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NEW ZEALAND BEEKEEPER, FEBRUARY 2017
SOUTH CANTERBURY
CHRISTCHURCH
I trust you have all had a great time over the Christmas season with family and friends. Hopefully you are refreshed and keen to check your hives again. I noticed that the spring flow in Christchurch, which had been strong with some good early honey, had finished about 12 December. However, the rest of the month and the start of this year have been cool, with lots of southerlies bringing rain with them. We have also had the odd hot day of 30°C or thereabouts. The rain has kept things green and cool, so the street berms and lawns are full of clover. Normally by this time the clover has all been burnt off by the hot, dry north-westerly winds. It seems this season’s urban honey will be clover based. The cool weather has meant the bees are a bit slower this season and honey supers aren’t filling as fast as normal. The cool weather has seen the bees packing honey close to the brood restricting brood laying area. What this will do for the summer honey crop remains to be seen. Probably not so good, as the hives won’t be as strong. Travelling north to Picton I noticed prolific mānuka flowering. I also saw hives in paddocks with very damaged farm tracks. Access to and from these hives must be problematic. Had the 14 November earthquake occurred during the day, beekeepers could have been hurt or trapped. Just before Christmas I suffered from an infection of cellulitis in my right hand, probably from a sting, necessitating intravenous antibiotics. This put me out of action and beekeeping for two weeks. Both the earthquake and my illness have got me thinking about how we manage our personal health and safety when we go about our beekeeping. As we manage our hives we are often out on our own. If you have hives in isolated places, please let someone know where you will be and what time you will be back. Keep your cellphone charged and on your person, make sure your vehicle is accessible and filled with fuel, and wash your hands after working your hives. I know this sounds like common sense, but these events make me realise how vulnerable we can be to things that just happen.
In early November an unexpected but interesting visitor stayed with us: a bee master from Germany specialising in bee breeding. He told us first-hand about the state of beekeeping in Europe, especially the effects of neonicotinoids. In late November and early December beekeepers were still feeding hives. Bees have been kept inside because of cold, cloudy days with some rain. Damp, cold weather has even slowed down livestock growth, with sheep not going to freezing works as they haven’t reached the required weight soon enough. Several instances of strong north-westerly winds have dried the ground out considerably in some places. We have had the best flowering of hawthorn trees I can remember for a long time. This would have contributed to the strong swarming season experienced. There have been heavy drizzly patches overnight and well into the following day, with some afternoons becoming hot and sunny. From 8 December the bees have had a small nectar flow, leading to a slow main flow build-up. We haven’t had many spring robbing problems, thankfully. On 24 December, Canterbury experienced heavy rain from Nelson to Christchurch. South Canterbury has had some thunderstorm rain but most of it has gone out to sea or up along the foothills. A lot of pasture has been cut for hay or silage, leaving the way open for fresh clover growth that is starting to show up now. Most vegetable seed crops have been in flower since late November with good nectar flow coming in from these. The Mackenzie Country is experiencing an exceptional flowering of viper’s bugloss (blue borage). We need some high temperatures now to really get things going; it’s another overcast, drizzly day as I write this in the second week of January.
- Noel Trezise, Geraldine
WEST COAST
- Lindsay Moir
And still it keeps raining ...
It would seem that our hopes for a long hot summer have been washed away with what is reported to be one of the wettest and coldest summers on record. We are now into the first week of January, and already we are seeing truckloads of hives leaving the Coast and heading over the pass in pursuit of the warmth and sunshine in Canterbury. Kāmahi and mānuka flowering has been very patchy to date and with the limited opportunities for the bees to gather, it is difficult to say how well they have yielded. It would seem only our very strongest of hives are managing to slowly gather a crop to be proud of, despite the difficult conditions. It would be nice if we could look forward to a rata crop to give the hives something to be excited about, and to get them drawing some foundation. It’s believed that we will need a good few weeks of dry warm weather to promote flowering, so hopefully summer is just around the corner!
- Carla Glass
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