Routine Work during the Honey Flow

New Zealand Journal of Agriculture, Volume 94, Issue 1, 15 January 1957, Page 35

Routine Work during the Honey Flow

Seasonal Notes for the Domestic Beekeeper

By

A. W. BENNETT,

Apiary Instructor, Department of Agricul ture, Hamilton

B EEKEEPERS who have worked hard during spring checking hives for stores and freedom from disease and manipulating hives to encourage the production of really strong colonies can now relax their efforts for a brief period and await the harvest of the bees' working. IN most districts the main honey flow will be on, and with fine, sunny days the bees will be working hard from daylight to dark. Very few beginners realise how much the bees can collect in a day or so. A super of empty combs or foundation is often put on a strong hive in the expectation that this will keep the bees occupied for several weeks. Lack of appreciation of how quickly bees will fill combs under favourable conditions accounts for many domestic beekeepers not securing the crop of honey they should. Honey Flow Indication Many commercial beekeepers keep a honey flow barometer in the form of a scale hive. This is just an average hive placed on an accurate set of platform scales. Taking the readings morning and evening gives a very good indication of how much nectar has been collected in the day. Some days the difference in readings may be only a few pounds, and on others it might go up to 201 b. or even over. A few days at the latter rate mean that supers will be full up and the

hives will require more room immediately. The routine work for this month, therefore, should be confined mainly to checking over the hives and giving them extra combs as required. At this time a beekeeper appreciates having heeded the warning to make up earlier an ample surplus of supers and combs of foundation. It is bad beekeeping to have the hives full up with the bees clustered on the outside wait-

ing for the beekeeper to supply extra room for them. Sometimes bees in desperation will even begin to build comb on the outside of the hive. Beekeepers should not lose the result of all spring management by neglecting to check up quickly on the storage space requirements of each hive. In some favoured localities the limit to the number of supers that can be put on a hive may be reached when conditions are just right for a heavy

nectar flow. Immediate preparation should then be made to extract some of the honey so that empty combs are available. The usual pattern for adding honey supers to a hive is to take note of the condition of the super already on the hive. If this is almost filled with honey and a few of the combs are capped over, it is time to lift this up and place the super with empty combs or foundation underneath, provided a queen excluder is being used above the brood nest. If one is not being used, it would be best to do what is called “top supering”, that is, place the empty super above the filled one, as sometimes if the empty super is placed underneath, the queen may be enticed into it. At this time of the season any more brood rearing should not be encouraged, as these extra bees will arrive too late to be of much use. If more room is still required, the extractor will have to be used. Care should be taken to extract only combs that are fairly well capped over. At this time it may be impossible to find combs completely capped. It should be remembered that uncapped honey at this period of the season has still some moisture to be removed by the bees. Therefore, if too much of this honey is extracted, there will be a great risk of the honey not keeping well, because excess moisture encourages fermentation or sourness in it. Main Nectar Sources As bees are busy working on all the available nectar sources, beekeepers might be interested in a short description of the important flowers that will be yielding nectar now. White clover is found in pastures in all parts of New Zealand. Warm, sunny days appear to 'be required before much nectar is collected from this source. The honey is water white and mild in flavour. Blackberry is a plant that yields nectar under most conditions and is to be found in most parts of the country. The honey is water white and of mild flavour. An interesting feature about this honey is that when it is beginning to granulate it goes a dull or putty colour. Even when fully granulated it never has the. bright, attractive appearance of clover honey. Apart from this it is a very good honey, and good yields are generally obtained where there are large areas of the plant on waste lands. Unfortunately for beekeepers blackberry is being rapidly eradicated by chemical weedkillers. Thistle is another valuable source of good white honey of mild flavour. Catsear is one of the best honeyyielding plants. It appears to grow in most parts of both islands and flowers fairly regularly every year. The plant is very much like dandelion,

which flowers in spring, but it grows much taller and has more flower heads per plant. In some parts it is often called capeweed. This is not correct, as the capeweed flower has a black centre and is quite pretty. A beekeeper can generally tell when his bees are working catsear, because the combs and canning in the hive becombs and cappings in the hive be come bright yellow. The honey when extracted is brilliant gold and looks very attractive in glass jars. The beeswax taken from the cappings is also very bright yellow.

Lotus uliginosus (major) : This plant usually flourishes on damp pastures and roadsides. It yields a honey very similar .to that from catsear, with almost identical characteristics. Tawari is one of the bush sources honey; it produces a fairly light +b on , ey Wl Fri ra *J l t r an unus flavour that ls not llked by many This native tree flourishes on the higher bushland around about 1000 ft to 3000ft> and is confined to the northern part of the North Island. It is a beautiful bushy or canopy tree with the flowers clustered on the top.

Cereals for Greenfeed in South Island

THOUGH saved pasture or special pastures of short-rotation or Italian ryegrass are used extensively as greenfeed, autumn-sown cereals still provide the greatest bulk of feed for this purpose. On most arable farms they fit ideally into the crop rotation, as they can be sown after ploughing old lea or after rape or a cash crop harvested in JanuaryFebruary. The type of cereal sown depends on a number of factors such as type of country and climate, when the bulk of feed is required, and whether or not the intention is to save the crop for harvest later. The cereals given consideration are ryecorn, barley, oats, and wheat. Ryecorn is mainly confined to the poorer, colder class of country and here the C.R.D. variety is providing very satisfactory results. Barley is -used mainly for later sowings, since it has the ability, to grow

late into winter. All varieties except Wong have the disadvantage, however, of not making adequate regrowth after the first spring feeding. Oats: The several varieties of oats still remain the most popular form of greenfeed and can be relied on to provide good feed in early spring for ewes and lambs and then make sufficient rapid regrowth for a good second feeding. Wheat: Early autumn sown wheat can provide a good bulk of grazing in early September. Irrespective of the time of feeding greenfeed it is a sound management practice to stake bales of hay in greenfeed paddocks to allow stock to pick at when desired. This is especially so where set stocking is practised, as in other cases hay is normally provided on the run-off. —D. G. REYNOLDS, Instructor in Agriculture, Department of Agriculture, Oamaru