believe it or not, going and cutting down uh old dead trees with beehives in them. You can imagine how that went when they went smash on the ground. They were very, very wound up honeybees. Uh, but that was something that we we did. Maybe we were young and silly. I'm not sure. But by the time I was 16, I had, you know, 50 hives and couldn't even drive. And it was a very great delight when I could pop in a car with my license and go and do my thing. But, uh, I guess when I was about 20, I had 90 nine teehives. Wow. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. And then Russell, what stage did it become trans transer from being a hobby to a very serious part of your life? So I guess from the age of 20 21 life changed uh family um careers but it was only after I left my TA teaching job as a carpenter that in 2012 I left TA and Jamine and I my wife set up uh our beekeeping business uh mainly native bees the little black bush bees first but when when uh dad became uh somewhat less energetic with keeping honey bees that I gave him a hand. So that all sort of kicked off in 2017 and since then we've grown the honeybees to 400 hives and the native bees this time last year we had 1100 hives. Yeah. Oh. And you worked up in the top of Queensland in was it was it Weer or Weer for a while? Yep. We lived uh at a place called Aracun just below Weer on the Western Cape and uh in 2005 I was uh transferred to Caner and then uh flown into Aracun to teach the local indigenous um mainly men how to make native boxes. how to use chainsaws, but also how to harvest native bees from the wild. So, at end of 2005, we had over 200 hives of native bees in boxes. And uh when we drove out uh that was the end of the contract. Not sure what happened after that, but uh I have no knowledge of what what's occurring there now. Probably nothing. But uh it was a great year, great country, a very exciting place to to work in. Right. So you've you you have carpentry skills and you're a TA teacher. How did those skills align with your your beekeeping? Yeah, I I think um well with natural material like wood is sort of it you're making the bee boxes out of timber and the next step is putting bees in boxes. So um it's a very two very ancient professions I guess really. The Egyptians kept honeybees for thousands of years and so too was carpentry. Yeah. Right. So Russell, if you had to sum it up, why are you so passionate about bees? I think well I wish human beings were like this but they were the most social most coordinated animal on the planet where you have up to 70,000 worker bees uh but seemingly coordinated to function as a single unit. But the most exciting part for me is seeing the glistening white wax on the frames when there's what we call a honey flow where the trees are producing lots of nectar and the bees are collecting lots of honey which is another interesting side how nectar becomes honey. Can you tell us about that nectar? Sure forms to honey. So when a worker bee, by the way, all worker bees are female, the queen is a female, and the drones are the males. But the worker bees go out. The foraging be bees go out. They collect nectar from the flowers. Uh all sorts of flowers including all gum trees uh even clover loosen. And they collect the nectar. They swallow it. They keep it in their gut. They fly home and they uh I believe they transfer the nectar to a a house bee where that house bee um will um where the nectar is actually processed in the gut and is regurgitated out as honey and then installed into the comb where the honey is dried out to about 18% moisture. Yeah. So in some ways uh honey and you can edit this if you like becomes bee vomit because they really regurgitate regurgitate back out of the stomach. Yeah. Okay. Oh interesting. Yeah. Can you describe how your your day as a beekeeper typically looks like? A busy a busy day. A busy day. Well, most of our activity uh I guess is on honey production. Mhm. Although we also have a small time a small business in raring Queens. So I guess there's two sides home production and uh colony production. So the honey production looks like uh where we load up our utility with maybe 70 empty boxes. And I should say when we harvest honey and spin the comb out in that extractor that centriuge we end up with empty comb which can be reused again. So we call it stickies. So we'll get a box of stickies uh which is just frames which happen to be sticky from honey spinning. And those uh uh boxes of stickies are actually used to put on the hive when we take off full boxes of honey. So, full boxes of honey come off and we put on empty stickies onto the hive. And once we remove the bees from the full box of honey, and by the way, we use a number of methods to remove the bees from the the honey. One is just using a leaf blower, a garden leaf blower to blend the bees out. You can imagine what sort of a um an amazing disaster that is with literally a million bees flying around. But we actually leave the box sitting around for 2 hours where all the bees will drift back home which is a much more pleasant process. And once we bring the honey home we will remove the captain and spin it out and then it uh runs into tanks where we can uh see stray bottle. The other side of our business is really raring colonies. And Natalie, you may have heard of the new invention called FLHive. Yes, I have. Yes. Which is a fatherson invaders from Northern New South Wales. A great idea where you just turn a tap on and honey runs out of the honeycomb frames. Now we produce a lot of nuclear sides we call them, which is just four frames of bees with uh a queen and we install those into the bull chamber of the flowhive boxes. So, we we do a lot of that um nucleus production, but we also sell queens. And believe it or not, we sell queens in a little plastic cage with six workers with a little bit of candy, we call it, in the cage. Uh the viewers can actually look what a uh queen cage looks like. But, um we actually post them through Express Post in all Yeah. all parts of Queensland because uh that is one of the only animals that Australia Post will accept which is live queen bees being posted. So that's what we'll do. Also Russell, how successful is is the postage? I assume it is successful or you wouldn't do it. Is is there a high success rate? Uh it is a high success rate. However, the biggest risk is the good old posty leaving the bees in a hot mailbox. Right. Yeah. And that's where we prefer having the bees sent to the post office for collection. Yeah. Wow. And Russell, what are some of the most satisfying moments? You you did touch on that earlier about seeing seeing the white wax. What what are some some other aspects of beekeeping that you just love? Well, the the queen growing cell is exciting where we actually graft worker larae into a queen cell. Uh put those cells into a queenless hive where the bees are uh you know really enthusiastic about raring queen cells. Once we put the queen cells into other queenless hives, the virgin queen will hatch within days. She will, this is very interesting uh um process of mating. She will actually within days of hatching go out and mate on the wing with one drone at a time and she's a very strong flyer and only the strongest drone the male can catch her and once the drone mates with her his boy bits pull out and he dies and she will collect the seaman eject the boy bit and then uh she'll probably do that five times a day come back in the evening and do that over 5 days. And after the 5 days of mating, she will come home, never mate again, and her ovaries develop. And within days, she'll start laying eggs. And she can lay 2,000 eggs a day in the middle of summer. And the most interesting part is that I mentioned before there are female bees and there's male bees. And the queen is just an adapted version of the worker bee. Whereas the drone is the boy, the totally different uh insect. So we call them casts, the three different casts. But the interesting thing is a queen can lay a fertilized egg at will and that becomes a worker bee and she can lay an unfertilized egg into a cell and that becomes a male bee. So that's rather interesting. And only in the animal only ante world. Well, unfertilized egg becomes a boy. Yeah. Yep. So a a drone has no father. Amazing. Interesting. Yes. Yes. Russell, you work with both honeybees and Australian native bees. Can you briefly explain what the difference is? Of course. So the honey bees that we see around the gardens, the big orange and yellow stripey bees are actually European bees. The English bought them over in sailing ships way back in the early 1800s. And that's called apus maleifa. And that's where you get the word operee. Operist aiculture comes from the word umpus. And the apus bees are all through Europe and Africa. Apus maleifra. You might recall her hearing about the killer bee, the African bee uh in South America where they hybridized and become very vicious. So the African honey bee is Apus maleifera scutterada whereas the ones we have in Australia, Apus maleifera lugusta or apus maleifa maleifa. I remember any of that. Yeah. Yeah. Uh but native bees are the true natures of Australia. But uh uh in Australia there are 1,600 species of the solitary native bees and some of the listers may have seen blue banded bees getting around the place or leaf cutter bees or resin bees and they're all solitary bees a bit like a fly male, female, female does all the work. be uh the nest may be in holes in timber or holes in soil or holes in the ends of lantana sticks sometimes. But the 11 species of the social bees which are the ones that we uh keep right are mainly in the tropics and subtropics, right? And the native bees don't make as much honey as the honey bees. Is that right? No. So ninja bees produce half a kilo a year whereas honey bees can produce up to 200 kilos per hive per year. So ner bees you have for pollination. Mhm. And are the introduced honeybees a threat to the Australian native bees? Certainly the introduced European bees are permitted in national parks because they're not native. Uh honey bees fly up to 10 kilometers. They're up early. They uh get home late. They're probably 10 times bigger than the native bee. So, they're really set up for honey uh collection. Whereas uh and and native bees only fly half a kilometer and there probably only 10,000 bees in a hive and they don't start working until 18 degrees. So, yeah, they're up a lot later. Right. So, there's no conflict of Not really. Not really. Yeah. other than out competition. So in the Amazon they discovered that as soon as the killer bee went into the Amazon the local native bees were far less uh supplied with food from the bush because the honey bees got it first. Right. Yeah. But in Australia no real problem. Right. And the native bees sting as well the Spanish totally stingless. Unable to sting. Oh of course of course. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Uh but bear in mind the sultry native bees can sting. Yeah. So more interest than kings but the honey bees the honey bees have a barb sting and they can sting you and the stinger stays in and continues to to Yes. And it hurts. The interesting thing is the queen bee has a nonbarb sting and her main well the stinger on a queen bee is mainly to sting her unhatched sisters before they hatch out survival of the fittest or the first right well do you have a favorite type of bee uh in terms of native bees uh we have three species tetrail carbonaria with a spiral brood, tetrabondular hawking side with a step brood and a plebia aralus which is a more western Queensland Northern Territory New South Wales be a tough little western bee. Uh my favorite is the Ostropleius Australas because of the beauty of their uh nest structure. But the if the viewers and listeners want to check out Tetraanula carbonaria, it is an amazing spiral brood uh with a diameter of about 100 mm. It's just so elegant, beautiful. Right. Right. Yep. And Russell, can you just help us understand the purpose of people keeping both types of bees? So I understand that honey bees that's obvious for producing honey in the hives and are the native bees for the purpose of pollinating like pollinating crops fruit trees and so on. Yep. So native bees that we have in southeast Queensland the tetraanular carbonaria is the primary pollinator of macadavia proven PhD proven. Uh they also pollinate avocados and in Mexico where avocados come from the native bees pollinate the avocados there. But native bees will pollinate citrus fruit, stone fruit, uh all of your gum trees, melucas, leptosperms, and you might know that leptomum bushes uh is where manuka comes from. Yes. Yeah. Russell, what is one really interesting fact about bees that you think the audience probably don't know? probably wouldn't surprise them. Yeah, I still reckon the fact that a queen can produce a drone from an unfertilized egg. And I always say that a drone has no father, but he has a grandfather on his mother's side. So, think about that one, guys. Um um so that's one of the amazing things. The other amazing thing, it's mainly uh I guess with the honeybee side is that they can go out, collect food, they come back, and you may have heard that the fagian bee comes back and actually does a bee dance. And they can do a figure eight dance or wiggle uh abdomen dance. And the uh figure eight dance, they can actually tell the other foraging bees the direction and the distance that the food supply is, which is absolutely amazing. Yeah. So there's some very high intelligence there. Amazing. Absolutely amazing for a little tiny bug. Yeah. Uh yeah. Really extraordinary. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Um let's now move on to the importance of bees and their role in in our planet and ecosystems. What would happen to life on our planet with the absence of bees? I think the old slogan is that if you don't have bees, uh, life will not exist within a couple years. So there are many many crops that rely on bee pollination entirely. Others rely on other insects like flies and moths and other bugs. uh but uh these are extremely important even now where um we have seen the introduction or the incursion of veromite arriving in Australia about 3 years ago that seriously affect the honeybees terribly terribly bad. Yeah. So, uh, the New South Wales government euthanized up to 20,000 hives a couple years ago trying to wipe out the veromite that arrived in Newcastle uh, with with no success. And now we are living with veromite. And what that means, Natalie, is that all feral colonies will die out. So all that free pollination that farmers uh, have enjoyed will disappear, right? all of the unkempt hives will disappear and only beekeepers who manage their honeybee hives will survive. And what made it worse this year is that all the migratory beekeepers moved their honeybee truckloads to uh southern New South Wales, Northern Victoria to pollinate almonds. We see a couple hundred thousand hives moving to the Armond pollination areas in the riverina and that's where the might just spreads like wildfire, right? And the might cannot fly. It's like a tick on a cow. It once waits on a flower and then hops on the bee that flies past and it comes home and then propagates. Terrible. Terrible. Yeah, sounds disastrous. Is there any hope to eradicate that might? Not in Australia anymore. It's too late. It's the horse has bolted. Every other country has it in the world now. And I know, but New Zealand had it 20 years ago. We got it 3 years ago. We're now managing the might with pest strips, which cost money. So beekeepers are paying anywhere between 60 to $100 a year extra per hive to control the might. And it might not sound like a lot of dollars, but that's like the first 20 kilos of honey just gone in pest management, which they we didn't have 3 years ago. Yeah. But we have hope. We have hope. There's always hope. Good. Good. Russell, does that mean there's no organic honey available anymore? Well, at the moment they might not be really true organic honey because uh the beekeeps have to use pest strips uh with which contains chemicals. Uh let's just uh at the moment is in southeast Queensland as far as Bundberg as far as west as uh Quilbe but it's all through New South Wales but northern Queensland Natalie would still have organic honey. Right. Yeah. But we have a future where some very clever beekeepers are trying to develop var resistance in the honeybee. Yeah. Which fingers crossed. Good. So there is hope. Are there any other major threats facing bees in Australia? So, native bees, I think, will increase in value as in in demand as we see uh the demise of the backyard honeybee keeper where they'll want a native bee. Um, I'm at the end of my career. I'm selling my native bee colonies, but I've still got 300 hives of honey bees and 100 hives of native bees, but there's plenty of other enthusiasts out there with native bees that are uh propagating and selling far and wide. And uh nature bees will be the future of backyard pollination for sure. Okay. And on that topic, if there was someone in the audience thinking, I'd love to have a a hive. What would be the first step in actually starting? So native bees, what bank do you mean? Or native bees? Mainly native bees first. So yeah, go on go on Google NatureBs Australia and you'll see there's many many uh bits of information and vendors out there. Uh always go for the reputable long-term vendors. Some of the upstarts may not have the the knowledge to actually deal with customers and bees and so on. With honeybees, I guess do your research first. There's a lot more knowledge and technology required to farm honey bees compared to native bees. There's a lot more information to to read and look and a lot more equipment to buy with honey bees. Right? I call native bees the perfect pet. Native bees are native bees are the perfect pet. Why is that? You don't have to water them. You don't have to feed them. You don't have to take them to the vet. You can go on a six-month holiday. They'll still be there when you get home. Whereas honey bees a lot more work required. Okay. So on that that back to the native bees and you can be absent for six months. Is there no no maintenance required for six months? No. Not at all. Um in the wild they perpetuate without any man uh made input. And you know I've got logs of bees in my yard here that I collected 30 years ago that are still going. So, uh, there will be probably logs of bees, native bees around in backyards that have been there and passed down through inheritance just about. Right. That's how how uh power they were. Yeah. Russell, are there any simple rules of thumb that you would you would suggest to people just starting beekeeping? So, with native bees, they need to really live in a suburban area. And the reason for that is native bees only fly half a kilometer. And the native bees enjoy uh the garden flowers of suburbia all year round uh as well as the more uh stable temperatures within suburbia compared to out in a dry forest bush block. Honey bees honey bees are a bit different. They'll tolerate a great range of temperatures and um yeah, they're a tougher bee really, Natalie. Yeah, the honey bee, right? So, Russell, you and your wife Janine are now transitioning into semi-retirement and back some of the business. So, what does that look like for you now? So, I've got less well, we have less than 100 odds of native bees and we'll probably just keep some for family and a bit of a hobby. Uh, we still have 300 lives of honey bees and I'm still raring queens and producing honey. Although our young workman Diego uh is sort of transitioning with us and taking over some of our honey bees and native bees and uh he's a great young man and he's got a great future ahead of him with beekeeping. But uh we've got a motor home and uh we're going on uh a cruise on Sunday to New Guinea. So, we're just wonderful. Winding down. Yeah. Good. And is it is it a diff was it a difficult decision to sort of step back from bees given that they've been so important in your life? Um, yes. But I realized this year being 67 that I can't do this forever and I've got years ahead of me to enjoy other things. For sure. Yes. Yeah. Yep. Russell, for home gardeners and and balcony garden people listening, what can we actually do to help bees to help the survival of bees? Uh nothing other than for honey bees, keep buying honey, I guess. Uh you can plant all of your uh native trees and plants, bottle brush, revils. Yeah. Uh you don't have to put out water or anything like that, but um just support the beekeeper by buying local honey, maybe. Yes. Uh uh Natalie, some of the big uh honey packers are actually importing honey from overseas, right? And and I'm talking about container loads of it from Indonesia, Philippines, uh South America, New Zealand. So buying local honey from the markets is probably a good way to support the beekeepers that uh have honey bees for sure. Yes. And that should support the actual survival of bees as well. Would would planting native native having native gardens bec Definitely definitely although in saying that they love crack my flowers, palm tree flowers, uh citrus fruit, stone fruit. So uh I've even seen them on geranium. So they will visit uh most plants. I've never seen them visit um passion fruit. Uh they visit all of your succulent flowers. They love the succulents like dragon fruits and the other little um succulent flowers you see at various times of year. Uh they're not very fussy, but uh they're I guess opportunist and they'll get the food by the closest means they can, which generally means in your garden or surrounding gardens. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Russell, if there was one key message you would like to leave the audience after the podcast is over about bees, what would it be? I reckon you support your local beekeeper by local honey. Um, and and certainly if you wanted to uh procure a native beehive, get one for your backyard. And one thing the the beauty of a man with bees, particularly with our box design, you can split the colony every 12 months and create another colony. So you're uh artificially propagating the native beehive. And I always say if you got one native beehive, you put it down the backyard and uh it dies out after 10 years. I always say to them when they ring me, have you put your hive? Oh no, we just put down the backyard. And I always say, stick your hives of native bees every 12 months. At least then you've got backup in case one dies. And uh what my young workman says, if you've got livestock, you've always you've also got dead stock, he would say. So that's that's the like, you know, the same with cows and sheep and other animals. So propagating is the way to go and keep them alive, keep them going. Yeah. Thank you. And one final question, Russell, if people would like to find out more about you and and or your business, what's your website? So, our website is very simple. It's just my surname, Zable, zabel.com.au. And you will see a bit of notes there, Natalie, about my transition to retirement. So, uh, but I've still got products for sale, so it'll be a little while. Yeah. Great. Russell, thank you. Thank you very much for your time and it's been fascinating learning about the the amazing extraordinary life of bees. Thank you. Thank you Nan. Animals and us is a production of Kugi Heroes. Thank you to Xavier Rudd for his permission to use Follow the Sun as our theme music for this series. If you enjoyed this conversation, share the podcast with a friend and let us know by leaving a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you'd like to support Kugiheroes and the stories we share, head to kukiheroes.com.au and follow the instructions to make a taxdeductible donation. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next time. and brand new star.
More stories
This site is part of Kintsugi Heroes. Visit the main site for the full podcast. If any of these stories hit close to home, support is out there, you don't have to sit with it alone.
Read how we handle these stories ↗
Kintsugi Heroes · Registered Australian not-for-profit · kintsugiheroes.com.au ↗
The varroa mite has now spread to every country in the world, and beekeepers in Australia can no longer produce truly organic honey because they must use chemical pest strips to manage the pest.
This conversation includes a swarm in a chaff bag, tipping the bees into the box, stung into immunity, from hobby to 90 hives, teaching and building in the far north and from carpentry to beekeeping business.
You don't have to be in crisis to call.
Subscribe
Apple