A short note in time for the shortest month, an ode to ‘little’. After all, my occupation is one of farming tiny livestock, a manipulator of the minute.
February has found me stuck on a carousel of harvesting honey and extracting. Round trips of three to four hundred kilometres. Breath-taking, rugged coastal views constitute my office. A lot of the honey has been harvested, and the start of March will see us on the final migratory leg for the season, bringing our bees home to their wintering grounds.
From humble beginnings, my beekeeping expertise is flourishing. Little did I realize the responsibility of being part of a team like this.
Inspection of hives finds nothing out of the ordinary. Most hives are still pumping with full boxes of brood. American foulbrood has not been detected this year during harvest rounds, yet although we avoid this bogey, I am finding the odd hive at various stages of breaking down from mite infestation and sacbrood – the ugly aftermath plain to see on the brood frames.
Wasps have been a major disturbance at some of our summer sites, although, the bees can rob each other just as effectively.
One site we took honey from was a bit of an eye opener. Maybe it was due to being the first fine day after a week of rain, whatever the cause it seemed like they were expecting us at 8am on a Monday morning. Being only a small site we knuckled down with the job, but by the end of it the truck was swamped, waves of bees cascading like a waterfall off the back row of boxes.
We managed to lose most of the bees after uncovering and driving slowly down the road with short stops to let the bees dissipate, a standard drive home until we queued for roadworks – directly across from an apiary site. They could smell us. Our load was an irresistible ultraviolet beacon. Within 10 minutes there was a visible bee-line to our truck and our driver was on the horn. Just another pitfall to be wary of as we cart golden goodness around the country.
At the other end, the honey flowing from the extractor tells another story. Honey tasting reveals small batches with unique flavours. The blackberry and other light honey has all been packed and the plant is now mānuka fuelled. So far it tastes reasonably mānuka-ry, and sample testing will tell us the rest.
Beekeeping is about upskilling yourself. I would not have believed last year that I would be capable of running the extraction plant single-handedly, but where there’s a will, there’s a way.
When one small batch of honey came through with an odd taste, I delved into my second love, botany. I recalled a paddock next to that site, choked by a tall yellow flowering weed I was not familiar with. Investigation followed and our crop was identified as goldenrod, which, along with small amounts of fennel, I could see growing and are possible contenders for that funky taste. The other usual culprit for foul taste is tree-orchid in our light honey, although this year it seems to have passed us by unscathed.
Whether I’m in the field or in the shed, the warm weather is holding. I may be sweating but at least I have stopped dreaming of queen bees (did someone mention autumn requeens?).
Short and sweet, I’ll leave you with that thought, and hopefully we have some reprieve from the buzz-iness of it all in the near future.
-Aimz
Aimz is a second-generation commercial beekeeper in the Bay of Plenty who took up the hive tool full time at the end of the 2024 honey season. Formerly a stay at home mum to four kids, she has now found her footing in the family business.
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