Beekeeping business grows rapidly

Press, 21 February 1986, Page 21

Beekeeping business grows rapidly

By

HUGH STRINGLEMAN

A family bee-keeping business in North Canterbury has grown to more than a thousand hives in less than five years and recently Introduced the latest in extraction equipment which was engineered and built by a MidCanterbury company.

Carl and Margaret Thompson, of Waiau, started with six hives as a hobby in 1981 and like their livestock, have built up a strong business on this small foundation. Now their son Warren is also involved full-time and another son, overseas at present, may be employed. The Thompsons recently bought 650 hives in the Hanmer Springs region and installed the new equipment — a honey extractor and cappings spinner and associated pumping lines — built by Symes Apiaries, of Staveley, Mid-Canter-bury. This expansion from the Thompsons’ previous 400 hives, in the Waiau, Culverden and Leader River areas, was made possible by a $lOO,OOO

loan from the Maori Affairs Department. Margaret Thompson, who is of Maori extraction, also operates a queen bee rearing business, supplying hobbyists at present but aimed also at exporting in the future. The challenging business of managing 300 queen bee nuclei occupies Mrs Thompson from August onwards and it brings in some money before the main honey season begins in early summer. She also has an autumn queening period. Mrs Thompson’s father and mother, Kelly and Rose Robertson, of Christchurch, have also made a big contribution to the Waiau bee-keeping business by assembling all the boxes and frames needed for the hives. "You need a lot of woodware for an apiary,” said Mrs Thompson. The loans approved to the Thompsons by the Maori Lands Advisory Committee were of $85,000 for the purchase of the Hanmer hives and $15,000 for the centrifugal extractor.

A committee field officer, Mr Grant Bright, said recently that the Waiau business was financially viable and had a growing queen-rearing section with good potential for exports.

The Maori Affairs Department’s lending operations in the South Island had been moving away from lending to individuals, said Mr Bright, but it does make exceptions, as in the case of the Thompson family. Carl Thompson was employed for many years in North Canterbury as a farm manager. Margaret Thompson had a dressmaking business for 28 years and son Warren is a qualified chef. Now seven days a week during the peak season they can all be found in the stifling heat of the apiary unloading frames, stripping cappings and loading up the extractor. From then on the process is largely automated. Honey dew and clover honey goes in drums for export by Hororata Honey/Wilson Neill, Ltd.

Carl and Warren Thompson spend the first half of their 12 hour days in the summer collecting about one tonne of hives or boxes. Rainy days provide the only respite from this hard, physical work. A big flow during the white clover season can fill all the frames in a hive in three days.

“Hives have to be moved back and forward quickly, and from honey dew, or the black beech stands, to the clover and mixed flower sites during the summer and then back to the beeches,” Mr Thompson said.

“We are fortunate in this district to have the honey dew, because it is very popular overseas and provides a long honeycollecting season — from October until May."

The addition of the 650 new hives for the Thompsons necessitated the installation of the extraction equipment at their home in Waiau and a change from their former work pattern. This was to collect boxes for a day or two and then drive through the Leader road to Greta Valley where extraction equipment owned by someone else was used.

Clearly the three-hour round trip was impractical with a 1000-hive operation which demanded extraction each day during the season. The next process to be streamlined might be the trimming of cappings, which at the moment is done by the time-hon-oured but lengthy and physically demanding method of hot knife trimming.

Al! three family members are involved in this process, during the afternoons.

The new Symes extractor, model number 6 from that manufacturer, takes about 100 three-quarter frames and it increases speed slowly and evenly to avoid frame distortions and failures. It will then take the trimmed cappings in a different load and separ-

ate the honey. The wax recovered from this process can be taken back to the apiarian supplies company for reforming into “foundation,” which is a honeycomb pattern placed in frames to get the bees started.

This recycling will result in savings for the Thompsons and Margaret is already providing significant savings, let alone extra income, by breeding replacement queens. Hives need requeening every two years for maximum vigour and production.