The Club is holding its annual Honey and mead competition this month, so bring your best effort along to the meeting. There are four classes this year:

1. Liquid Honey. This is the standard honey produced from extraction, and the emphasis is on quality of presentation. No air bubbles or particles, no granulation, and a suitable low water content. Entries to be submitted in a 200g glass coffee jar.
2. Creamed Honey. The emphasis is once again on presentation, with the aim being to have a smooth and consistent texture to the honey. Entries also in a 200g glass coffee jar.
3. Comb Honey. Entries to be a frame of honey which would be suitable for cutting and packing as comb honey. Emphasis is on the presentation of the frame. Please bring a complete frame.
4. Mead. Emphasis will be on the presentation and quality of the mead (is it balanced, fermentation finished etc). Entries to be in clear glass bottle.

The club encourages members to take the time to prepare some of their honey to the best possible standard and to enter it into the competition. There is a cup awarded to the best honey (along with a miniature for the winner to keep).

This year, the club has introduced new classes in response to demand from members, so please support the new categories as well. If you are producing creamed honey, or have good comb then bring it along to find out how it compares with similar products from other members.

Presentation on Honey Extraction.

The club secretary demonstrated basic honey extraction procedures using the club’s four frame extractor. Always ensure the honey fames are slightly warm to ease extraction. The top bars on the frames should always be trailing in the extractor.

Extracted honey, and later cappings were filtered through two sieves with different mesh sizes into standard 20 litre buckets. The honey was then poured into suitable containers for storage.

Drained cappings were returned to a hive at dusk inside a rectangular plastic bucket. After a couple of weeks, the bees had cleaned them totally, and the remaining wax was removed for melting down to solid wax blocks.

A lively discussion followed with members asking questions or explaining their own extraction variations.

The eucalyptus, koromiko and fennel are just about the last nectar producers that flower before the winter and are now producing a small flow. Clover although still flowering because of recent rain, has mostly ceased to produce nectar as the ground temperature are too low.

In some areas the honey flow is over and the bees are out looking for anything they can get for nothing to top their hives up before the winter. In the last few days we have received calls about bees coming back to houses where hives have been killed and removed. Robber bees are now taking honey remnants out of these hives. Hopefully they were clean and the bees won't be taking diseased honey or poison back to their hives.

Wasps are now making their presence felt as we are receiving calls for bees in retaining walls.

Consequently now is the time to close down the hive entrances and remove the honey crop, making sure to leave at least a box of honey on for winter stores.

Before removing the honey supers from the hives, you should cover them with a spilt board or a cloth to prevent robbing and inspect the brood to see if its still healthy. Note the condition of the brood patten also. Wall to wall brood in the bottom super means you have a good queen. Spotty means you need a new queen so order one quickly. Remove the surplus honey and extract if while its still warm.

Put the wet supers back on the hives after dark otherwise the whole neighbourhood will know you've got bees. They'll be flying everywhere looking for this rich nectar source you've just put on the hive. Supers can be removed in a week when the bees have cleaned them out and stored them away for the winter with a sprinkle of PDB in them to kill any wax moth.

More at the meeting.

• You must pay a levy to the National Beekeepers Association if you have more than 10 beehives or if you have more than 3 apiary sites.
• It doesn’t matter what you may have used your beehives for, or whether you took any surplus honey or other bee products from them.
• "Apiary sites" refers to the sites you had registered with MAF as at 1 June 1996. All of those sites are levy payable, whether you had beehives on them at that date or not.
• The levy is paid at $50 for the first apiary and $22 for each subsequent apiary (both figures are exclusive of GST).

Beekeepers who are paying more levy than they did under the Hive Levy Act may want to consider consolidating apiaries, or releasing those infrequently used, in order to reduce levy obligations. Beekeepers will pay a levy to the NBA using a new system for the 1997 year. These notes will clarify a few issues as to how the levy system was developed and specifics about paying it.

The National Beekeepers’ Association was told nearly ten years ago that the Hive Levy Act would be replaced. The change in legislation was used to refine and improve the levy aspects that had not been equitable or workable. The NBA wanted to ensure the levy was payable by all ‘commercial’ beekeepers. It was important to ensure that there were no perceived exemptions for pollination services, queen rearing, bulk bee production or any of the other ‘goods and services’ produced by beekeepers.

The NBA wanted to move the level of ‘commercial’ down from the previous 50 hives. It was felt that a lot of honey can be produced by people with 10 to 50 hives, and they were really doing it for more than just ‘fun’, and so should contribute financially to support the activities of the NBA.

We wanted to levy in a manner that was verifiable. We wanted the levy to be easy to authenticate rather than rely only on a declaration. The old hive levy had depended on a declaration of the number of hives ‘as at 1 January’. Effectively, beekeepers were asked to declare how much levy they were willing to pay - it was not an easy thing to establish hive numbers if the beekeeper were uncooperative. When some beekeepers began to abuse the system, it then led other beekeepers to question whether the levy was being collected fairly and completely.

While MAF still maintains the Apiary Register, in a few years time the NBA will be responsible for the register as a part of our Pest Management Strategy. Until that time, we are attempting to obtain the use of the register so that the levy can still be based on the number of apiary sites on the register as at the previous June.

June was chosen as being the time of the year when hives are more settled and when the register itself is considered most accurate. June has always been the time when the register has been used to generate industry statistics for that reason.

No one apart from the beekeeper actually knows which sites have beehives on them at any given time. Rather than falling back to a declaration by the beekeeper, the NBA has developed the levy based on all apiary sites registered (including any that should have been registered but weren’t!).

The only apiary sites that aren’t required to be ‘properly’ registered are temporary sites, those that are used for less than 30 days (such as the orchards where bees are placed for pollination). All other sites that a beekeeper has registered with MAF are levy payable.

Some beekeepers may not remember exactly how many apiary sites they had on the register as at last June. When the NBA obtains the apiary register, we will compare the number you had registered with the number you have paid levy on and provide you with an invoice or refund for any differences identified.

All of a beekeepers sites, whether there are beehives on them or not, are counted when calculating the new levy.

The only exemption for paying a levy is for the true hobbyist beekeeper. Hobbyists receive many of the benefits of the NBA’s work, such as disease control and marketing. However, it is felt that collecting a levy would be both unfair to some extent, and most certainly more expensive to collect than the income would warrant. The exception to paying the levy was written in such a way that true hobbyists will not have to pay. Some beekeepers who still consider themselves hobbyists may well need to reconsider their hive and apiary site numbers to stay within the exemption!

If you have 10 hives or fewer, and keep them on 3 apiary sites or less, you do not have to pay the levy. You do, however, need to supply a statutory declaration to that effect.

When setting the levy rate, it was easily apparent that a beekeepers first levy payable apiary was the one that ‘cost’ the NBA the most. After all, each member gets a copy of the New Zealand Beekeeper magazine. Each member is sent a copy of the Annual Report. Each member is sent a voting paper for the Executive elections. These ‘fixed costs’ were included as part of the first apiary levy, which is why the levy is paid at two different rates.

A beekeeper’s first levy payable apiary is levied at $50 (excluding GST). Each additional apiary is levied at $22 (excl GST).

In estimating the income from the new levy, the Executive attempted to arrive at the same total income as that provided by the hive levy. The biggest impact will be on people who have between 10 and 50 hives - they now have to pay a levy while they did not have to previously.

Many beekeepers will, in fact, pay less levy under the new scheme than under the hive levy. Three categories of beekeepers may find their levy obligation has increased:

1. those who have yards with only a small number of hives
2. those with many seasonal sites that have hives on them for only part of each year
3. those who continue to register sites but don’t put hives on them.

These beekeepers may well want to consider changing management styles somewhat if the changed levy structure impacts too drastically upon them. The levy will need to be seen as a quite predictable cost of production, one that must be paid, but one that at least has the advantage of being a known quantity before each production year begins.

Many beekeepers will find the new levy to be less than their previous hive levy. Others may have an increased levy to pay. Beekeepers will need to determine the effect of the levy on their business and manage accordingly.

This is certainly going to be a year of challenge for the NBA as an organisation. As the levy is collected, the NBA must ensure that it is being paid fairly and completely. This is an obligation not only to the levy order but to our membership. Those beekeepers who do pay their levy as and when do must feel confident that the NBA does all that it can to collect the levy from every other beekeeper who is obliged to pay.

And what of the future? Once the levy collection mechanism has settled in, we will see how close the estimates of income are. Only then will we be able to say that the current rates are appropriate, generating the income that the NBA requires for effective organisation. If the income is not as expected, or if the membership wants the NBA to undertake more activity, the levy rates can be changed in a democratic manner through a combination of the levy order itself and our NBA rules.

I have said previously in these notes that I don’t really enjoy many of the aspects of being President of the NBA through the current period of legislative and ‘social philosophy’ change. All of the work on the Commodity Levy Order has been ‘inwardly focused’. The efforts are not easy to defend in terms of directly ‘putting money in the beekeepers’ pockets’. They are absolutely necessary, however, in order to maintain a healthy, stable and effective organisation.

I look forward to getting the apiary levy collection mechanism sorted out and stabilised so that the NBA can move forward at full power again to achieve the gains of which it is capable.

When: Sunday 16th March, at 1pm

Where: Taylor Stace Cottage, Pauatahanui

What: Harvesting Honey and Wintering Down

Frank Lindsay is going to host a mini field day for club members who want to learn about taking honey off, and wintering down their hives. Frank will discuss and demonstrate these aspects of beekeeping at Graham Lusty’s hives at Pauatahanui on Sunday 16th March.

Our secretary, John Burnett, is currently planning some interesting session for next year. Please mark these dates in your diary and come along.