Avalon Honey

Avalon Honey I love to educate people about honey bees 🥰🐝 Avalon Honey and bee pollen is available at 32 Elouera Road, Avalon Beach. I also make beeswax candles and wraps.

My hives are at home and near Barrenjoey High School. https://linktr.ee/avalonhoneybees 🐝🐝

Our eldest son is studying at Oxford, so we follow Oxford University on social media and I read this article about honey...
18/06/2026

Our eldest son is studying at Oxford, so we follow Oxford University on social media and I read this article about honey bees being selective about how much they eat in order to remain healthy. It’s incredible that honey bees are one of the most studied insects on the planet and we’re still learning so much about them. I’ve had my own beehives for 14 years now and it’s been a constant learning journey.

https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2026-06-17-bees-avoid-too-much-of-a-good-thing-by-balancing-nutrients-in-pollen

We are so fortunate to live in an area that has such a wide variety of floral resources for my Avalon Honey Bees and the variety of pollen sources has been shown in a couple of recent studies now to help honey bees to stay strong and healthy 🥰🐝 Thanks for continuing to support my bees by making your gardens look pretty all year round 🌸🐝🌺🐝🌻 🐝🌼🐝

Photos of pollen that I’ve collected from my hives. I only take the excess, as I do with honey, and make sure my bees have plenty of their own food, but sometimes they bring in more than they eat.

I’m working on a redesign of the labels for my Avalon Honey jars and would like feedback on the new design. This is a pr...
14/06/2026

I’m working on a redesign of the labels for my Avalon Honey jars and would like feedback on the new design. This is a preliminary idea generated using AI and it’s easy to incorporate changes.

I like the idea of a lighter background and I’ve added some native looking plants and a beehive, but concerned it’s too busy. I’m definitely going with the honeycomb lids as I’ve bought those.

I’ve included photos of my current label design and my original label design for comparison.

Thanks for returning empty Avalon Honey jars 🍯🙏 I do like to reuse and recycle wherever possible ♻️ It currently takes ...
14/06/2026

Thanks for returning empty Avalon Honey jars 🍯🙏 I do like to reuse and recycle wherever possible ♻️ It currently takes some time to fully remove my existing paper labels, but I’m planning to change over to foil backed labels along with a design change. The new labels will be easier to remove without residue but will also go through the dishwasher without degrading.

I’m happy to offer an $1 discount off your next purchase for every one of my Avalon Honey jars that you return. Just to note, please don’t leave other jars as I’ve got a set size that I use to align with my labels. Whoever dropped jars today, please do take up this offer for these jars!

Beekeeping is full of ups and downs. This morning was a mixed day for inspections. I’d gone into my home hive hoping all...
13/06/2026

Beekeeping is full of ups and downs. This morning was a mixed day for inspections. I’d gone into my home hive hoping all the colonies would be strong going into Winter, with low mites counts and the bees keeping on top of the Small Hive Beetles (SHB).

Hive 1 is growing well, was from a nuc that I made this year and I’m happy they have enough resources and space. This colony made a new queen a couple of months ago and she’s laying well, so I’ve marked her with a white dot for 2026. There were a lot of SHB, so I moved them to a hive with a mesh floor that traps the beetles

Hive 2 had high expectations, but disappointed to find the population had dropped and there was no brood, no queen, loads of SHB and some wax moth larvae hatching out. This was a massive overhaul, many frames removed and relocated the bees to a 5 frame nuc box along with a frame from hive 1 with some eggs. This will give the colony a chance to raise a new queen. It’s late in the season, but my colonies have drones and I’ve successfully raised a queen over Winter last year.

Hive 3 is going full speed. 14 frames of brood across 2 boxes. I had reduced their space last month but they needed more room so I’ve given them a third box with their honey frames moved up to the top.

Thankfully the varroa mite count was low on all the hives. Keeping on top of these pesky mites with the OAV InstantVap tool that I’ve bought. You’ve certainly got to be passionate about keeping bees these days with the pests they have to cope with.

🍯 Spring Avalon Honey 🍯I discovered a bucket of my Spring honey (November harvest) and this is now available in jars at ...
11/06/2026

🍯 Spring Avalon Honey 🍯

I discovered a bucket of my Spring honey (November harvest) and this is now available in jars at my front door. I only have a few of the 500g and 320g jars available, positioned on the far left of the table.

This Spring honey is likely to crystallise slower than the Autumn honey, which is already going thicker quickly. The speed honey crystallises is mainly down to the ratios of fructose and glucose sugars. I understand that Paperback and Flooded gum have higher glucose and thus crystallise quicker. The May harvest will become soft-set and is still l delicious and you can spread it thick on toast! You can gently warm it to turn back to liquid, but it’s natural to change.

Tasting jars of each type are in the grey box on the right. These are arranged roughly as they are positioned on the table. The jars you buy have the batch label on the bottom.

Wow look at the difference in pollen from these two adjacent hives! I collect pollen from my hives as my bees often brin...
08/06/2026

Wow look at the difference in pollen from these two adjacent hives!

I collect pollen from my hives as my bees often bring in more pollen than they use and this builds up over time which takes up space in the brood frames. When pollen or honey takes up too many of the cells in the brood frames, there’s a reduction in available laying cells for the queen. That can cause a colony to make plans to swarm, usually in Spring and Summer, but we can have swarms at any time of the year here on Sydney’s Northern Beaches with our mild Winters. I only ever leave the pollen traps on for a day, as bees prefer fresh pollen to feed their larvae.

It was interesting to see the difference in the pollen that hives 6 & 7 collected over the same 24 hour time period. Hive 7, left of centre collected mostly the orange pollen, while Hive 6 on the right of centre mostly collected a light colour pollen. Bees are absolutely fascinating 🥰🐝🌼🐝🌸🐝

I had an interesting situation with my North Avalon Honey Bees today. I hadn’t opened hive 8 for over a month as it was ...
24/05/2026

I had an interesting situation with my North Avalon Honey Bees today. I hadn’t opened hive 8 for over a month as it was going fine with an established queen and sufficient space.

As soon as I opened the roof I realised something was amiss as a bunch of drones (male bees) came out. Now these are too wide to fit through the queen excluder, so should be in the bottom brood box along with the queen.

On inspecting the frames, I found an open hatched queen cell and it was clear to me what had occurred. The bees had made a queen cell above the excluder and when the queen hatched out, she was too wide to fit through the narrow bars so could not leave the hive to mate. Usually a queen bee lays an egg in a standard size cell, she fertilises it and this develops into a female worker bee. However, when she finds a wider drone cell, she lays an unfertilised egg and that develops to be a male drone bee. All these bees above the queen excluder were male as she had no s***m stored to fertilise the eggs. Once a queen passes 40 days old, she’s too old to mate.

I found the established queen who was laying well in the brood box and shook all the bees from the top box out in front of the hive. I added a ramp for the bees to walk back inside the hive but the guard bees would keep the new queen out. I actually found the new queen outside on the grass but didn’t manage to take a photo before she flew away. Sadly she’s no use to any bee colony and won’t survive on her own. It’s the females that do all the work in a beehive, so a colony of drones wouldn’t last long.

Also found frames that were completely full of beautiful different coloured pollens. This shows the variety of floral resources we have in our area and recent research shows that what makes a colony strong and resilient 🥰🐝👑🐝🍯🐝

20/05/2026

🐝 Happy World Bee Day 2026 🐝

Posting this video of me from last year giving a swarm of my bees a new home 🥰🐝 while honey bees can be defensive and sting, when swarming they don’t have a home to defend and I knew these particular bees were really calm 🐝😎 However I’m an experienced beekeeper, and I strongly recommend people use appropriate PPE 😉⛑️

I’m now stocking a wider variety of jar sizes of my Avalon Honey. I created a batch of smaller jars of honey for the stu...
12/05/2026

I’m now stocking a wider variety of jar sizes of my Avalon Honey. I created a batch of smaller jars of honey for the students at Avalon Public School for Mother’s Day gifts. These are now available to other customers as they make great gifts 🍯🎁 😊 although the larger jars are even better gifts 🍯💝🥰

Avalon Honey is available at my front door at 32 Elouera Road, Avalon Beach. There are a few jars of my light Spring harvest and plenty of my Autumn harvest in all sizes. Please message me if you have any specific requests such as a bulk order of the 200g gift jars 🍯🍯🍯

Prices for my regular Avalon Honey $7/200g, $12/320g, $17/500g & $30/1kg
Creamed Avalon Honey (currently sold out) and Hot Honey $15/320g & $20/500g
Cut Honeycomb $10/200g & $20/400g
Bee Pollen $15/100g & $30/250g (message for orders as pollen is frozen)

While visiting a beehive belonging to a friend this morning, I was stung on the tip of my little toe. I was dressed in a...
30/04/2026

While visiting a beehive belonging to a friend this morning, I was stung on the tip of my little toe. I was dressed in a t-shirt, shorts and a pair of thongs (flip-flops or sandals for non-Aussie friends). I’m sharing this as it was the most painful bee sting that I have ever experienced and I’ve been stung a fair few times in my life and these days they don’t usually bother me. My dad kept bees when I was growing up and our garden was full of daisies and I’ve had my own beehives for 14 years now. The intense pain in my little toe lasted for 15 minutes and this was despite me removing the sting within 10 to 15 seconds of the bee stinging me.

Interestingly I read a study by Michael L. Smith from the Department of Neurobiology and Behaviour at Cornell University, USA on “Honey bee sting pain index by body location” (published April 2014) and this concluded that the nostril was rated as the most painful, followed by upper lip and the p***s shaft. The little toe didn’t feature in the experiment, but the middle toe rated as one of the equally lowest pain areas along with the skull and upper arm. I don’t recall ever being stung in those most painful rated areas of my own body and I’ll actively avoid those areas in future!

I’ve included a screenshot from the study and full details are available on PeerJ:https://peerj.com/articles/338.pdf

Abstract: The Schmidt Sting Pain Index rates the painfulness of 78 Hymenoptera species, using the honey bee as a reference point. However, the question of how sting painfulness varies depending on body location remains unanswered. This study rated the painfulness of honey bee stings over 25 body locations in one subject (the author). Pain was rated on a 1–10 scale, relative to an internal standard, the forearm. In the
single subject, pain ratings were consistent over three repetitions. Sting location was a significant predictor of the pain rating in a linear model (p < 0.0001, DF=25, 94, F=27.4). The three least painful locations were the skull, middle toe tip, and upper arm (all scoring a 2.3). The three most painful locations were the nostril, upper lip, and p***s shaft (9.0, 8.7, and 7.3, respectively). This study provides an index of how the painfulness of a honey bee sting varies depending on body location.

Address

32 Elouera Road
Avalon, NSW
NSW2107

Telephone

+61425183605

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