If the cows are the heart of Lantanaland, the milk I get every day pumping through the veins of the farm, then in the last week the farm has got its soul back. The first big thing that we got, that made Lantanaland an actual small holding, not just a block of land covered in lantana, was bees.
They are funny little buggers, with their own moods and I grew to love them. I didn't hurt that honey fresh from a hive is good small holding currency. Everyone seems to like honey. So when my hive succumbed to a bad outbreak of small hive beetle a few years ago, I felt like Lantanaland had lost a bit of itself.
This week, in one of those strange coincidences, this was fixed in a big way. On twitter, the guys from @beeonethird, an urban bee king crew that help people get up and running with bees, let me know that they had a nuc I could have. I jumped at the chance, prepped the stand inside the chook pen and welcomed back hives to the farm. At the same time, semi regular Lantanaland resident, Bryan Bollocks was organising another nuc. He loves the honey, does Bryan, but he also knows how much they were a part of the farm.
From no hives to two hives in a week! How good is that. Lantanaland has its soul back baby!
