Mission statement:
“Proudly supporting New Zealand’s antibiotic-free honey. Raw, natural honey from healthy, cared for bees”
lear more about me and Bax
SAVING THE BEES ONE HIVE AT TIME
Hi! My name is Zara, and I am a beekeeper. In NZ,you will come across many who are quietly building their hippy “Utopias” in their home,and if they are lucky like me, in their work. In NZ, we love the land and sea and protect it fiercely and proudly. New Zealand is renowned for the fresh and natural clean food sources it provides.
5 years ago, I was gifted some hives for my birthday,and the journey began. After seeing what a beehive could do for my garden yields and realising we had access to a lot of land around New Zealand, we decided to go ahead and stock some of these beautiful clean parts of New Zealand with bees and collecting some of the many different honey varietals blooming every spring and summer. Utilising our local network here, we established hives from Auckland up to the far North of NZ to produce honey and hive products.
We collect delicious raw and natural honey, collected for the purpose of being as unprocessed as possible. As well as honey we selectively collect different products from different hives: some hives we allocate to the collection of Manuka and Kanuka honey, New Zealand’s “magic” active raw honeys. Some hives are allocated to collecting the delicious and rare pohutukawa honey. Some hives are on farms or in the bush for the sake of collecting raw, natural honey on the comb. Some we allocate to collecting pollen in areas where pollen is plentiful and excess to the bees. Some hives we collect highly valuable venom, and some hives are to collect propolis. The very best hives are used as breeding hives – which we use to rear queen bees with our preferred general genetics, and some are used to create new hives for both expanding our numbers or to sell to other keen beekeepers.
The world of beekeeping is more than honey and we intended to learn all about it: the complex environment, the many uses of beehive products`
HIGH SCHOOL
Immersing yourself in the world of beekeeping is a huge learning curve and we went to task immediately finding out how to keep our bees optimally healthy. Bees have a number of predators, hazards and diseases however there is one that stands out as a huge biosecurity hazard. This disease is called american foulbrood; a sporing bacterial infection that is spread between neighbouring hives through contaminated hive ware and a bees natural feeding and robbing behaviour. In recent years,hive numbers have risen dramatically with the birth of the Manuka honey industry, and so has AFB. Tragically for the bees and their keepers, the law states that once visual symptoms manifest of AFB, your hive must be burned. Though the honey is safe for human consumption,it is still burned so that it represents no further threat to the neighbouring hives. In this way it is a terrible loss and waste of bees AND honey. The point of the burn off is two fold: firstly, it serves to destroy the spore contaminated equipment and honey in an effort to keep the elimination rate higher than the reinfection rate and secondly to ensure that New Zealand
LIVING IN THE CITY
keeps low enough AFB numbers to not have to use antibiotics to control the disease. Should numbers become unmanageable as they have in other countries, New Zealandwould seriously have to consider using antibiotics. As a country that values its high grade food exports, this would result in a devaluing of our honey industry.
American foulbrood is such a serious disease that it threatens the industry in many ways: for example, burning valuable hives and crops, and affecting things like where a beekeeper who may be exporting honey or bees can send to. A hive depending on its strength and equipment make up can be worth upwards of $400.00 new zealand dollars to $1500.00. Added to that each hive potential to multiply has been lost. An AFB affected hive can be the difference between you doubling your hive numbers or halving them in burn offs, and costs the beekeeper dearly in honey and hives, and the poor bees who don’t make it.
WIth that in mind, and looking to keep our current disease free status since starting beekeeping, we looked across the ocean to see what others were doing about this problem. In other countries, beekeepers are feeding their bees antibiotics to combat the symptoms, which makes its way into the honey we eat. All honey has a basic level of antimicrobial and antibacterial activity, and degrading this quality with drugs makes no sense for New Zealand, particularly within our Manuka and Kanuka. Luckily, New Zealand is still maintaining a low enough level of disease that we are not yet forced to use antibiotics. In fact, it is illegal to feed bees antibiotics for AFB in NZ. (Onya nz!)
What we discovered in learning about AFB control worldwide is that the State of Maryland is utilising a unique tool at border control to ensure that AFB is under the closest watch possible – by dogs! More specifically, scent recognition trained sniffer dogs. All bacteria has a scent,and AFB is discenable by scent to humans sometimes, but it’s a far stronger odour to a dog. We did our research and found out that the State of Maryland has been using them as a tool against AFB since 1982! Not only here, but as we searched around we came across these working class heroes in England and Australia… and then back home in New Zealand!
MEETING BAX
Without delay we contacted the trainer, who with years of experience training sniffer dogs and 9 years experience training AFB sniffer dogs we knew we had identified the correct tool for the job. So started the process of finding “our” dog for this extremely specialist job. He had to be young, trainable, energetic, focused and responsive to reward AND neither allergic, nor scared of bees!
Finally we got the call; our dog was here! Our little 1 year old lab cross was sourced by the trainer, who recieved a call from the pound the day before his euthanasia date as showing suitable behaviours for this very important job. Our trainer went right away and tested him for responsiveness, and took him home to train. Baxters play drive performance was his lucky escape! Bacxter and his trainers set about learning to earn his keep with his nose. Baxter spent months in training: scent association, dummy hives-and then finally, real hives with real bees. Baxter is a natural at finding AFB, and when we picked him to take him to his forever home we knew he was going to make an awesome team member. As the first sniffer dog for this disease north of Auckland he has a pretty big job ahead of him, but his love for the job means he can go as long as I can!
SAVING BEES
We took Baxter home and had him settle in gently – most beekeepers love animals and we are no exception. Baxter was not just a working dog, but family. We let him get to know his new yard, kennel, car and of course his family. Telling a pup who has been from a home,to the pound, to the training grounds of AFB sniffer dogs that this is his last stop – seemed important.
Baxter and I quietly set about checking first our own hive, then hives of friends and family in the area to train with each other. We concentrated on areas that we knew to have high traffic volumes and operations that were small commercials that we had known to have difficulty getting rid of the disease. While its not great news to get, it’s also great news when you’re struggling to rid your set of contaminated equipment- Baxter quickly identified both hives with lice infection and hives with AFB scale. Not only that but Baxter has so far indicated ov hives that were not showing any visible sign of infection until 2 months later!
We knew after the initial training period that Baxter was only going to develop his skills with more exposure to more hives and we took every opportunity to find AFB. He has performed some amazing feats with such accuracy. The first AFB he ever identified with me was in EMPTY unused boxes – a stack of 6 of them! We downstacked the boxes for him into all singles and asked him again and he identified 2 specific boxes in the stack. Checking those boxes confirmed that there were small patches of AFB scale in each box – even right down to the frame he stuck his nose in!
SAVING BEES
This is consistent with some of the research I have done about WHY it’s so hard to get rid of AFB once you have it – Because contaminated equipment is so difficult to identify sometimes. The incidences that I am referring to are from” dead out” boxes – Boxes where the colony that used to be there dies out of abandones the hive. There are MANY reasons that this may have occurred – AFB isn’t the only killer of bees. But if it is, then you cannot reuse the equipment as you would if it was simply a weak colony, starved our or had varroa mite. Further to that, any other disease may come before or after AFB – Meaning they may not have died out of AFB contamination but been contaminated when it was weak – enough so to fully infect the following colony the boxes are used for.
As a long time dog lover but first time professional dog handler, it has been a challenge to “learn my dog” and for him to learn me.However, seeing is believing and Baxter is a dog who is on form as far as finding AFB goes. He is so focussed on the find he prefers to sleep in the car, although his team made sure to build him a large and lovely kennel – Baxter doesnt get ready, he stays ready!
After a period of settling in at home and handler training, we have opened up our services to the rest of the north island so that our neighbouring beekeepers can benefit from Baxters nose – Bees don’t have borders and it is in our best interest that all beekeepers be vigilant about this disease. We service Auckland through to the far north for AFB sniffing and elimination services.
We are committed to making yummy, raw, active natural product from healthy stock, and contributing to our community of beekeepers through committing to finding AFB – And there is nothing more more Kiwi than that!