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NEW ZEALAND BEEKEEPER, MARCH 2017
FROM THE CHATHAMS
IT RAINS, IT FLOWERS, WE SMILE AND BEES SHINE
Mana Cracknell and Michele Andersen
Flowering in February are the Chatham Island aster, rautini, tree koromiko and tarahinau, as well as white clover, yellow maku lotus clover (Lotus pedunculatus), dandelion and gorse.
Number 8 wire is alive and well where necessity drives invention Living on an island, one cannot swim to the industrial part of town or visit a specialist store close by to purchase equipment or parts for repairs. On the Chatham Islands, there is one garage, one hardware shop and two grocery stores. Air and sea freight are very costly and weather dependent, with competition for limited cargo space. This reality causes us to be thrifty, self-reliant and innovative problem solvers in simple but practical ways. Often we need to design, adapt and build for our needs, and equipment may have to perform a multitude of tasks and functions. Like many would-be beekeepers, we have been suckers for the flashy new (plastic) equipment appearing in beekeeping magazines. After a few downers, it has become clear that the genius graduating from a design course might not have sat
down and identified the plethora of tasks a pressured beekeeper will need to complete to render a costly new purchase fully operative, functional and profitable within a fast-moving beekeeping environment. Following are eight of 20 ways that we have adapted and now use standard pieces of beekeeping equipment. The list of ways is growing and evolving as we study beekeepers and beekeeping approaches in the recent past; i.e., the past 300 years.
3. With the ventilator removed, the mat can be used for introducing a new queen or when uniting hives. 4. Used as a (three-way) top entrance above the queen excluder to enable more foragers to access the honey super directly during the honey flow. 5. Used as a pheromone reducer for queen rearing; e.g., as part of the Cloake board system, as shown in the photo below.
Hive mat with three entrances and a removable ventilating insert
Pheromone reducer with front entrance open: Harry Cloake’s board system.
1. Used as a ventilated hive mat for hive moisture reduction; e.g., in curing honey. 2. Used as a separator for a topbox mating hive or for setting up splits.
Aster and tarahinau in the wild.
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