Me and the bees!
Beekeeping in the Far North!
Bees on the move 24.01.2020
0This morning we got up really early so we could move some of our bees to their new forever home! We shut their doors last night and we dragged them up the hill on a sled and then loaded them onto the trailer.
We got them on board then whizzed down the road, some of the ‘late home bees” clung to the boxes all the way! We unloaded them and I put sticks in front so they would notice things had changed and re-orientate to their new place, then I opened the hives!

All aboard!

Sticks in front.

Bees at their new home…and our one behind.
Harvest time soon!
0We didn’t have the best Pohutukawa flowering this Christmas, for some reason the trees made more leaves than flowers but there were enough for the bees to make some honey! We are really excited to see what they have! You never know till you open the hive and see what the bees have done.
Because we harvest our Pohutukawa honey after Christmas we will have to send our honey to be tested for Tutin testing. Tute is a native plant which can grow in the far north, it’s poisonous, sometimes cows eat it and they die. In summer passion fruit vine hoppers make honeydew when they suck the sap from Tute and the bees can collect it, it won’t hurt bees but if people eat that honey they can be poisoned! So we will send ours to be tested to make sure its safe, each test costs about $50.00.