Waikato Branch Field Day - Saturday 27 March 1999

As always, the Field Day started with a friendly cup of tea, complete with fresh baking (hot cross buns made with honey by Pauline Bassett!).

Lewis Olsen welcomed everyone to the annual Waikato Field Day and introduced the hosts, John and Pauline Bassett.

In the first presentation, Bill Floyd stressed the need for innovation and 'new approach' to the spending of the beekeepers' marketing money. He felt the need to develop more demand, rather than simply increasing supply.

He continually returned to the meanings in the new mission statement for the Marketing Committee:

"NBA will lead the world's beekeeping industry in developing a new respect and demand for honey and hive production in the international marketplace."

He described the basic problem as the numbers involved in the production/marketing chain. Producer sends the money to the buyers. Small number of buyers then deal with large number of customers, and a massive number of consumers. He feels the buyers have a choke hold on the industry, controlling the prices realised by beekeepers.

Buyers working on low price only, selling at low margins and dealing in volume and turnover keep prices paid to beekeepers down.

Existing buyers do not have the ability to maximise potential of the producing industry. Felt the need was to improve the demand from the consumers for the product.

Bill said there are basically only three significant buyers of honey, which creates the need for increase the product base. We must stop honey from being treated as a commodity, with people buying on price only. The need is to de-commoditise honey!

Functionality: What can honeys do? From the biological science point of view, honey has potential in therapeutics and nutrasudicals and it has great opportunity in food processing applications. On the 'food fashion' side, honey should capitalise on the variety of flavours, and the flair of different types of honey.

Each of honey types needs to find unique niche, or advantage, so they cannot be compared one against the other. Arrogant buyers would not then be able to simply 'state a price'.

There is also a carry on effect. By proving the advantages of the Unique Manuka Factor (UMF) there will be a spin off for all other honeys.

Investigations into enzymes in such honeys as manuka, kamahi, rewarewa and Waikato clover honey will lead to an increased perception of the value of all honeys. Similar values will come from work related to the antioxidants in honey.

Bill felt the need to promote honeys regionally, along the lines of regional wine differences. Even though the honeys may vary, they can still be promoted as being unique to the area. The descriptions need to have 'sexy' words, the sort of words a wine taster would use. Worst idea is to simply let the beekeeper write the copy on the label - better would be to pay a wine taster to come up with a better description.

The need is to think of honey 'outside of the box'. Think instead of the bucket of milk (that can be made into variety of products) or glass of wine (which can be promoted in new and different ways).

Opportunities discussed with American Honey Board: Osteoporosis (honey can through calcium uptake decrease the disease), sports energy (as energy source), antibiotic activities. Bill has spoken with Arthur Lydiard, famous athletics trainer, about the particular values of honey. Unfortunately, Lydiard is not so 'in' with the sports nutritionalists due to some of his views.

"New Zealand is too small for us as an industry." Will need to go outside of New Zealand to achieve full potential. NBA Executive has agreed to let Marketing Committee look beyond the borders to generate demand for the specialty honeys they are promoting.

In speaking with marketing person from Capilano (Australia), Bill described the need to shift the Australian market from liquid to creamed. In doing so, he hoped to attract new buyers into our market.

Described strategy (to link into next year's Valentines Day) to promote honey as "healthfull and loving". Link honey with ideas of expressing affection to others, a suitable gift for those situations.

There is a need to have a common agreement about what is being bought and sold between people - standards. He used the example of manuka. There was considerable discussion on the development of standards. Last Executive meeting agreed to the development of standards, using basis of pollen analysis, but with 'fall back' of tasting panel in case a honey would be unfairly classified.

Bill led the group in an interesting honey tasting.

Number one was a Southland clover - very white, mild and lovely in a liquid form. Two was honeydew, a pronounced and distinctive flavour, and with potential due to specific sugars that it contains. South Island kamahi surprised some of the North Island beekeepers - lovely, buttery in flavour, light in colour. Honey number four was rata, an excellent honey to go with any recipe that includes milk products. A manuka from Nelson was next, again quite a surprise in its flavour and colour compared to the local products. The last honey, thyme, was described as a honey great in cooking - the 'gargonzola' of NZ honeys!

The next speaker was Russell Berry, President of the NBA. He spoke of the honey crop as being perhaps bigger than it was maybe first thought to be. Late kanuka and nodding thistle flows, some very late flows in some areas, might mean reasonable amounts of honey to promote and sell. Big bush flows - rewarewa and tawari - but maybe not so much clover and manuka.

Mystery Creek Field Days will have a stand prepared by the Waikato branch. It will promote the value of bees to the farming industry. The Executive wants the Waikato branch to 'drive' the initiative, using other people and branches nearby.

He referred to a honey analogue case in Canada, with test able to detect 8% or more honey analogue. Bill Floyd reported that Peter Molan and collegues felt able to detect even lower levels.

Levy increase of $4 per apiary being considered. Reasons include that we must do a bit of 'catch up', since some are paying more and some paying less than they were before. Income is not as high as it was under Hive Levy. Some increases in expenditure also require a levy increase. The vote will come up at the coming conference.

Executive on its own cannot simply raise the levy, due to legal restrictions. Russell felt that the voting system he chose to use last year biased members against voting for any of the four options provided.

Russell was unable to confirm the 1998 loss of $68,000, as the final accounts were with the auditors. He did confirm that he had seen a copy of the statements. Considerable discussion on the new levy rate and possible changes to the levy.

Recommendation from NBA's lawyers is that the NBA pay $500 toward Graeme Gaisford's legal expenses.

Genetically modified foods and how they relate to the perception of consumers was discussed.

Spray problems on the South Island were mentioned, with particular problems when there had been an application, then a dry period followed by rain - and poisonings occured when it would not be expected.

Beekeepers who were in areas recognised as disaster areas, due to drought, would be allowed an extension to the payment of the levy.

Finally, beekeepers were encouraged to book soon if they wanted to get good airfares to Vancouver for September.

Lunchtime gave a good opportunity to catch up with other beekeepers to talk...

Walking around the honeyhouse area revealed not only well stacked equipment, but a tidy yard of nucleus colonies.

Lunchtime also gave everyone a good chance to see John Bassett's new extraction facility.

The setup showed excellent attention to detail, with a tray provided for scraping burr comb from the top of supers.

After scraping, frames were pushed up out of the super with a hydrolic 'de-boxer'.

Frames moved through an uncapping machine.

Further down the processing 'chain', the wax and honey entered a continuous feed spinner to separate wax from honey.

A large radial extractor was kept busy with the frames coming to it.

Beekeepers, as usual, climbed all over the equipment, keen to see how it was all being done.

A very sophisticated controller for the extractor meant that little direct supervision or changes to speed were required - it would go through a preset routine to bring it to speed and through a full cycle.

Finally, frames came out of the extractor and back into the boxes. All in all, a very tidy operation!

Beekeepers also spent plenty of time looking over the equipment and supplies on display from Ceracell and Mahurangi.

John Bassett gave an informative talk on bee breeding, even though he admits to being 'too qualified' - he says he has a PhC, as he had to drop out before he got to a PhD.

Bees have 16 sets (pairs) of chromosomes, a total of 32, while drones only have a half set - 16 chromosomes composed of one member of each chromosome pair. Meiosis, the 'splitting' of the pairs, results in some crossing over and recombinations.

The queen that layed the drone's egg, however, will produce drones that are all the same (and the same as those in the queen mother's hive). First warning, then, is to not breed from the same breeder for two seasons in a row - as they will probably then be mating with their close relations!

John used about 30 nucs per mating yard (for a day's mating). In the drone raising colonies, he will have a variety (generally 6) drone lines, to avoid the accidental 'overlap', the inbreeding, effectively a form of line breeding that would occur if there were inadequate numbers of drone lines involved.

Next problem is how to keep the various drone lines going. John does this by reversing the lines used for the cells and drones by the yard - if mating A, B, C line cells, they go to a yard with X, Y, Z line drone mothers. The X, Y, Z cells go to a yard with A, B, C drone mothers.

John stressed the need for an 'even' colony - consistent colouring, etc, before he will consider grafting from it. Otherwise the resulting daughters will not be consistent. In combination, they might make for a superior colony, but since the good characteristics may have come from a variety of drone sources, they will not breed true - the daughters will vary in colour, in hygenic behaviour, etc.

A considerable number of learned questions caused a lively debate. One comment involved trans-genics, using features of dairy cows and bees to create creamed honey!

John marks all queens with Twink, and uses a piece of tin fixed under the lid that he writes on with a felt tip marking pen, recording the breeder and the month and year. In any given year, he is using about 6 breeder queens.

John believes he has adequate supplies of high quality protein for most times in the year that helps in the quality of the queens he produces.

Murray Reid from AgriQuality NZ described aspects of the Pest Management Strategy, as AgriQuality is the contractor hired by the NBA.

You must still inspect hives, report cases of AFB and you must still destroy the infected hives.

A not so small difference is the use of Disease Elimination Conformity Agreement, a negotiated agreement that will allow a beekeeper an 'exemption' to the need for another Approved Beekeeper to inspect your hives and complete a Certificate of Inspection.

Murray spoke a bit about the identification test. It will probably involve (life sized) photographs for identification, followed by a number of true/false questions. But within the T/F, there are some that must be correct. Most of the exam will come out of the manual, which is being sent out to all beekeepers who have a DECA approved.

Murray described that AgriQuality is organising training workshops, which will be offered at $110. But there is no compulsion to attend - beekeepers could just roll up, pay a fee for the exam only and sit it without going to a course.

Inspections and requests for bee and honey samples have been made. They are being returned somewhat slowly, and Murray asked that beekeepers send them in as required to help 'targeted' beekeepers idenfify any possible problems.

Residue testing has taken place again, with random sampling arranged by MAF RA. Murray expected a similar (favourable) result to the testing from last year.

Some discussion on clover weevil, with concensus that numbers are down. Low numbers summer before this last one made the research very difficult. Dry weather has contributed to low numbers, too, according to some beekeepers' understanding.

The drawing of the raffle might well have seemed to be a 'jack up'! Though drawn by an uninvolved spectator (Bill Floyd), the winner was known to all...

John Bassett! The host of the day won the raffle, a copy of "The ABC and XYZ of Beekeeping", kindly donated by Trevor Cullen of Ceracell. John didn't mind too much that I missed this photo the first time, and he had to repeat the kiss. I'm not sure how Jane Lorimer felt about it...

Finishing off the day, Jane Lorimer spoke on the recent activities of the Marketing Committee. She stressed their close co-operation with the Honey Research Unit at Waikato University. Obtaining samples for the research unit was very difficult at times, and she proposed setting up one person in each branch to coordinate and facilitate the donation of samples. She and Bill Floyd again emphasised the need to develop some of the polyfloral honeys to maximise the opportunity for higher returns for producers.

Last speaker of the day was Trevor Cullen of Ceracell, demonstrating the latest model of a queen excluder without a wooden rim. Without the rim, there was considerably less burr comb attached to it in the hive.