Sweet as

With 50kgs of honey each year out of the hives on his property, Greig Buckley is getting a reputation for sweet and sticky gifts. One of the growing number of people who have switched on to the joys of keeping bees, Greig’s thrice-annual harvest provides far more than his family can consume, meaning the bees’ bounty flows over into tasty presents. And surprisingly all this golden goodness is happening just 10 minutes out of the Auckland CBD.

His popularity with friends and neighbours aside, Greig’s also found he has no lack of busy pollinators for the fruit trees on his section, which are turning out bumper crops. And to top it off the family have felt more in touch with nature through dabbling in the gentle, ancient art.

So if you think you’d get a buzz from beekeeping, what do you need to know?

Urban’s okay

You need surprisingly little space to keep bees – after all they will be traveling up to 10kms away for flowers, not just feeding from your garden, so beekeeping in the city is perfectly realistic. Of course there will be a few metres around each hive where you won’t normally want to go, as the air will be thick with activity during daylight hours, but space issues are more about providing a flight path that doesn’t bug the neighbours.

 “And you get a better style of honey in urban areas,” Greig reckons. “You get a better variety of flowering plants, as opposed to in the country where it’s mono-cropping.”

Of the three harvests Greig makes each year from his Birkenhead hives the first is a floral-scented “bush honey”, the second is pohutukawa based – “a late blooming tree near the hive gives a great honey, which is lighter and richer – it’s very distinctive”. And the final harvest is a darker brew around March.

Even those living in apartments can become apiarists, as beekeepers are known. A flat rooftop with sufficient shelter can be the perfect way to get a hive’s flight path up and out of everyone’s way. In New York City for instance there are many rooftop gardens where bees living way above street level produce beautiful honey. There are even hives on the roof of the Auckland Town Hall on Queen Street.

Getting started

Bees follow set routes and defecate as they fly, so you need to position a hive properly to avoid getting little spots all over your – and your neighbours’ –  washing. They also need a source of drinking water and a dry spot out of the wind, so if you think you’d like to keep bees on your property you need to get a friendly beekeeper to come around and see where a hive could work for you.

At this point you’ll also want to check your local council bylaws about urban beekeeping, plus have a chat with whoever is over the fence. The washing issue and bees drinking from swimming pools are the two most common complaints from neighbours, and some councils allow bees in urban areas only if they’re not a nuisance.

The best place to start for finding a beekeeper for advice is the website of the National Beekeepers Association, www.nba.org.nz. All hives are required by law to be registered with the NBA so you’ll be in contact with them at some point if you decide the hobby is for you, and the site provides a list of beekeeping clubs and societies around the country, which should be your next port of call: contact your local club and along with expert advice you’ll also likely be pointed in the direction of a beekeeping course where can learn everything you need to know to get going.

What you’ll need

If you want to make a start in beekeeping you’ll need to get some equipment – suppliers such as www.ecroyd.com have a huge range. At a minimum you’ll need hives and frames, some protective clothing – either a full suit, r in the least a veil for your head; a hive tool for separating frames, a smoker and access to or ownership of a centrifuge for spinning the honey out of the honeycomb.

Oh, and you’ll want some bees! These are often sold in the hive – Trade Me is a good start – and can be transported around the country. You can even buy bees by the kilogram (www.packagebees.co.nz) and have them delivered by post!

However, if you’re keen on enjoying bee benefits with less commitment there are options. Greig doesn’t own the hives on his property – a beekeeper he met keeps them there with the two sharing upkeep and Greig paying $250-$300 for his part of the spoils. “It works out very economical!” he enthuses.

While Greig has an informal set-up there are also businesses that rent hives from between $300-$800 per year. These arrangements typically include all servicing and health treatments for the bees, though the amount of honey that comes to you varies with the agreement. www.urbanbees.co.nz, www.beezthingz.co.nz and www.beehivehire.co.nz are all good places to start.

Finally, for those who don’t want to spend too much but who would still like to own a hive, a less mainstream option exists in a traditional apiary style called ‘top bar’ beekeeping. Basically top bar hives are built differently to modern beehives. They are cheaper, lighter and need less work, but yield less honey (and more wax).

Bee health

Our bees are under attack by several serious diseases which need regular monitoring and treatment. One of these, a bacterial infection called American Foul Brood (AFB) is rare but potentially catastrophic and hives are required to be inspected for disease every year. If AFB is detected the hive must be destroyed.

The other major threat is from the parasitic varroa mite, which has spread throughout New Zealand with the exception of the Chatham Islands. Varroa mites are tiny parasites that suck blood from bees, weakening and eventually killing them. Varroa has wiped out 99% of the country’s wild bee populations and, in short, if you don’t use preventative treatments on your hives your bees will definitely die.

Bees can be particularly susceptible to varroa if they are under stress from other factors such as low level pesticide exposure or lack of food, and there are fears that the mites are becoming resistant to the miticides used to tackle them.

Learning the ropes

There are other issues to consider, which is where a good beekeeping course comes into its own. Bees occasionally need feeding with sugar-water, for instance through the lean winter period, or they risk starving. And an important issue to watch out for in parts of the country such as Coromandel is tutin poisoning. Bees that feed on native tutu flowers in certain conditions can produce a honey that causes life-threatening convulsions in people who eat it – so it’s crucial that hobbyist beekeepers learn about avoiding the nasty toxin. 

There’s no doubt that looking after bees takes some time and effort – less than for a dog or chickens, but slightly more than for a cat seems to be the consensus. Yet despite the work involved, caring for a humming mob of insects – and sharing in the sweet reward of their labours – can be enormously satisfying.

As one keen apiarist told Green Ideas: “Yes, you’ll get stung – but not too often… Yes you will end up with more honey than you know what to do with. Yes you will see rapid improvement of fruit yields in your garden – and all around your neighbourhood. Do it. You’ll never look back.”

Bees in crisis

Globally the humble honey bee is in major decline with entire hives mysteriously dying on a huge scale. The condition, labeled Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), has seen a third of all hives in the United States wiped out year-on-year since 2006 – the exception being the winter of 2011-2012 where total losses were 22 per cent. Similar losses have been experienced across Europe.

It’s an alarming phenomenon, not simply because of the impact on the honey industry, but because bees play such a major role in pollinating dozens of food crops, from pumpkins to almonds. The United States Department of Agriculture estimates one mouthful of food in three directly or indirectly benefits from honeybee pollination. A worst-case-scenario if CCD continues unchecked could see bees virtually vanish with the partial collapse of our agricultural sector, shrinking global food production and rising prices.

The bad news is that no-one has yet found a smoking gun to explain CCD. Urgent research is being done, though, with the list of likely explanations including widespread use of new pesticides, especially a group known as neonicotinoids (which are banned in some countries but still used in New Zealand); the spread of bee mites such as varroa; stresses on bees from industrial farming practices that see bees trucked around the countryside en masse; new bee diseases – or a combination of all of these.

The good news, however, is that CCD has not reached New Zealand, and bee numbers seem to be climbing as beekeeping becomes more popular.

However, as joint CEO of the National Beekeepers Association Daniel Paul points out, when the exact cause of CCD isn’t known there is no room for complacency. While reports last year of large numbers of bees dying in New Zealand turned out to be caused by varroa mites becoming resistant to treatments, rather than CCD, there have been other troubling reports of sudden hive losses and these emphasise the urgent need for a national bee health survey says the NBA chief.

Bee kind – what you can do

• If you must use pesticides, always make sure you spray in the evening when bees have gone home.
• Buy organic or spray-free produce.
• Plant old-fashioned flowers for bee food. Gardening writer Janet Luke recommends lavender, rosemary, fruit trees, sunflowers, phacelia, calendula and borage for attracting bees.
• Mow the lawn less! Dandelions, clover and buttercups will flower and the bees will love it.

Handy  links

National Beekeepers Association
Firsthand beekeeping advice
Advice for honeybee protection
Bulk bees for sale

Hive rentals
www.urbanbees.co.nz
www.beezthingz.co.nz
www.beehivehire.co.nz

Have you tried backyard beekeeping? Share your experience by commenting below.