John Berry on: Norway’s Bountiful Beehives

It’s been a bumper honey season for John Berry’s son Chris in his now-home of Norway as the long daylight hours, combined with some hot, dry weather have seen a range of nectars flowing. The Hawke’s Bay beekeeper reports on his recent travels to 61 degrees north where some late-summer work awaited.

By John Berry

I arrived in Norway just-in-time to extract this year’s crop of heather honey. At around 12kg/hive, it was a bit disappointing, mainly because the area where the hives were was a bit dry. However, the heather was just the icing on top of a large cake in a year that has been truly amazing, one of those really rare seasons where all the stars align and the weather actually cooperates. Despite the worst swarming season (mostly controlled) he has ever seen, my son’s 24 hives averaged over 100kg/hive.

The topic de jour – ‘drying’ honey. Heather honey has a naturally high moisture content (and Codex rules recognise this). Two fans, two industrial dehumidifiers and four days took out five percent.

Like in New Zealand though, just because one area does well doesn’t mean other parts of the country will follow, and some beekeepers I met said it was one of the worst seasons. Some things don’t change no matter how far you go.

The vast majority of honey sold in Norway is granulated and, rather than by variety, names tend to go by ‘spring’, ‘summer’ and ‘autumn’. Where my son lives, near Lillehammer in the country’s southern interior, ‘spring’ honey is predominantly dandelion. In summer, wild raspberry is the main crop, followed by clover and fireweed which he called ‘late summer’. Heather is the autumn honey.

Chris's experience with heather honey is that it is always high in moisture and ferments very easily. Therefore, he has found it is very important not only to dry it, but to dry it quickly before any fermentation can occur in the combs (Editor’s note – the topic of ‘drying’ honey was detailed last month in Friendly Fire from an Apimondia Broadside). Once fermentation is started, it is hard to stop. Regulations do allow for heather honey to be higher in moisture than any other honey (up to 23% as opposed to 20% for other honey varieties) and I just don't understand this. In my experience it needs to be at a low moisture level to stop fermentation and even when dried very carefully it can still get a bit fizzy if stored somewhere warm over time.

Chris’s hand-operated pricker. Effective, but hard work.

The hives one box high and ready for winter.

This year Chris experimented with putting four hives up at the mountain farm (most farms in the area have a ‘valley’ farm and a ‘mountain’ farm). It is a predominantly forested area, but with a lot of wild raspberry which is quite dominant for several years after logging. He was told they wouldn’t do any good and initially this did seem to be true. Then, all of a sudden, things turned around and they ended up averaging 150kg.

The season is short, but very intense with almost continuous daylight and plants that have a very short window to get pollinated and they really go all out to attract the pollinators.

I have never stayed so late in the autumn before and, despite it being reasonably warm, everything, including the bees, seem to realise that winter is coming and they just shut down.

Landing Home

Next thing I know I am back home and my hives are cranking up. I actually found the change of seasons more disconcerting than the jetlag. Fortunately, I got away with leaving them alone for the best part of a month. One of the things I did before I left was to give them all some fondant. I have never fed this before and I have to say I was quite impressed how the bees consumed all of it.

Chris marking a queen – something I never do.

The Rat and the Toilet Brush

The recent death of ex-Prime Minister Jim Bolger reminded me of a conference many years ago when his son Paul Bolger was taking part in a debate to entertain the crowds. I don’t remember what the debate was about, but I do remember my brother referring to Dr Mark Goodwin as Harry Potter’s younger brother and then later Paul Bolger looking out into the audience and saying, “is that John Berry out there or a rat looking through a toilet brush”. He told me later that his father had wanted to use this line many times in Parliament, but had been too much of a gentleman to do so.

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.