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The Secret Life Of Bees
From Country Life, Gianina Schwanecke
There's an art to beekeeping, and it starts with pheromones - the invisible chemical scents you produce.
"Working beehives you've got to be totally relaxed," says Frank Lindsay, a man with more than half-a-century's worth of experience tending to bees.
His fascination with bees started after a childhood visit to a Havelock North honey factory. However, a failed attempt to start his own hive in which his father and brother were stung multiple times, saw him banned from keeping bees until he got older
Later working as a technician for the Post Office gave him enough time to tend to bees and he got his first hive in 1970. At its peak, Frank kept about 450 commercial hives across Wellington, Horowhenua, Ōtaki.
"Most beekeepers only have their hives within 30km radius but we had ours over a 100km radius because it's just a coastal strip.
"Wellington is known for its southerlies. When the southerlies occur during our summer and spring we don't get much honey. And in Ōtaki it's sheltered from the southerlies. So when it's bad weather here, it's good weather there ... best of both worlds."
These days he's focused on helping grow future and hobbyist beekeepers through helping tend to hives on the outskirts of Wellington, run by the Wellington Beekeepers Association.
"Generally a box of bees is around about 15-20,000 bees. In Wellington area, it's around about 30 kilos [of honey] per hive."
Bees gather pollen from trees in spring, then from pasture from December onwards, which they use to make honey.
The wider Wellington region produces a bush blend, often marked by dark orange pollen from gorse flowers, as well as the white, sugary honey made of pollen collected from pōhutukawa flowers.
"Everything that is a weed is great for bees. If you're in an area that has a bit of bush and open farmland, the bees do really well.
It all depends on how many beekeepers are around. Frank says this is the first year they've really started producing honey with many beekeepers exiting the mānuka honey industry.
"They're entering season collapse," he says. "It was a gold rush and then everybody jumped on it. Even the family businesses are hurting and they've dropped their numbers to be more sustainable."
Changes in farming practices have also influenced changes in beekeeping, with the rise of rotational grazing practices reducing the amount of clover available for bees
"We're just a Cinderella industry that sits in the background. If you're a kiwifruit or avo grower we're really important but if you're a farmer we're just providing a source of free pollination which they don't see."
Late autumn is a time for maintenance jobs like replacing frames and checking the health of the hive.
"Some of your best production hives have high [varroa] mites at the end of the summer and then they collapse."
Varroa mites are an ectoparasite which suck the blood of the bees and can lead to other viruses infecting the hive.
Every week Frank checks on the club's hives and photographs the mite fall, to track the number of varroa mites in the hive. He uses artificial intelligence programmes to do the counting for him
"The difference between 1 percent which is 3 mites per 100 bees and 5 percent which is 15 mites, is you only get half the honey crop."
Frank is a life member of several beeclubs, including the Wellington Beekeepers Association, the Southern North Island Beekeepers Group and National Beekeepers Association.
The Southern North Island Beekeepers Group is running it's own conference in Whanganui in August, with Australian beekeeper and scientist Randy Oliver coming to talk more about varroa mites.
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