The honey crop over most of New Zealand has been reported as being well down, perhaps the worst honey crop in years. The continuous rain and cold weather we experienced from mid October to mid January put paid to the possibility of good crops for most commercial beekeepers. A lot of hives in the manuka have dead drones in front of them indicating that these hives were forced to expel drones to survive. IE no honey or pollen coming in therefore the hives go into survival mode. Brood production stops and in extreme cases, the bees start eating developing larvae to survive. Under these conditions, the hives quickly reduce in bee numbers. There are always exceptions. How is it that one or two hives in an apiary seem to find a nectar source and cap all the honey frames in the hives yet the rests of the hives in the apiary produce only winter stores? They are incredible things these bees.

All this rain has meant that paddocks are green and honey sources that would have normally dried out by now are still flowering. A walk through an empty calf paddock a few days ago revealed a host of honey plants flowering. White and Red Clover, Catsear, Thistles and lots of Lotus Major. The bees were all over the Lotus Major. Penny Royal and Willow Weed were sending up flower heads. Around our house the Lancewood (Pseudopanax crissifolius), Koromiko (Hebe stricta) while up the coast, Fennel and pink and red varieties of Eucalyptus are in full flower. Perhaps some hives will manage to produce a crop after all.

However hives in some suburban areas have done very well indeed. The major difference being that one or two beehives do not have to compete with other hives therefore are able to continue to gather the nectar and pollen. The other main contributing factors are shelter and multiplicity of nectar sources. Hobby beekeepers can tuck a hive away in a sheltered garden and they will do extremely well.

Urban hives are full of brood and this has triggered late swarming so keep an eye on your hives, get the capped honey off (after a disease check) and the wet supers back on quickly (in the evening) as this stimulates the bees to gather more nectar. Its also important to get into the habit of removing honey early (by the end of January) as at some time in the future, you will have to treat your hives to control varroa mites around this time.

One of the main problems with urban beekeeping is disturbing the hives. Angry bees in a city environment is a recipe for disaster. It is best to work the hives on a sunny afternoon when you neighbours are away at the beach. By the time they get home, the bees would have settled down again. Another alternative is to work them early in the morning when it’s still cool. A little smoke and the bees are easy to keep under control.

Honey is best removed using escape boards. Brushing and blowing just disturbs the bees and the neighbours and chemicals such a benzhaldehyde are now being frowned on as a source of chemical residues. Use as little smoke as possible. Heavy use of smoke taints the honey.

There are conditions where escape boards don’t work. If there are any patches of drone brood along the bottom edges of the frames, the bees won’t leave them. Cut these out with your hive tool. A similar situation occurs if there are cracks or holes. The bees will defend the honey and won’t leave the super. Bee escapes can be blocked with wax particles when the honey supers are put on top of them. This can be prevented and dripping honey eliminated if the honey suppers are "cracked" a day beforehand. Take the hive tool and lift each end of the honey super off the one below. Any bridging wax between the frames is broken and the bees quickly clean up dripping honey. Next day when the honey supers are lifted off to place the escape board in position, they are easy to remove.

At this time of the year, bees do not readily move out of the honey supers if there is no room in the hive. This can be overcome if another super is added above the brood nest. Also the warm evenings don’t encourage them to move down either and it can sometimes take a couple of days for most of the bees to move through the escape board. I have found a quicker way to do this. Place a crown or split boards on the ground beside the hive and place the honey supers on top of this then put the escape board on top of this with the escape mechanism upwards. Provided the honey supers are sealed, (tape over any holes or cracks) the bees will leave the supers within an hour or two. Late afternoon you can pick the honey supers up and remove them to you house without disturbing the bees. This operation works best with porter bee escapes. The homemade diamond type with mesh will attract robber bees, as they can smell the exposed honey. If you use this type of escape device, you may have to leave the super until flying has ceased. The only bees left in the supers will be drones and these can be shaken on to the ground in front of the hive.

When the honey flow finishes, the field bees start looking for additional sources of nectar and what is more efficient than taking it from an unguarded hive or nuc. I found out what robbing can be like a few years ago. I leave my hive entrances restricted all year round due to the wind in our region but used to lift the roofs or set a top honey super slightly askew to give additional ventilation. In this apiary I failed to reset the roof at the end of the flow and when I came to remove the honey off in March, I noticed dead bees in front of each hives. There had been a real battle but all the hives were flying so seemed ok.

After lifting the roofs off the hives I got a real surprise. All the honey in the hives had been robbed out and there was a layer of dead "black" bees about 50-mm thick between the frames of the second and third super protecting the brood nest below. My nice yellow bees had put up a fight against these invaders and had survived but lost the battle to save their honey crop. I changed my management after this and found that so much added ventilation was not necessary. A 25-mm cut in the crown board now provides sufficient ventilation. When the honey flow come towards a conclusion, close down the entrances by putting on your winter entrance boards.

The idea when removing honey is to never leave combs exposed. Cover these with a cloth or a crown or split board. Once the bees start robbing ever thing and everyone gets stung. If you do get into a robbing situation, block all the hive entrances with grass to restrict bee flight. If your bees are being attacked from another hive outside your property put a garden sprinkler on top of your hives and turn on the water. This quickly stops any robbing activity. After bee flight activity has ceased reduce the hive entrances to 100mm.

February is also the best time to start setting your hives up for winter. Order new queens and make a few nucs or replace the old queens in your hives. All swarms gathered should be requeened, as the queens are likely to be old or have a propensity to swarm. If there is still a honey flow on, the queens will quickly be accepted. If the flow has finished, sprinkle a little thin sugar syrup over the frames and bees just after introducing the caged queen. This gives the bees something to do and they don’t seem to worry the new queen.

Requeening black hives is often a little more difficult. Apart from being defensive, these bees are "runners", i.e. they are not steady on the frame and tend to run to the bottom of the frame when it is lifted out of the hive. If you cannot find the queen on the first look through the brood frames, shake all the bees on to the ground in front of the hive and put a queen excluder between the floor and the first super. The bees will walk through the excluder into the hive, leaving the drones and the queen below the excluder. In an hour or so, lift off the supers and find and dispatch the queen. Introduce the new caged queen but don’t remove the protective lug. Splash a little sugar syrup over the bees (but not outside as this could start robbing) and close the hive.

In three days check the hive again. Look at the reaction of the bees on and around the queen cage. If they are feeding the new queen, release the tag to let her emerge once the candy is eaten through. If they are aggressive to her, pulling at the bees and trying to sting, go through all the brood frames and look for queen cells on the surface of the brood frames and wipe these off with the hive tool. Close and check in another three days. Once the bees are feeding the queen, she can be released.

As a general rule I put a strip of adhesive tape around the middle of the cage to reducing the amount of surface area exposed to the bees by half. This allows the queen some where to hide if the bees are aggressive and also stops the bees eating off the pheromone pads on the queen’s front legs. Dr Jerzy Woyke from Poland told us about this trick at the 1988 Australian Bee Congress. Nosema and foot damage is the most common cause of queen supercedure.

Things to do this Month: Extract Honey. Remove comb honey (there won’t be much this year). Rear autumn queens. Introduce purchased queens. Produce Nuclei. Check for AFB before removing any honey or brood frames from a hive.