Beekeeping Diaries – Signs of Spring

The beekeeping diaries will give you the inside story on collecting Manuka Honey from New Zealand’s remote forests.

It’s early spring here in New Zealand.

The bees have basically been in hibernation over winter. It was too cold for them to do anything, so they just huddled up into a tight ball and kept warm.

Darcy looking after the beehives.

Now the days are starting to warm up. The bees aren’t ready to get to work yet, but they’re starting to think about it. We’re getting warm sunny days, but the nights are still cold and there is an occasional frost.

We’re checking on all the beehives to see how they’ve done over winter. This means off road driving to the winter sites around the countryside.

We’re also feeding them a little bit. We try to feed our bees as little as possible, because sugar isn’t very good for them. Honey keeps them healthy (especially Active Manuka Honey) so instead of taking every last bit, we leave some for them to live on over the winter.

The purpose of the sugar feeding is to start getting them stimulated for summer. It will encourage the queen to start laying more eggs. She’ll want a large colony ready to start collecting when the nectar starts to flow.

We want her to build up the beehive, so we can split it and start a new hive for our partnership clients. The new hives will be started over the next few months of spring.

More on that later.

Keep buzzing.