John Berry on Keeping it Simple

It's the old acronym of KISS to the fore as veteran beekeeper John Berry explains how sometimes the basics are all you need for successful beekeeping.

By John Berry

I’m inside writing this today because it’s absolutely filthy outside and has been all week. Here in Hawke’s Bay we tend to have some of the best weather so I can only imagine what it’s like in other parts of the country. The joys of beekeeping. 

A box that has seen 40 summers and winters, made from pallet off-cuts, and a lid that might be just as old.

When I first started beekeeping our hives consisted of a floor (made from heart totara and soaked in hot tar), full-depth boxes painted with whatever was cheapest and mostly coming from other beekeepers who had gone bust, home-made simplicity frames, and a lid. No internal or external feeders, no excluder and no top board. Nine frames in the two brood boxes and eight frames in the honey boxes.

Combs were cleaned up in winter and sorted into brood (no drone cells), thirds (some drone cells) and fourths (rough).

If you wanted to get fancy you could have a rock on top to hold the lid down and a lumber crayon to write on the lid. A home-made hive tool, a smoker, a bag of pine needles for fuel and a fume board to drive the bees out of the honey boxes. A notebook for record-keeping, a box of matches and a sealed tin of granular cyanide for killing AFB hives.

Work gear consisted of leather boots, anklets with elastic top and bottom that stop bees getting into your boots or up your legs (if you worked in wet grass the bees would sting the hell out of your ankles), a pair of khaki cotton trousers, a home-made veil made from a khaki cotton shirt, steel gauze and number eight wire. You could either tuck the veil in or use a belt. Cotton inner gloves and PVC gloves. 

Everything simple, mostly home-made and all interchangeable, mendable, recyclable, reliable and minimal.

I used to be amazed as a kid going to beekeeping field days and seeing hobbyist hives with reversible summer/winter floors, flash white boxes, excluders, flash brought frames, top boards and flash lids with built-in ventilation and sloping roofs, not to mention the pristine white bee suits. Nevertheless, what we had worked and was cheap and that’s what you needed in those days to survive as a commercial beekeeper.

An old Arataki veil on top of a square hive – they aren’t often seen these days but used to be far more common, holding 12 frames. 

These days my hives are all on pallets, I use excluders and top boards, but everything else is mostly the same. We use overalls with elastic on the bottom, but they are still cotton and khaki and, while I do have a couple of white veils, I prefer my khaki ones even though they are bought.

Khaki is a better colour for bees, they react to it less, especially at night. It’s also better at not showing propolis stains. I would by choice still use home-made ones like my grandmother and mother used to make, but my wife – after making them for a few years – said they were just too difficult and hard on equipment. So I have to make do with what’s available commercially.

I still make my own hive tools, my own slightly modified simplicity frames and have nothing but full-depth boxes. If, heaven forbid, I was to start all over again from scratch I don’t think I would change much. I would probably try and make my boxes out of macrocarpa rather than pine and I wouldn’t paint anything (it’s not my favourite job).

My father once told me that if he was to start again he would go to a 1 ½ depth brood-box with three-quarter depth honey supers. I can certainly see the advantages, but the convenience of everything being the same size has a lot going for it. You could of course have nothing but three-quarter gear, and it is lighter, but then there is more of it.

Over the years I have seen innumerable types of hives. From the rustic and highly illegal apple box hive, to the modern fully plastic version, and every variation in between.

I have also had the privilege of working with some overseas beekeepers and many different types of hives, but there is a reason why a standard Langstroth hive is still by far the most common hive in the world and that is because it is well-designed, practical, easy to manufacture and keeps it simple. 

You know what they say – keep it simple stupid.

John Berry is a retired commercial beekeeper from the Hawke’s Bay, having obtained his first hive in 1966, before working for family business Arataki Honey and then as owner of Berry Bees. He now keeps “20-something” hives.