Although there are still ongoing tasks back in the UK, I've temporarily parted ways with the BS Team for a period of 6 months to engage in queen breeding. After an extensive 30-hour journey, I finally touched down at Sydney Airport.

I've arrived in New South Wales, Australia, and it's springtime here, ushering in the active beekeeping season. The oilseed rape bloom has recently concluded, and the business of rearing queens is in full swing.

Our current operation involves managing nearly 2000 mating nucs on the ground, with plans to expand to 3000 mating nucs. These nucs are specially designed plastic four-way mating hives, tailored to the task at hand. This week has kept us quite occupied as we've been diligently catching queens. However, contrary to the stereotypical image of Australia as a land of endless sunshine, pristine beaches, and warm seas, we've encountered rather unexpected challenges. Severe frosts and cold starts have prevailed, necessitating extra caution in handling queens and queen cells to prevent chilling.

Today's mission involved the placement of 450 queen cells into queenless nucs that we had captured during the week. To accomplish this task, another team of three joined me.

These queen cells are now 10 days old and will soon hatch. We'll be back in 21 days or more to retrieve these newly emerged queens, with the hope that they'll successfully mate (unlike our experiences in England) and continue the breeding cycle.

During our work, we encountered an unwelcome visitor in the form of a snake that slithered past our team. I'll be regularly updating my experiences and insights from this venture in Australia, so I encourage you to stay tuned to the blog for further updates and details.