THE newest residents at Braybrook’s Quang Minh Temple have really got the place buzzing.
Last week, a convoy of cargo bikes lead by urban honey founder Lyndon Fenlon and his rickshaw transported half a million bees to the idyllic riverside setting.
Starting from Vern Smith Cycles in Maidstone, where Mr Fenlon’s rickshaw was handcrafted, Brimbank Bicycle Users Group joined other bee and bike enthusiasts for the ride.
Mr Fenlon, who has hives in a number of urban settings around Melbourne, had been working with the temple for a year before the move to make the site bee-friendly.
Together with the temple’s Tony Le Nguyen, Mr Fenlon spent many weekends terracing the steep slope by hand, levelling and mulching the rocky ground and weeding.
This was all in accordance with his carbon-neutral, organic policy.
Thanks to the overcast weather last week, the bees were the perfect passengers to their new landscape.
Three of the six queen bees are used to confined spaces, having been sent through the post from Queensland. “I spent a week preparing the bees for the journey,” Mr Fenlon said.
“Within five minutes of me putting down the hives the wild bees came to check them out, they could smell the hives.
“I let them out and they buzzed around and chased me for a bit then they were happy,” he said.
BrimBUG’s Ferdi Saliba said the group had never done anything like it before and it had been a great day.
Last Updated on Wednesday, 26 January 2011 23:01