ABOUT THE APIARY: SUMMER 2024-25
Barry Foster.
Summer marks, in numerous ways, the culmination of the beekeeping season. Starting with the placement of hives on various summer sites for a variety of honey flows. Then it’s supering, harvesting, processing the honey crop, controlling pests and diseases and hopefully marketing the honey crop for a profit.
How many supers to put on my hives and when ’tis the question?
Supering up hives for a honey flow has always been for me one of the most enjoyable tasks about the apiary. It marks an annual culmination of effort, experience, knowledge and luck in building up hives from a wintering colony, into one that will successfully produce a honey crop.
Successful supering up is a combination of experience, hive quality, checking the flowering and future budburst of a targeted honey crop and, of course, the weather. This last point is of course the most variable. Check both daytime and, importantly, night-time temperatures as part of your decision. For example, clover secretes nectar once day temperatures are 20° Celsius or above and night temperatures are 12°C or above. Also, you need to factor in when you plan to return to your apiary or apiaries. (See photos A and B.)
Photo A shows a hive on a tāwari flow that has a mostly filled but not capped ¾-depth super of honey. I put one extra ¾-depth super with drawn comb onto this hive as I plan to return within seven days.
Photo B shows a hive on the same site with a capped full ¾-depth super on which I put two ¾-depth supers with drawn comb. The weather forecast for the next week was for temperatures above 20°C and above 12°C during the night.
Hopefully, as you read this all the stars have aligned (weather and everything else) and your hard work has paid off with you now having full boxes (or already processed containers) of honey.
Plan before you harvest and process the honey crop
First, you need to plan and decide how you are going to feed your hives through the next winter. As a rule, I try to leave at least one box of honey if it’s not ‘valuable mānuka honey’ on each hive for the winter. I say ‘valuable mānuka honey’ in inverted commas and italics as a caveat, as the current honey markets are fluid to say the least. Ideally you should know your market(s) and plan accordingly. This is not an easy task in the current economic environment, but at the very least do some homework and contact potential buyers as part of your planning.
How much honey to take off?
If you are not leaving at least a box of honey on per hive as winter feed, then you need to plan to make this up with supplementary sugar feeding at strategic times before you winter down your hives. Budget for this expense as well as other major seasonal costs such as packaging, labour, transport and varroa controls.
Another important part of planning is to work in with your honey processor in timing your harvest to coordinate with their schedule of production slots. It’s a busy time of the year for honey processors and you may not be well received if you just turn up or give very short notice that you are bringing in a truckload of honey for processing. The storage of honey supers and wet supers can become major hold-ups in the flow of extraction if not planned right, so once your crop has been processed, remove your wets (supers of freshly extracted honey) to free up space at the extraction facility.
Taking the honey off
I like to take the honey off in the early morning and use bee escape boards (like that in the photo) placed under the honey supers a day or so before I take the honey off. Harvesting early in the morning prevents robbing, and it is also cooler to work before the heat of the day. I have mesh bottom boards on my hives that keep them well ventilated.
Bee escape board.
I first close up all the hives in an apiary to be harvested and then lift the honey crop off the escape boards and load it onto pallets that incorporate tin drip trays. The honey is then covered and lifted onto the truck. Any remaining bees are released down the road away from the apiary. This way I usually end up with supers well cleared of bees. Only when the honey is loaded onto the truck and tied down ready to leave do I reopen the hives.
Using escape boards allows me to work backwards in timing from when I need to deliver the honey supers for extraction. I have found that I can leave escape boards under for up to seven days without the bees repopulating the honey supers, which helps with working around inclement weather. Any longer than seven days and they will find a way to get back up the bee escape tunnel.
It is also vital that you block any holes or gaps in honey supers when you place escape boards underneath; otherwise you will come back to empty honey supers that have been robbed out. I usually take some wood putty with me to block up any small holes or cracks. Remember also to block open vents in hive mats under the tin lid.
You also need to have at least two brood supers below the bee escape board to allow room for the bees in the honey supers to move down into them. If you are running single brood nests, an empty super on top of the single brood nest will provide sufficient space to clear the bees out of the honey supers.
The disadvantage of using escape boards is that you need to visit the apiary twice—to lift off and place back the honey crop onto the hives to get the escape board between the brood boxes and honey crop. It certainly helps if you have a crane or some mechanical means to do the lifting, as this will save what is often a very heavy lifting job with risks of back strain, particularly with full-depth boxes. Lifting the honey supers up as a block to get a bee escape under also doesn’t disturb the bee sealing with propolis and wax that bees have made between honey supers, once again helping to prevent any robbing. I use ¾-depth honey supers with Manley frames and find that this combination works well regarding weight and recovery of honey. If you are an urban beekeeper, I would recommend using bee escape boards because it minimises the potential for bee nuisance to neighbours.
I have a bee blower and use this as a backup to the escape boards for any hives that have not been cleared of bees. (I don’t know of anyone using chemicals now to clear honey supers due to the risk of having residues in their honey.) I also use printed A4 sheets as pallet cards on pallets of honey, showing my name, date of harvest, honey type and hive site name or MPI number for traceability. Also, fill out a harvest declaration available for download from the MPI website. (This site has several useful forms for beekeeping.) https://www.mpi.govt.nz/export/food/honey-and-bee-products/forms-and-templates/
Cleaning and storing wet honey supers
In many cases, wet honey supers with the honey extracted are placed back on hives for a period for the bees to clean up the remaining traces of honey. In urban environments this is best done in the evening to prevent robbing and possible public nuisance. Most commercial beekeepers either store their honey supers as wets in a cool store or sealed shed until the next season or have one dedicated and isolated robbing yard. This last method, of course, runs the risk of spreading American foulbrood (AFB) if you have missed anything during the inspection when you took the honey off. Inspect such apiaries closely for any AFB in the spring.
Rewarewa flower. All photos: Barry Foster.
Inspecting for AFB
It is illegal to harvest honey from hives infected with AFB or trade in infected honey (Biosecurity (National American Foulbrood Pest Management Strategy) Order 1998). With some markets, such as China, now requiring honey not to contain any AFB spores you also risk losing markets, even if you don’t have a clinical AFB infection.
Hives should be thoroughly inspected for AFB when before bee escapes are placed or honey harvested. It is time consuming but vital to get it right, as unwittingly harvesting honey off hives infected with AFB will likely lead to financial losses and entail years of effort trying to rid your business of infected gear and diseased hives. Shake bees off all sealed brood frames, carefully inspect them, and only then harvest the honey or place bee escapes underneath.
Timing varroa treatments
Varroa treatments should be ordered and placed in hives shortly after harvest or by the end of February, at the latest. It has been said many times in this journal that you should co-ordinate treatments for varroa with other beekeepers. The reason for this is to help avoid as much re-invasion as possible. Co-ordinated treatments are more effective at controlling varroa re-invasion. Importantly, autumn treatments are aimed at protecting the wintering or diutinus (long-lasting) bees. These longer-lived bees will last up to six months and take your hives through the winter and into the next spring. That is, unless their health is in some way compromised by varroa or the viruses they carry that can cause shorter life spans and losses in overwintering hives. If you are out of timing in your varroa treatments with your neighbouring beekeepers, then your hard work and cost in treatment can be easily undone through re-invasion of varroa.
Pace and plan your work interspersed with periods of rest
Many beekeepers are very busy at this time doing multiple tasks involving a lot of travel that can lead to fatigue, stress and poor judgment. Our industry has a history of death and injury at this time of the year as beekeepers sometimes push their physical and mental limits. In doing so they work long hours and can run unnecessary risks without first planning their moves. Know your limits, pace yourself and get help if needed. Make sure you are familiar with the work-time requirements for commercial drivers (NZTA).
Check the weather forecast before you decide to harvest in remote areas, as there is nothing worse than discovering that you must drive on a greasy track or getting stuck by yourself. I always carry a personal locator beacon (PLB) with me. There are plenty of good ones on the market between $300 to $500 each. For more information on what type of beacon to get and how to register it, visit https://www.beacons.org.nz/
Requeening
If you have the mechanical means to lift all those heavy supers full of honey from above a queen excluder, then requeening during the honey flow with cells works reasonably well. The hive is at peak performance with abundant stores and has plenty of mature drones in the area to produce well-mated queens. However, I don’t generally requeen during the honey flow as the work pressure during this time is often too great. Like most others, I requeen my hives in the autumn.
References
New Zealand Transport Agency. Work-time and logbook requirements. Retrieved December 6, 2024,from https://www.nzta.govt.nz/commercial-driving/commercial-safety/work-time-and-logbook-requirements/
The Aotearoa Circle and Chapman Tripp (2024, April 29). Protecting New Zealand’s Competitive Advantage. Retrieved December 6, 2024, from https://www.theaotearoacircle.nz/reports-resources/protecting-new-zealands-competitive-advantage
Things to do this summer
- Order autumn varroa control treatments.
- Monitor hives for the success (or not) of prior treatments.
- Take breaks on long journeys and during long working days. Check your vehicles well beforehand and take tools and jump starter leads in case you may need them. Work in pairs if you can.
- Check the long-range weather forecast and decide on the numbers of supers per apiary/per hive.
- Plan your trips to production sites and first check out any cross-country routes. Advise landowners of your moves.
- Check with your honey processor that you have a production slot to deliver your full honey supers. If you are processing your own honey, prepare the honey house equipment and go through the RMP checklist before you start processing.
- Order drums and containers to put your honey crop into. Ideally you should have already purchased your drums and have them ready in storage.
- If you are in an area of likely tutin contamination, you need to take your honey off and or move your hives. Test the honey for tutin before sale or consumption. Take particular care with any possible contamination of comb honey with tutin and get laboratory tests done on the honey before sale or gifting. (See page xx for more information.)
- Take a break and do something you enjoy with family and friends. Enjoy the summer break.
But who will buy my honey?
Talking about honey markets is not within the scope of this column, but it is worth doing some homework on markets as part of the plan for your seasonal work around the apiary. I suggest reading/doing the following:
- the quarterly ApiNZ honey market reports for members
- the honey strategy on the ApiNZ website and those measures announced at the online meeting on 27 November 2024: https://apinz.org.nz/the-honey-strategy/
- talk to previous buyers and attend any field days in your area
- I recommend a recent report on market trends and on the volume-versus-value debate entitled Protecting New Zealand’s Competitive Advantage (April 2024), compiled by Chapman Tripp for The Aotea Circle. This report, while not a panacea for current low prices and reduced markets, provides considerable insights on the trends in environment, social and governance reporting required now and in the future for 80% of our current export markets.