Beehive Thefts

There's been a rash of beehive thefts lately.

There are a few things going that that might cause this: The price of manuka honey is rising fast. And the bee industry is growing like crazy too, with lots of new beekeepers coming in to the industry to try and make a good dollar.

This also means the value of beehives is increasing too. A 2 box hive used to cost about $700 a couple of years ago, now it is above $1000.

All of this creates an industry where the get-rich-pickings seem irresistable, so the opportunity is there for less scrupulous people to take advantage too. Hence the increase in beehive thefts.

Where are the bee thefts from?

This is not from any official source like the police, but my gatherings of anecdotal information over the last month or so.

It seems that beehive thefts have been occurring in quite a few places:

• North Waikato
• Whanganui
• Tauranga
• Hokianga
• South Wairarapa

It doesn't seem to be such a problem in the South Island.

What have the thieves been doing?

Well, this is where it gets a bit bizarre.

There is the usual, which is what you might expect, where thieves take whole boxes. At this time of year it is often 2 box hives. And they leave just a dent in the grass. In one case they took the boxes but left the bases.

And how many hives are taken? It depends a bit on how many hives are at a site. And how many make up a truck or ute load. The numbers are from 12 to dozens.

Thieves have cut through padlocks to get into paddocks. Or lifted the whole lot over wire fences, quite a mission.

In another variation, the thieves took just the frames and bees out of the boxes, and left the boxes behind.

Then bizarrely, there have been a couple of cases it seems, where the thieves took the frames, and replaced them with new plastic foundation frames. Is that weird or not? Well, maybe, maybe not.

Read the full post here for some theories about who these thieves are, and an outline of things you can do to protect your hives.

The honey flow is on

Manuka just starting to flower in spring

The manuka is starting to flower! That's here in Auckland. In Northland it is partly over, not been a great season for them apparently as it was quite wet this spring. And further south, the trees will still be budding up.

But right here, we've got about 6 weeks of lovely manuka flowers for our bees to go out foraging on, to make high grade manuka honey. This is called the Honey Flow.

How to tell when the honey flow is starting?

How do you identify when the nectar is ready and the bees are starting to make honey?

There are 4 things to look for:

1. The bees are out and about, on the flowers, and they are non-aggressive

2. The entrance to the hive is very active with bees

3. They are building white wax in the hive, which will become the honey comb

4. If you tip a frame up, fresh nectar will drip out

Why timing your bee build up is so important

It's important to get the timing of the bee colony numbers build up just right.

If the bees build up too quickly, and are at peak before the honey flow, they may starve (and die).

If they build up too slowly, then once the nectar starts, there will not be enough bees to maximise nectar collection and honey production and the beekeeper will miss the honey flow, and have a poor harvest.

It they build up too quickly, they are likely to swarm. And you lose half your bees to some distant tree.

You want a large population of workers old enough to forage for nectar right as the honey flow starts. How many is 'large'? Enough bees to fully occupy more than 1 brood box.

How to take advantage of the honey flow

There are quite a few more steps to ensure you have a good harvest:

1. What size hive is best? Lots of small ones? A few big ones?

2. When do you add honey supers (the boxes that go on the top of the hive that get filled with honey)? How many honey supers should you add at a time? 

3. How often do you need to check the hives?

4. What type of frames should you add? - drawn comb frames or foundation? - this means frames already with the honey comb on them (drawn), or frames where the bees build their own comb (foundation). This will have a definite impact on your harvest.

To read more about these issues, visit the full post here at Business of Bees.

Feeding sugar to bees in spring

Feeding bees syrup

One of our most important bee management activities happens right now, in early spring.

We feed the bees sugar syrup.

In Auckland our honey flow - the time of the nectar being ripe on the trees for the bees to collect and turn into honey - starts in about November. So, to make maximum honey, we need maximum bees ready to take advantage of that.

Now from egg to nectar collector (a forager) takes about 6 weeks. So about 6 weeks before honey flow, the bees need to decide to start on the baby production. I mentioned the pollen from gorse in the last blog post but they also need nectar, or nectar substitute.

Which is sugar syrup. You can see in the picture it looks like the syrup is being poured directly into the hive. But there is a feeder box sitting inside the hive beside the brood frames, so the bees can stay in and eat. And also so no foreigners come to dinner.

For some more of the in-depth gumpf on this visit Business of Bees

And for a free downloadable Pictorial Step by Step Guide to Growing Manuka Trees from Seeds sign up here.

Don't forget to share this with your friends.

What to use in a bee smoker

We normally use chopped up coffee sacks in the smokers as they make a good smokey smolder.

Sometimes they are hard to get, so recently we got a big pile of them, left over from a wedding where they were covering hay bales as the seating arrangement for a country-style event.

A couple fell off the back of the truck ;-) and have been re-purposed as cat beds. Quite popular, they are too. The dog loves hers too.

Extracting Honey

These are the Karamea hives of my brother.

And here is the honey being extracted and dripping into the sieve and into a bucket. A lovely harvest this year, although he reports that the rata honey is in short supply, probably because of the rata flowering profusely last year, and not much this year. The kamahi is good though. Different areas produce different honey types.

And, a jar of fresh honey. What could be better? (I know the answer to this: homemade sourdough and honey!)

Moving Beehives

How to move beehives to a new location? We've just had a Big Weekend!. Moving over 100 hives from Hamilton to the Wairarapa. We needed both utes and trailers, the bee boys and me (the spare driver), a couple of extras to help unload at the end. And 36 hours on the go without stopping.

Bees need to be moved in the dark, when they are all home. So, if you are loading quite a few, it goes on for a few hours. We finally left at 2am, ready to drive through the night. 

We lock up the front doors of the hives, so they don't fly off down the motorway, strap them on (this take AGES), and then drive drive drive.

And at the other end, bee people in suits, unloading. (I'm watching from the grassy slopes in the sun, with ahem...my eyes closed...)

We're really glad to have the super duper 4WD utes, top of the range -  this hill was extremely steep, and we were at the top - and it is full of some leftovers of some crop (blue flowers, stalky?), plus a few bulls (bulls are friendly, right?), add in a couple of narrow paddock gates on the wrong angle, and the most experienced 4WD driver, and we got there. In the end. I did stop breathing a bit, on the way (oh ye of little faith!)

Doesn't NZ farmland all look so similar? This could be virtually anywhere. OK, maybe not Otago, but still....

A job well done. Just another site to put the rest on, and we're done. Bee boys 1 and 2 were off with the other ute in a couple of other fields. I did count the hives, but got a bit muddled, so a recount is required. But, by my reckoning, there were gazillions. Technical term....

Official stats:

2100 Km driven, each

12 filled rolls eaten

4 apples, 6 bananas

6 cups of coffee consumed

6 litres of water drunk

gazillions of hives

even more bees

36 hours for the longest shift (we got back into Auckland at 9pm)

7 people (thanks to Will, visitor, who helped so much :-) )

5 days to catch up on sleep after (hey, I'm not so young, OK?)

Moving Hive Boxes

In a previous post 'Bee Equipment Logistics' I outlined the to-ing and fro-ing involved with all the hardware required to grow bees. Well here it is in action. 

Having spent ages making all the boxes and then dipping them in oil and letting them air dry, they need to be taken to the farms where the hives actually are. So we (ah, that would be the beekeepers) load them up on to the ute and a HUGE trailer, tie down every which way, and then some - none of these babies are going to fly off down the motorway - ready for transport.

And, because the bee box supply depot is at the other end of the island to the bee farms, the bee boys get up before sparrow fart and drive all day. Probably NOT the most satisfying part of their job.... but it certainly looks impressive all loaded up, and driving a big load could have its charms, at least the first time.

Expanding bee hives

This time of year the bees are multiplying like crazy. So this weekend it was all about expanding the hives at home, This top hive is looking pretty busy, all those bees trying to get in the door way. By the end of the day it has now got another box on top. Not that that will make the doorway less crowded, but conditions inside will be more spacious, and more room for honey-making.

Even Spike the goat, who lives over the driveway from the bees, was pretty interested. Or maybe its just quite boring being a goat, and any activity is welcome? 

November is swarming month

About this time of year, in spring, the bees are all growing like mad. Growing, as in, making babies, not getting to horror-movie proportions. And in the wild they cleverly deal with this by making a new queen, and then half the tribe flies off with the old queen to set up a new home, and the other half hatch the new queen and carry on back at the ranch. All good, in the wild.

But in our hives we want to keep all the bees and help them to create new homes where they will be safe. So at this time of year we are always vigilant looking for signs that the hives are ready to swarm. One of these signs is the creation of queen cups. These are little lumps usually at the bottom of the main frame that have the queen larvae in them. And another is overcrowding.

We deal with both of these threats by keeping a close eye on the hives for signs of swarming. And splitting the hives to make 2 out of 1. And adding new boxes to the top so the bees can move up their apartment block and spread out.

Once a hive has swarmed we try to catch it and put it in a new hive so the bees don't just fly off and make their new nest in an inconvenient place. Like a bush, or an old building. Not that easy, and does require being there pretty soon after it has taken off. And if you see a swarm, and don't have a bee suit, its best to leave it alone and call a beekeeper. Nahla, the dog in the picture, got just a bit too close to this swarm!