frazzledfozzle

I hope I’ve done the right thing and we will get paid for the both of us.

Agree with @yesbut it takes less than 5 mins to fill out. Just wondering if anyone has filled out the self employed application and have two people in the business partnership not drawing wages just taking drawings ? The application has no facility to add names of those involved in the partnership just the business name, IRD number and business number. Second part of my post was merged does that show up as a new post @Trevor Gillbanks

We will be uniting our singles into double broods this autumn !

My KiwiSaver is relatively small as I only put in the minimum to get the govt money each year and have no employer contributions. im in the riskiest fund and have lost over $3000 in the past couple of weeks im just going to leave it there and hope for the best

@Dennis Crowley I also hold my hive tool like you . I never use the other end ever. @Alastair it will be interesting to see how you go selling it , whether it’s easy or hard , interest or not so much. would be great if you could update us on how it goes without the commercially sensitive detail of course

absolutely 100% agree

Lol Trevor .... I don’t like it either . Alastair it wasn’t that long ago March 2017 . cost us $80 but his price was variable and we paid more than some because we were getting good money for our honey so nice to spread it around a little. Name was Mike Wraight. been beekeeping for a very long time. Top bloke, very much respected by all who knew him.

he’s very much missed around these parts. Every beekeeper top of the South used his services and a lot from all round the country did also.

@Alastair the price for that particular batch I don’t know I’m not the best book keeper. for most of the boom the prices we received were between $9 kg and $25 kg. before the boom average of $2.50 with payments spread over 9-10 months. I remember our first real honey check it was $24,000 and that was super exciting pretty much a years gross wages yes it’s irrelevant now but you are questioning me on Kanuka Manuka pollens and Kanuka adulterating Manuka etc etc ignoring the fact that before MPI told us what Manuka is Kanuka was and will always be part of Manuka honey. Your honey may have been sold based on UMF but having UMF doesn’t mean your honey is solely or mainly Manuka. So on one side you say before the MPI standard we shouldn’t have sold honey on pollen count Because Kanuka was being sold as Manuka but then you tell me you sold your honey on UMF content no matter the floral sources I’d say pot-kettle to that. If UMF is what the consumer wanted and was buying Manuka for then what of the high UMF honey produced in Northland that is now not passing the standard ? If UMF was the magic ingredient why was it not the first cab of the rank when it came to MPI and a Manuka standard ? just for the record I completely agree with you that UMF/NPA/MG /MGO and any other iteration of activity is what customers want so I feel for the beekeepers who have been producing this honey and now are told by the office wollers in Welly that their honey no longer fits the profile.

@Ted he had no reason to make it up Kanuka Manuka it didn’t matter to the buyer. Honey was sold on the pollen analysis anything with too much dew was harder to sell and we got a lower price because of low total pollens and high conductivity. The buyers don’t want the honey separating out on the shelf. not sure why you think a handwritten analysis is somehow inferior to someone’s PA tapping it out on a “puter“ @Ted I get the impression you have been beekeeping for a long time I could be wrong feel free to correct me. how did you differentiate between Manuka and Kanuka before the MPI standard ?

@Alastair yes Kanuka Manuka as one because that’s what Manuka honey used to be for as long as Manuka honey had been produced the two were were considered one. Have a look at the analysis look at all the pollens he identified. he also did a taste profile etc. many pollen analysis done today have a very high percentage of unidentifiable pollen probably because the technicians can’t be faffed learning more than the most prevalent which is a real shame IMHO He was identifying weird “crud” in our honey which was willow dew meliotoze (sp) before we even knew the willow aphis existed. He was very interesting and full of information we miss him a lot

@Ted how did he know ? because he was a pro had been doing it for many many years.

I’ve said it many times in the past, our pollen guy could tell the difference and I remember two things he said one was that ( Kanuka or Manuka don’t remember which one ) had more pointed ends the other more rounded and the same one with the more pointed ends Was more concave on each side. we regularly got a note on the bottom if one polllen type was more dominant than the other

I guess my answer to that Dennis is that I don’t believe the MPI standard has anything much to do with how much Manuka is in the honey. It was a standard based on what ? So when someone tells me that the high activity is due to a small percentage of Manuka mixed in with a lot of Kanuka I just roll my eyes. We all know consumers buy for the activity If it was me Id be blending the heck out of that high activity honey. Buy up a heap of South Island high 2MAP low activity and bobs your uncle anything you can share here ?

With the amount of activity in the honey I very much doubt it was mainly kanuka . Our very good kanuka honey has very little NPA activity

so true ! And it could change at any point in the future

I could have said more but bit my tongue...pretty hard actually, I now have a blood blister

You don’t need to blend multiple sources of “ Manuka” honey to achieve MPI standard because if it’s deemed to be Manuka in the initial testing then it’s already achieved the standard. Blending a mono with a non Manuka is not adulteration it’s blending to meet a standard. many non and multi Manuka honeys are failing on one point and that for a lot of people is 2MAP. blending a high 2MAP with a low 2MAP to get it over the line makes perfect sense. It needs to be remembered that the current standard is something that has been put together by PEOPLE . the original standard they brought out had a 2MAP minimum of 1 for mono PEOPLE changed it to a 2MAP minimum of 5 meaning a whole heap of beekeepers are looking at having to blend to make standard. We hear beekeepers on here saying any standard is better than no standard and I bet you one of my worthless beehives those people are sitting comfortable on their drums of mono and don’t give a fig for others who produce Manuka honey that doesn’t fit the standard some boffins in an office paid came up with.

I believe also if an extractor goes under any and all honey stored on the premises now belongs to the receiver no matter who it actually belongs too.

I think it comes down to the fact the Manuka bubble meant all our honey varieties achieved ridiculous prices because packers were able to turn any kind of honey into Manuka . Because beekeepers were selling to Manuka buyers, those packers with other markets like honey dew and clover were all of a sudden looking at having to pay huge prices for that honey which of course they couldn’t do. packers that traditionally sold non Manuka honeys would have lost those markets that they had probably put a lot of time and effort into developing. We would be very naive to think they could easily pick those markets up again . As beekeepers we rely on packers and marketers to sell our product we are very much at their mercy and I imagine it would take a lot of time and expertise to get that market going again. its just not realistic to think it can happen overnight. I don’t see beekeepers making a living out of non Manuka honey anytime soon. It will be like it was before, where you did the bees in the season and worked for wages over winter.

I have to disagree strongly, the problem is very definitely with Manuka just as much as any other honeys. I also believe there is probably more blending going on now than there was before the MPI standard

@tristan what is the best way to load a truck of heavy supers ? where should most of the load be ?

That’s a big nest ! first video really cracked me up I’m still laughing

yes,yes and yes

If you mean Claude Stratford whos company Comvita bought no. The business I worked at before comvita bought it was called the Herbpharm and owned by local people if I remember right. interesting place with very lovely people to work with.