Honey production is well underway in some North Island areas and almost finished in others while for those inland in the South Island; it will be underway at the end of the month. In urban areas there is a continuous dribble from gardens and parks while in the high country, the flow can be as short as two weeks some seasons. Each area has it own management problems. Being prepared is essential; hives good and strong and the honey supers should be on the hives ahead of time. If one or two hives in an apiary do not have two supers of bees bubbling over in when opened, consider uniting them into one strong hive. One strong hive will out produce two weak ones.

We don't generally realise just how quickly the bees gather nectar and turn it into honey. Its not until a hive is put on an old set of scales, the sudden increase in weight can be seen when the main flow starts. The amount of nectar brought in depends upon its availability. Some trees secrete nectar continuously throughout the day and the bees will work this exclusively unless something else comes along with a higher sugar concentration. Ground sources are more fickle. Clover for example dries out quickly in the heat of the sun so it is only gathered in the mornings, however on an overcast day, under drying conditions, it will secrete all day. You can see the different nectar types when uncapping frames. Sometime there will be rings of different coloured honeys. In areas where there isn't the variety of plants, the nectar is predominantly from just one source.

City beekeepers should remove honey supers as they are capped (don't forget to inspect the brood for disease first). If the frames are not fully capped check that no honey comes out of the cells when the frame is held horizontal and given a sharp jerk. Immature honey is high in moisture and will ferment quickly if the moisture content is over 18%. If you're not sure, leave the frames until the next round of extracting. Try and extract the honey the same day it is removed from the hive. That way it is extracted while it's still warm and is easier and quicker to remove from the frames. Put the supers back on the hives in the evening after flight activity has ceased to prevent excited bees flying all over the neighbourhood looking for the source of honey. The wet supers stimulate to bees to gather more honey, which is why urban beekeepers do so well.

When extracting, remember this is a messy job and honey has this tendency (along with propolis) to spread all the way through the house even though I washed my hands and left my boots at the door. Sometimes extracting can be a bit of a grind for one person. Get a number of beekeepers together and work as a team and remember to put down plenty of newspaper otherwise you will never be allowed to use the kitchen again. With luck it will be all over in a few hours instead of an all day job. If you want to keep honeycomb, wrap it in plastic bags (remove the air) and store in the deep freeze. When you want to use it. Take it out of the freezer and allow it to come up to room temperature before removing the bag.

Depending upon the length and strength of the honey flow(s) beekeepers need to manage bee numbers. In lowland and coastal urban areas there is generally a constant dribble of nectar after the main flow which stimulates the queen into brood production. In such situations, without restricting the queen below a queen excluder, by March the hives can be full of bees and very little of the winter stores are left. Others remove most of the honey and winter stores from the hives as soon as the main flow finishes extract the crop and put the stores in plastic bags and only put them back on the hives towards winter. Under these conditions, the bees are literally on starvation rations and cease brood rearing between minor flows. I used to leave all the honey on the hives relying on the bees to "honey down" (place nectar in and around the brood nest thus reducing the frame space available for the queen can lay in) and remove the honey at the end of the season. Varroa mites have meant that this technique is no longer practical if you want your hives to survive. Inland high country beekeepers do not have this problem as hives quickly close down for the winter after the main honey flow.

The idea now is to remove all honey as early as possible and then treat the hives by the end of February or earlier if mite numbers indicate it. Those of us in the surveillance zone have been given time to prepare for the arrival of mites. We have to adapt our hive management now and put in mite monitoring and control elements into our routines. All beekeepers should be looking for mites, even those in the South Island. We just don't know where they are going to appear next. As a minimum, each beekeeper should select at least one hive in an apiary and remove about 100 drone pupa at the pink eye stage with a forked capping scratcher. Look for mites on the abdomen of the larvae and in the vacated cells for mites. Also as you remove the brood supers, look at the drone brood between the frames for mites and disease.

When you are removing honey supers, always keep in mind that you are handling a food. Strict hygiene is essential. We have just spent a week clean down our plant and the extracting room and replacing anything that might play up during extracting. Our Council insists that everything is clean and sterile before we start even though honey is a product that doesn't spoil. However "you" - the beekeeper, can introduce impurities and bacteria into the product. It all starts when you take off the honey, what you use, where you put the supers, how its transported. The shorter the distance travelled and less it is handled between hive and extractor, the better. MAF Food and the Beekeeping Industry are shortly to release an industry standard to assist beekeepers to produce a beautiful, pure product. MAF's interest now that we have varroa is to see our products, remain free from contamination and residues.

All honey tend to granulate (crystallise) over time. Honeys high in glucose granulate quickly; i.e. Pohutukawa (Metrosideros excelsa) will granulate within four days of taking it off the hive and if not extracted straight away, it will granulate in the frames. Other honeys like Eucalyptus take months to start granulation while beech honeydew takes years. The age of the frame also has a bearing on how quickly the honey granulates. Wet supers will still have fine honey crystals in the cells even though the bees clean out the frames when they are put on the hives. This tends to start granulation off in the cells where freshly drawn comb has no impurities; the honey in these will stay runny for months.

After you have extracted your honey, it pays to assist it to granulate using a fine grain honey. We used to purchase a small amount of South Island clover honey and add this to 5 kg of our honeys, cover it and store it at 14 Deg C in the basement. This was stirred three times a day until a bloom appeared through the honey. Then the 5kg was added to a larger amount and the process repeated until all our honey was seeded and then it was packed in jars and held at the same temperature for a week to stop frosting. Frost appears on the inside of the glass jar during granulation if there is a variation in temperature. When honey granulates, it shrinks and some water is released. The space against the outside of the honey allows glucose oxidase to form in this space and this causes the frosting. Its natural but doesn't look all that good to some customers. This also promotes the question; "Do you add sugar to the honey to get it to granulate?" No it's natural just like beating an egg white.

Now that we are larger its easier. I just get a 5kg of last year's Pohutukawa honey, heat is slightly and add this slowly to a 200l drum of honey and turn the pump on for a couple of hours. The honey soon takes on the granulation bloom and is pumped into another the 200-l drum ready for sale. The 2-3 kg left in the pump hosepipe then seeds the next drum and the process continues without much further invention by us.

Queen introduction. During the honey flow is one of the best time to requeen your hives ready for next season. The bees are too busy with the flow to worry about intruders and are easy to work with a minimum of smoke. I still like to make nucs and introduce new queens into these. The queen has an opportunity to start laying before being introduced into the main hive either by using the newspaper method or a direct introduction method, i.e. find the old queen on a frame, remove her and place the nuc queen directly on the same spot. If she is laying at the same rate as the old queen and her pheromone levels are the same, the bees will not notice the difference and she will carry on laying as if nothing has happened. If there is a difference in pheromone levels the bees will immediately notice her and will seize her. If this happens remove her and put her in a cage for three days. Inspect the hive again and remove any developing queen cells and see how the bees are treating the caged queen. If they are feeding her and are not all over the cage, release her and watch the reaction. If none close up.

Others prefer to find and kill the old queen and a day later introduce a queen caged mated queen into the hives. This works well for most.

Another way to requeen hives if you breed your own queens is simply put a virgin queen into the entrance of the hive. Of course this is not as easy as it sounds as virgins die if not fed pollen and honey within two hours of emerging. However you will sometime come across queens emerging in your hives and after making a nuc, what do you do with the rest? Hives not up to scratch should be requeened. With a virgin queen you get a brood break which means there will be a 14 day period of no brood and lot of bees so they will bring in more honey. Not everything always goes to plan. Most of the time the virgin will kill the old queen and take over the hive. Sometimes the old queen wins and sometimes both queens are lost and others can be lost while mating so it pays to have a nuc standing by just in case.

Once the honey flow ceases, its much harder to introduce queens and robbing can result. Consider requeening early when they are readily available.

Protective gear. We use and encourage beekeepers to use full protective suits. They give confidence to the new beekeeper. However after continual washing the fibreglass face mesh can get out of shape and can sit against the face. This is easily fixed using a hair dryer. Warm the facemask up and hold it in the right shape while applying the heat from the dryer. This will remove any kinks and it will hold its correct shape until next time is washed. When travelling in a vehicle with a suit on, unzip the veil a little more until it sits on your left shoulder and this will help prevent it from crumpling out of shape.

Take time to enjoy your bees, stand beside the hive in an evening and smell the scent of the nectar being emitted from the hives as the bees dry the nectar. A beehive in the garden is the one place where you will be free from interrupted and can tune into nature. I sometimes watch the comings and goings one the landing board. At this time of the year native bees are out of they over-wintering borrows and gathering pollen and nectar to supply their next generation. I once saw one on the landing board of a nuc. Normally bees will not tolerate an intruder near the entrance of the hive. In this case it appeared the bees were not quite sure what it was and wouldn't come within 2cm of it. It seems to be only resting and after five minutes took off again.

Things to do this month: Check feed if you have a late flow, check for failing queens, introduce nuclei, super hives, Prepare the honey house equipment, first extraction in some areas, swarm control, BL check before removing any honey or exchanging gear between hives. Fit foundation into honey frames.