Build Up

Dearth September. Admittedly a slower start than last year, but all of our hives have been boosted into action with regular manipulation and feeding. Frames of honey and pollen are added to simulate an early flow, and with the changing of the clocks, the real thing can’t be far behind.

Summertime – scents of sickly-sweet flowers, sunscreen and sizzling barbeques. Nostalgia much?

Daylight savings always throws a quick curveball, especially so as a kid. Thinking back on it, I baulked at sun-drenched bedtimes, but eventually the long days would give way to the liberty granted to children whose parents’ sole instinct is to work. That’s what beekeeping does for you.

If I wasn’t coming along for the ride, you could find me catching crickets in a scrap yard or roaming the riverbank with my brothers. What about my parents? They hardly knew what day it was. More daylight allowed them to work longer hours. Engulfed in the mental and physical load of pollination, they’d be circling their bees, invoking growth and expansion, battling nature, and each other, while bringing up a family the best they could.

The only way to make it then, was to pull together.

Our family business boomed. Dad and mum were some of the first beekeepers in the country to chopper hives into remote mānuka sites at the beginning of the bubble. Pollen and honey was supplied to a small factory in Paengaroa, and a sound relationship was formed with the founder of Comvita, while sharing ideas about honey and health.

My older brothers pulled alongside, midday school pickups by the bee truck assured they worked the long summer days. With everyone on the same page, cohesion made for a successful business. If you’re not pulling together, you are pulling apart.

Sometimes though, things do come apart, right at the seams. Like a modern-day fairytale, my parents separated just after I left home at 16.

Working side-by-side with Dad. As it turns out, I do want to be a beekeeper. I wonder what my 16-year-old self would think.

Sometimes, when you think the world is upside down, it’s just realigning itself.

At 16, I was out. See you later family. On the flipside, bees. Really, who would want to be a beekeeper anyway?

My adult self, waving frantically It turns out, I do.

In grace, my family’s business continued to breathe, and thrive. Finding my way back home, as an adult, is literally winning the life lotto. With beekeeping in my blood, the peace of the bees becomes a piece of me.

Now the pointy end of the year is drawing close and pollination contracts are flying through cyberspace. Numbers are starting to circulate through the brain and occasionally I catch a glimpse of a queen bee that isn’t really there. Bring on the kiwifruit flowers, I am ready, although the hives are not quite…

Ready to roll, the Edgecomb Honey fleet. 

Expansion and growth is where we’re at.

Overwintered queens have been arriving in weekly batches, most finding their way into splits, with a few requeens. Tough calls are to be made, as some old queens have pumped coming out of winter, only to peter out at the crunch – telltale double eggs, missing cells and spotty brood patterns, or just plain slow.

Those big old girls have done us well, but exposure to mite control chemicals over the year diminishes their productive life span. To ensure robust colonies throughout the coming season we follow best practice with requeening, and if in doubt, replace it.

Beekeeping around the weather has been a juggling act. Splitting hives between showers is not ideal, but every day counts as we drive these hives forward. The rain has slowed us down a little, but our spirits are not dampened.

Give it a month or so, the red kiwifruit should be finished, the gold will be in full swing, and as the world turns upside down, I will remind myself, this too shall pass. As it does every year.

Aimz

Aimz is a second-generation commercial beekeeper in the Bay of Plenty who took up the hive tool fulltime at the end of the 2024 honey season. Formerly a stay-at-home mum to four kids, she has now found her footing in the family business.