Pinnacle

I imagine once it is flattened they wouldn’t reuse it but would probably build afresh on top of it - so over time you would have a very thick base to the frame and decreasing room between frames to actually draw new cells?

Its a no brainier and an open source design effort would nail it in 12 months @Philbee your next project perhaps 😁

So a week ago I put some OA strips in single box hives that hadn’t been treated since last spring - only left them because I wanted to know what would happen with winter OA strips. All were 10 frame, healthy looking (!) and with good foodstores. Winter has been pretty mild for us so far so they’re actively foraging. 4 of Philbees wide strips non EP well drained, 40% OA, per hive. All on hive doc bases. No pre or post treatment mite wash. 5 hives look perfect, quite impressed, the 6th one photos are below. first pic shows dead bees out the front. It was so bad after only a couple days I cracked the whole front of the hive open to make sure they could still get in/out. second pic shows dead bees on the base - many adults, plus some larvae pulled. third pic shows hive put together after cleaning the base and active foragers returning. hive remains ok but has clearly had a large shock. No sign of disease (incl DWV interestingly) when the strips were put in. I didn’t pull the frames apart today, but suspect the hive has reduced from probably 7-8 frames of adult bees to 4-5, so I wouldnt be surprised if there was some dead brood in there from chill. assessing the hive, I’m comfortable it will recover ok and push along into spring. I’ve carried out a whole lot of different scenarios with these strips over the past year or so, a lot of it pushing the envelope and outside recommendation, just so I can get a true handle on them. I’m pretty confident in then now, I think there is more comfort zone with them than people realise, although I can see hobbiests getting the odd shock when they get it wrong and have a result like this one... from now on I’m running these strips, with FA treatments held in reserve. No synthetic strips. Kudos to Phil for all the work to date. Cheers Pics 1 and 2 Pic 3 - have a close look you may pick up something (I just did!) @Philbee do you supply strips in cardboard cartons? The pails are good but I think I’ve got enough of them now, if we could get the strips in cartons we can just keep reusing the pails we have. cheers

Guys - any chance you could take the whole mobile extraction discussion to another thread? 😁

hey @Philbee when you get a minute, can you please give us a summary of what strips you will be supplying this coming season? I’ve had a play with various options and keen to hear your current thinking? Cheers

Tell us more about the Lithuanian honey spirit James 😁

Hey mate give Julie and David Hayes a call at BeeNZ in katikati. Cheers

As far as I know it was all Zespri funded research which means they’ll keep it to themselves. If it is the way to go, we’ll see it reflected in their pollination advice - I haven’t heard anything yet but they usually have pollination meetings in spring

@Dennis Crowley that’s interesting thanks - do you know whether honeybees harvest significant nectar from red clover? Or only white? Thanks

Presumably if they chase the market with one of the leptospermuns we don’t have, we should be able to import it and play them at their own game. afterall, we’ve imported most of our horticultural crops. and plenty of countries have imported our Manuka. 😁

Adam I think you and I are on the same side here. i wouldn’t say no cause for alarm exactly - but this should be bread and butter to marketers. Even if (and its a big IF) NZ manages to get Manuka trademarked in important markets, the aussies won’t lie down and go away. They’ll either do their own research and promote their product as “better” than Manuka or they’ll switch the game to another honey. Ive already voted yes to the honey levy and I’m comfortable with a proportion of that levy being spent on marketing. I expect whoever is spending it though to work their balls off for it like I do getting the honey produced in the first place. Keeping Manuka in first position globally is going to take some serious work! Defending it against all comers is such a basic part of the equation to me it barely rates a mention. More important is improving and growing the story, keeping ahead of the chasers. And of course developing new unique NZ honey market positions so we’re not so reliant and frightened of Manuka

Adam, you’re the marketing guy. i would have thought a NZ press release sent to the right places outlining the reasons why NZ moved away from these three markers for Manuka i.e. ease of adulteration, availability of adulterants, past examples of adulteration and the fact DHA is in sunscreen, should be enough to counter this press release. i don’t see anything that alarming here, NZ is better to forge ahead and take the high ground. I’m sure as a marketer you would be well equipped to have the above discussion with your customers? cheers

Hi Rachel, yes it it is possible, but I would say it won’t be “easy”. tristan makes a lot of good points. You need to cosy up to either a local extractor or possibly a local bee club. There are some minor rules to follow re getting ready to sell on local market, everything is doable if you are prepared to invest a little time. i would expect 2 boxes of honey a year per hive, say 30kg. Some year you might get 2 or 3 times that, some years you might get none. Tristans comment on ruining a perfectly good hobby is also a good one. Once you have a bunch of hives you’re going to have a lot of work to do. And you will have to fit it around everything else. One of the big problems you will face is getting home at the end of a long day as a dairy farmer or vet and you won’t be able to ignore the hives - you will have to suck it up and go work them when you’re tired. When I was busy doing it part time I learned to put new queens in while it was raining, put supers on hives in the dark etc. make sure you know what you’re getting into. It can be easy to spend half an hour on a couple hives and then multiply that out and think yeah I can get a heap more. It’s not always as easy as that! Good luck with it

Yes it’s bacteriostatic - but my understanding (and no doubt someone will jump on me if I am wrong) - is that honey has the potential to have bacteria essentially “stored” in it that could later cause an issue once diluted (dissolved in a drink or spread on toast for instance). So pasteurisation would deal to these bacteria. Again my understanding, is that is why unprocessed honey is not recommended for infants or those with compromised immune systems. The risk to the general population with functioning immune systems is low, but higher for those that may not be able to reflectively able to deal with incoming bacteria

Dennis your question is a good one and I’ve commented on it elsewhere - I’ve played a lot with formic and the way the hives generally bounce back afterwards is quite noticeable. They just seem “healthier” I don’t know how else to describe it. I’m not sure how to get some measurement around it, but to me it is quite noticeable - these acids are likely positively affecting the hives in some other way. and I’m not one to readily say this stuff without some hard evidence, but in this case, over a few years, I’ve consistently noticed it - so to my mind there is almost certainly something else going on here