Your Pure Honey » Beekeeping Diaries

Gathering Honey

Luke — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 20:01:53 +0000

The bees have been hard at work. We’re confident each hive has 20 kg of Active Manuka Honey and hopefully more.

In a few hours we’re heading off, on one last trip… to start collecting the honey.

The Eastern Manuka Honey Flow

Luke — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 00:57:37 +0000

Yesterday was the big day where we moved the beehives from here in Tauranga, out to the most eastern coast in the world.

We were up at 4:30 for the long trip. The scenery along the coast was gorgeous as we drove past four hour of beaches and coast.

The beehives will spend about six weeks here, gathering Manuka Honey for our clients. Then we’ll move them far inland to another nectar flow.

Each beehive helps to protect the native forest.

After a couple of hours sweating it out in the bee suits, we went for a quick swim at this deserted beach by Cape Runaway.

The Baby Beehives

Luke — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 22:42:17 +0000

Our latest video diary is about the new beehives we’ve been starting for our partners…

Beehives in the Bay of Plenty

Luke — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 01:45:04 +0000

In this video diary we’re at one of apiaries. Darcy explains why the Your Pure Honey beehives are currently in the Bay of Plenty.

Protecting Manuka Trees

Luke — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 20:35:47 +0000

We like to talk about how we can preserve native trees.

Here’s some examples we recently saw of Manuka trees that have been killed off.

Each beehive encourages farmers to preserve two hectares of these native trees.

Beekeeping Diaries – Signs of Spring

Luke — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 23:01:38 +0000

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.