Seasonal New Zealand Beekeeping Calendar

SPRING

Is the time of growth!

At the start of spring your colony is very focused on making more bees so all the food coming in is being used to feed the larvae.  If your colony is low on food and the weather turns so bad that they cannot go out and collect more, they can starve very quickly.  Always be aware of your colonies food resources and prepare a light sugar syrup (1:1) to tide them over.

Feeding light sugar syrup

As the weather is warming its best to open the hive up for more air flow so remove any entrance reducers or under floor insulation.

In spring, as the hives are expanding, you can also decide if you want to increase your hive numbers and make splits.  But remember if you split a hive, you will half the number of foragers so they will not collect as much honey.  You have to decide: Do you want more hives, or more honey.

Spring is the time to do your full American Foulbrood (AFB) hive checks.  By law, every beekeeper in NZ must have all their hives inspected by an approved person between Aug 1 and Nov 30.  The inspector must sign the Certificate of Inspection (COI) and return to the Pest Management Agency.

To check your own hives, you must pass an AFB recognition course and complete a Disease Elimination Conformant Agreement (DECA) with the AFB Pest Management Agency.

Spring is also the time that nasty varroa start multiplying!  This is because the varroa mite breed and feed on the pupa underneath the capping.  As the Queen is increasing her laying in spring, the varroa are also increasing theirs!  The timing of your spring varroa treatments should be worked backwards from when your nectar flow starts, as you aren’t allowed to be collecting honey when your miticide strips are in the hive, you need to remove your strips before collecting honey.

Miticide strip in hive with brood

As your colony is growing, they also may start to think about reproducing, this means swarming!  Swarming is the colonies natural way of making a new queen and therefore a whole new colony.  If you let them swarm, the bonus is that you get a new queen (as the old queen leaves) but you do lose half your bees! To stop swarming you have to go through your full hive every 7-10 days and remove all the queen cells you see.

As the queen is laying non-stop, it also means that the colony is going to run out of room so adding new boxes, preferably with drawn out comb, for the queen to keep laying.

As the season progresses the colony will move from growth, to reproduction, to production – which is nectar collection and honey ripening.  Adding honey boxes, above an excluder if you want, before the colony runs out of room is excellent hive management.

If you’re worried about nutrition or food reserves, you can also add pollen substitutes if you want.

SUMMER

Summer is the time of honey making!  Your colony has used spring to increase in bee numbers and now that all the base jobs, like looking after brood, making wax etc are covered, all the extra bees can focus on collecting nectar and ripening it into honey

As your hive has expanded, you need to add honey boxes on before the colony runs out of room.  This extra room is for the bees to expand into and for them to put honey

Frame of honey with tiny patch of capped brood in the middle

When adding honey boxes, you can put them directly on top of the honey boxes already there or you can ‘under super’ which means you lift all the existing honey boxes up and put the new, empty honey box straight on top of the queen excluder (or brood box if you’re not using one)

DO NOT keep your chemical varroa treatments in when you are collecting honey as they can leave residues.  A good timing system is when you take your strips out, you put your first honey box on.

If you are planning on selling your honey you MUST have it tested for toxic honey, as that is the law.  If not, then its best to remove all the honey before Jan 1st so there is no chance for the honey to be toxic.

AUTUMN

Autumn is a tough time to be a beekeeper as it is the season of robbing!  All the beautiful nectar filled flowers have gone and there are now a huge number of foragers with nothing to collect.  These hungry foragers will go after anything that is even remotely sugary: your lunch, your rubbish, and even your other beehives.

The annoying thing about Autumn is it is the usual time that we harvest the bulk of our honey so this can cause a huge issue

Robbing bees can decimate a whole colony within a day or two so its important to limit the times you can into your hives and if you must go in – be quick!  The smell of honey and wax that comes out of your hive when you open it is what will attract the robbers.  They will also attempt to enter any hive so if you have any weak hive, make sure their entrances are reduced to only the space of 2 bees.  This is so the entrance is easy for them to defend.

Beehive entrance reducer to assist hive in defence

Seal up any other holes/entrances around the hive and seal off any ventilated bases.  If you need to open your hive do everything you need to do quickly and efficiently i.e.: Take your honey off and place your miticide strips at the same time – one trip = two jobs. 

Treating for mites in the Autumn is more important than in spring as your queen is slowing down her laying, whereas the varroa are not, so they can overrun your hive surprisingly quickly.  Its always best to monitor the varroa levels before and after you treat so you have a reference if it doesn’t work.  You can do this with an alcohol wash or sugar shake to count the number of mites per 300 bees.

Remember, when you take your honey off you need to check for AFB because if you miss it, it means that your honey frames are also full of AFB spores.  Whichever hive you put those frames back into will get AFB.

As the weather is cooling, we need to reverse what we did in the spring and reduce the number of boxes we have on the hive.  We need to condense the brood down to one box, so it’s easier for them to stay together and stay warm, and make sure the bees have enough food to survive the winter.

To do this you can either leave them a whole box of honey, WITHOUT the queen excluder, or you can feed them very strong syrup (2:1) which they will take and store so they can have enough to get them through

WINTER

We don’t tend to do too much in the winter as beekeepers.  Hopefully you have done all you need to do in the Autumn so that you have no need to open the hives and chill the brood. 

One thing you might need to do is check the food stores every month, this is easily done by peeking into the top box to see how much capped honey is left.  Be prepared with some thick sugar syrup if they seem hungry.

Our robbing bees have all gone back to their homes, but wasps are often now the thing to watch out for.  Keep the entrance reducers on and make them even smaller if you need to. Place wasp baits out if it’s bad.

German wasp on a beehive

Do not feel the need to open the brood nest as this will do more damage than good.  Some queens will continue to lay throughout winter while others may completely stop for a time.  Do not make decisions on queen-lessness during the winter – wait till it warms up.

GENERAL HIVE UPKEEP

Do not open your hives ‘just for fun’ as every time you open them you damage the colony, disrupt their foraging and piss them off!

When you do need to do something, make a plan first and try to do everything at once so you only disrupt them on one occasion.

Treating hives is a necessity to keep varroa at bay but it is not the only thing that helps.  Queen selection and genetics have a major role in varroa numbers.  Don’t waste all your time on a sick hive when you’ve got another hive in the same apiary that’s doing great.  It’s like farming – we cull the weak to increase the strong genetics.

When we treat in the Spring and Autumn you must rotate your products, this means use something like Bayvarol in the spring and something with a different chemical base, like Apivar in the Autumn.  This helps to make sure the varroa don’t become resistant to one specific chemical.

Whenever you go into your hive, for any reason, check the brood.  Be on the lookout for anything that looks weird of different.  To do this, you must know what is normal first!  During spring, you can open your hive more than other times so use this time to learn what your colony is made up off.  Look at all the brood stages and what they look like, so you know what’s healthy.

Juicy plump white larvae

Know what pollen, brood capping’s, and capped honey looks like.  Learn what a good lay pattern looks like.  Learn to see eggs - this is very important as often spotting a queen is very difficult.  Even if you don’t see the queen, if you can spot a good laying area of eggs that’s all the proof you need for a queenright hive.

As a beekeeper, you will get stung, it’s just part of the occupation.  Monitor your stings as your reaction can change over time.  And just because you are not allergic right now, does not mean you won’t be in the future!  Learn the signs of anaphylaxis and know what to do in that situation.

When you are beekeeping in your full bee suit, you are protected but that does not mean your neighbours, pets, and passersby are too!  Learn to light and use your smoker wisely.  Not enough smoke is just as bad as too much, so learn to read your colonies so that less of them die and less people around you get stung.

Happy Beekeeping Everyone