Bushfires – The Bear and the Bees

Not my picture, it came from the DEECA Hume Region Facebook page.

I haven’t posted in a while and as has been pointed out by an old friend, I’m probably not living what I think of as a very interesting life at the moment. That’s all relative of course, but now, ‘things’ have been happening and I have 2+ grand children, so they, plus moving back home from Sydney and of course my day job have been taking up a fair bit of professional and emotional bandwidth. I was however moved to get typing again, as I had a bit of a wakeup call recently as the bushfires have come early.

Bush fires in Australia and in our case Victoria, happen every year of course, and usually from February but they do seem to be arriving earlier, getting more serious and sadly more destructive. I’m not sure if thats exactly the case, but the feeling is real. last week was the worst day in the state for fires and they really weren’t all that bad where we live. We, as a family, have always been fairly resilient in terms of preparedness for cyclones, civil unrest and fires, from living in some ‘interesting’ places, but this time seemed different.

I remember having my cyclone kit prepped and ready to go weeks in advance of the typical cyclone season in North Queensland and even prior to the hurricanes in Mexico and being smugly proud of having a more comprehensive kit or roll down storm shutters (curtesy of our landlady) and being better prepared than my neighbours but oh, how pride goes before a fall or to give the actual quote from Proverbs its rightful weight – “pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall” That’d be me then.

I was relatively unprepared recently and the morning in question brought very high winds and high temperatures (40+ degrees) and that’s a sure recipe for a disaster and at their worst, there can be catastrophic fires that destroy communities and lives. Our place is on the edge of the village and it’s an old wooden farmhouse, so it’d go up like a matchbox if a fire was to reach it.

For a while that morning, we sat watching TV and Mrs jerry and I drank tea (English to the core) and discussed the eventual need to evacuate from the house, but we deemed it ‘unlikely’. I went outside to gauge the situation and then listened to the latest meteorological reports which described a ring of small fires all around us. The smoke was almost overpowering and the heat had killed most of the roses (the red ones died first strangely enough), despite the fact that we’d soaked them the day before. The wind was creating small tornadoes of smoke, dust, twigs and rose petals around the outbuildings and I felt an unmistakeable sense of dread and also, a distinctive feeling that we really should be more ready to move than we actually were.

The view from the back door. High winds and smoke. Not good.

I suggested to Mrs Jerry that perhaps we should pack a bag and get the animals ready, ‘just in case’ – part way through my comment, she’d already rolled her eyes, muttered abuse to the tune of ‘at last, you tw**’ and she raced off to pack. I assiduously don’t ‘do’ panic and so contrived to saunter into the walk in robe and (not so) casually threw a few items into a bag. My passport and papers are pretty much permanently stashed in a backpack, so I was in good shape there.

We had serious bushfires close to our place a few years ago that took out several hundreds of acres of forest and many houses, but thankfully no one was killed. This time, it was mainly grassfires, with the closest (small) fire around 500 mts away. Over 350 buildings have been destroyed in the state and that includes numerous homes, but luckily, only one poor person seems to have died. Whilst the fires have largely died out with a change in the weather, the sunsets still have smoke in them for days afterwards and I noticed that whilst taking the dog out for a walk if I brush against the bone dry vegetation in the bush, I can still see ash on some of the leaves and I can smell smoke. There are many fire spotting helicopters passing overhead and the sound still triggers me. It always has.

And as things go, Jerry Minor and his partner went to a music festival down on the Great Ocean Road over the weekend and they were almost cut off by the extreme rain and flooding that struck that area. There’s just no picking the way that the weather goes nowadays.

Down in country Victoria where we live, it’s supposedly summer, with warm sunny days and cool nights. Not that you’d know it just yet as I don’t think we have had a night without lighting the fire and for me, at least, the electric blanket on most nights. We seem to get a day or two of lovely sunny weather following some welcome showers and all the flowers come out of hiding and the bees burst out of the hives in a bid to catch the early blooms. Then of course, the weather changes again and like last night, it drops to 2 degrees C and all thoughts of a good honey season go out of the window.

As the weather temporarily improved, the lovely old rose bushes around the house started to flower and the climbing roses looked and smelled fantastic. Over the winter I had lost both of my bee hives largely because there wasn’t enough food for them plus I wasn’t there to supplement their feed. It wasn’t just me though and I don’t know anyone locally who has had a good year for their bees. Of course, the awful bushfires have wiped out many colonies and burned most of their natural food. As a result of that, I resorted to buying two ‘nuc’ or nucleus hives from a professional beekeeper at Woodend, on the other side of Melbourne.

I drove over to see him one morning and I found him working without a hood or gloves on his hives in the bright sunshine. His bees were busy and all around him but they didn’t seem at all aggressive. Not being quite so confident, I slipped a small net over my hat and wandered over to introduce myself. It turned out that he’d recently relocated from Sydney to the area he grew up in on the strength of the anticipated honey season. He said that it was just bad luck about the fires and I could certainly smell some smoke in the air, but he claimed that was only from his bee smoker and not from the bush surrounding his property. I was glad to hear that, but mentally prepared myself for a quick getaway, if it was needed.

It was clear to me that his bees were really docile, compared to the ones I had previously had. It’s not that my old lot were super aggressive, but if you accidentally squashed one whilst raiding the hive, they’d let you know by dive bombing you and pinging off your mask, which can be quite disconcerting, to say the least! The beekeeper explained that like all bees, his took their nature from the Queen and as she was quite docile, her offspring were as well. Just as well, I thought as we were lifting the frames out and into the boxes I had brought with me. By the time I got them into my car, I had quite a swarm around me, but by driving slowly, with the windows open, most of them flew out and hopefully back to their own hives.

I decided to stop in Woodend to grab some lunch and I parked in the shade and left the windows partially open so the car wouldn’t overheat. I stepped into a very fashionable cafe and ordered up a drink and a slice of cake. Unfortunately, I had underestimated the number of choices that the dreadlocked server would have to run through in order for me to avoid anything that could even remotely be considered as unhealthy, non organic, or harmful to the environment. I turned down the fair trade civet cat poo coffee in favour of a skinny hot chocolate that they guaranteed was made without child labour and a slice of (surprisingly good) vegan chocolate cake. Whilst I was waiting for my food, I felt a tap on my shoulder and a lady said “excuse me, do you know your back is covered in bees?” Ahh, no I didn’t but I thanked her as I felt a gentle scratching on my stomach. I excused myself and stepping outside, I lifted up my shirt gently and I noticed that one of the little critters had made its way inside my clothing. I took my shirt off, gave it a gentle shake, dislodging my hitchhikers and then after redressing myself, picked up my food and to the curious stares of the locals, climbed into the car and ate my food, with more than one bee trying to land on my cake .

Along the way, I could see a lot of bees in the rear view mirror. I pulled over and saw that the inside of the car was covered in bees as a bump in the road must have dislodged the lid of the box along the way. They weren’t bothering me thankfully, but I prudently decided to to wear my face veil in the car on the drive, just in case I suffered a high speed sting. I got some funny looks at the traffic lights I can tell you. Eventually, I arrived at home and I gently carried them over to their newly renovated hives.

You can see Her Majesty in the centre of the picture. She’s quite a lot larger than the others, but just to make sure I couldn’t lose her, the beekeeper had kindly put a small pink dot on her back.

Safe and sound, all in their new homes.

I had a call one morning from the local school, where Mrs Jerry is a teacher as there had been a baby ringtail possum found in the playground. Its possible that the baby had fallen from the drey (nest) or even off her mothers back. The trees were being cut down because of the risk of bushfire locally and she might well have been panicked by the chainsaws. When I got there the little critter was clearly alive and had a fine covering of fur, which was a very good sign. Mrs Jerry had him wrapped warmly in a towel in her office and he was very quiet, but wriggled when I held him.

The little ‘fellow’

His eyes weren’t open, which was a concern as its touch and go if they’ll survive at around that three to four months old stage. We got him home and promptly discovered that ‘he’ was a ‘she’ and that she really wasn’t keen on taking the possum replacement milk from a bottle. That worried us because the first night is usually the make or break time for orphaned joey’s (baby Kangaroos and possums are both called joey’s), but she survived for another day, eventually lapping the milk from a jam jar lid but not peeing or pooping anything, which usually means that the kidneys are stuffed and sadly she passed away. I was unsurprisingly upset by that but I reasoned that at least she had a better chance than she would have done if she hadn’t been found.

Again, as a result of vegetation clearing as protection against the spread of bushfires, we ended up with a small parrot to look after. When the kids brought it round to Mrs Jerry, they hadn’t a clue what it was as it resembled a small and very strange fluffy dinosaur.

Now, you try and tell me that he’s not enjoying that tickle!

I thought that he was possibly a Galah as we had hand raised one of those before when we lived in Queensland but as he got a little older, we could tell that he wasn’t a Galah at all. Although you couldn’t see colour through his pinfeathers, there’s a tell tale curved ‘U’ of dots on the top of the head where a Galah’s crest will be. It actually looks a bit like a bad hair transplant at that stage, with all the plugs in a row and whilst he had the plugs, this little fellow didn’t have the distinctive ‘U’. he did have two lovely pom poms on his head though!

I had been weighing him diligently on some nifty digital scales that I’d picked up from cash converters for $10 – (probably traded in as one of the local crack dealers upgraded…) and he’d been steadily putting on weight daily. We’d been feeding him on a mixture made by a company called Wombaroo, who also make replacement food for most Australian mammals and birds.

Pretty soon, he began to colour up and of course, he’s a Crimson Rosella.

He was quickly named Jeffrey by #2 Son. I have no idea why, but the name stuck and here he is, just around 2 months old. Jeffrey will gradually lose most of the green colouring leaving him that lovely scarlet colour with blue cheeks and blue edging on his wings. He’s pictured here in front of my Mum, who when over for Christmas, loved holding him while I was tube feeding him.

I make no real comment about the bushfires except to say, that they are worse than most people can remember and so much wildlife has been killed. The bush will regenerate, but I do worry about the birds and mammals and especially the insects. If they can’t find enough food to eat for long, they’ll die out and we’ll be in a real mess. It is a rare privilege to be able to help some of them survive, but I do wish it wasn’t necessary.

Tag: Bushfires

Bush fires in Victoria.

Bees, wildlife and bushfires