Articles

After a long, cold winter spent huddled inside, everyone is looking forward to spring – bees included. For your hives, spring is a time of intense activity. Egg-laying, brood-raising, and nectar-gathering all start to ramp up after being almost non-existent in winter.

New Zealand is home to 28 species of native bee, but most people wouldn’t recognise one buzzing past in the garden. Unlike their brightly coloured, social, honey-making cousins, native bees are mostly black, they lead solitary lives, and honey-making is not on their agenda.

When we hear about bees most of us think of honeybees (Apis mellifera) but there are many more bees around us.

Want to start beekeeping? Here are five reasons why it’s a great hobby – plus some tips from Ecrotek to help you get going.

Many Kiwi beekeepers start out as hobbyists, with one or two hives in a back garden or on a rural property, then make the jump to selling honey and beekeeping full time.

​Like any food product, honey needs to be handled safely before it can be sold. In New Zealand, safety standards cover everything – processing, testing, packaging and labelling. If you want to sell your honey, you need to meet these standards – and prove that you’ve met them. But before you do that, here’s our rough guide to safe processing and packaging:

Learn how to set up your first beehive, fill it with bees and manage your first week of beekeeping – from Ecrotek.

​Honey seems so natural and wholesome that it’s difficult to imagine it causing harm. But if your honey is contaminated with another natural substance – tutin – it can be toxic to humans, causing nausea, vomiting, convulsions, and even death.

Organic food is made without using chemical pesticides, herbicides, antibiotics or other artificial chemicals during production. Organic fruit growers don’t spray their trees or vines, using natural methods to control insects on their produce. Organic meat and dairy farmers don’t use antibiotics or artificial hormones to speed up animal growth. For many proponents, the organic concept extends into the overall management of the farm or orchard as well – they tend to take a slower, natural approach to crop or animal management, with a focus on caring for their charges rather than profit.