Hows the season going

[Dennis Crowley]

In my semi retirement I've been delivering mollasses to farmers, and this has to be one of the best springs they have seen in bop waikato areas for awhile, plenty of grass and silage being made, and all the flowering plants I see and farms with no bees on, makes a man have a brain fart and think about getting some hives again, then I hit a pothole and am shaken back to reality.
How is the varroa situation going and is there any headway with ox strips, i see small movements in honey sales, pollination still around. No im not getting back into bees, just still have an interest in the industry.

 

[tristan]

its been a good spring, a little too good as hives have been bursting at the seams then swarming. even the home hive i did a half split and the "nuc" swarmed 3 times.
reports of decent honey crops. selling it is another story.

kiwifruit has been good, big increase there. avo's are way down. lost a few avo customers as they have removed the trees.

oae strips going in at the moment as the hives come out of pollination.
some good reports of caging queens and doing oa vaporization.

still getting reports of afb found in hives people have bought.

 

[Alastair]

still getting reports of afb found in hives people have bought.

Are those being bought from people going out of business, or people breeding bees to sell, or hobbyists, or what?

 

[tristan]

Are those being bought from people going out of business, or people breeding bees to sell, or hobbyists, or what?

afaik mostly from people who have gone out of businesses.

 

[jos@centalotago]

afaik mostly from people who have gone out of businesses.

Thankfully the ass has fallen out of the manuka honey rainbow and good riddance to it and all the attendant shabby beekeeping it brought but now a lot of good beekeepers will be weathering the aftermath of poorly managed and abandoned colony's in manuka areas including upticks in AFB and varroa mites.

 

[southbee]

Nice to hear from you Dennis! As for us in the far south it's been a horrific wet spring, some nice days in between, but still waiting for a decent sunny, warm spell that they can make a crop. It's pretty bad, even for Southland.....but on the bright side, I get lots of the outstanding shed jobs done!