November & December 2023 (Issue #23)
It is winter. Or so we believe :-) Why do we say that? Well, we left our bees wintering happily, and took over for some (merited) holidays, now that our little girls are taking also a rest from work. We saw the photos of the snow in Zurich.... and by the time that you read this newsletter...we will be feeling it closer, as we are on our way back home. Some of the articles here down give you a clue of where we went (as we visited also fellow beekeepers). Can you guess where we were?
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News from the Beehives
We left our bees after the last check some weeks ago, with enough reserves, after the yearly treatment and checks for health, to make sure that they could over-winter happily and with no issues. We will be checking on them as soon as we back, although we are sure they didn't go anywhere since the last time we checked. As you know, once they start to winterize, they do not leave the confort of the hive if the outsideith temperatures lower than 15C...as they would have a temperature shock going from their cozy 32C at which they heat the hives.
Where is my Honey...?
Your honey is still with us. But not much of it, actually! We noticed that the bees 'alternate' years of large honey gathering, with years of less gathering. And this year was 'less' gathering, a little bit as some fruit trees, which laternate years of fruit producing, and years of no produce.
So, if you want spring or summer honey to better endure the cold of the winter (please remember that this year there is not much difference between both honey types), do not hesitate in reaching to us. The 500 g pots willhopefully last us for a couple of months. Urs will be delivering on his bycicle, rain or shine. (if possible, shine, of course)
Facts & Figures
We visited and wandered around extensive wild forests of Leptospermum Scoparium), a type of tea-tree, known as Manuka tree. Manuka tree is endemic in NZ, producing the famous (and very expensive) Manuka honey. Manuka honey is renoun for its anti-bacterial properties. But not all Manuka trees are created equal, and not all Manuka honeys contain the same amount of MGO, the active principle! MGO stands for methylglyoxal, a natural compound found in Manuka honey. It serves as the backbone for many of the honey’s therapeutic properties,
MGO concentrations in Manuka honey can range quite widely, from as low as 80 mg/kg to exceeding 1800mg/kg. But, how does it reach there? Bees convert a compound found in Manuka nectar, dihydroxyacetone. But this chemical is not in all Manuka trees! So each batch of Manuka honey needs to be analyzed for MGO content, and priced accordingly. The highest concentrations can reach prices of more than 1000 CHF/Kg!!
Did you know that...?
We visited some fellow beekeepers in the southern hemisphere. We talked to one beekeeper's family, who had a stand in a local market on the country side. They had two types of honey, Bush honey, and Whakarewarewa honey. Both of them were collected at the same time - at the end of summer- the difference was only due to the location of the hives. The climate is subtropical, and we were extremelly surprised that they told us that they made only one harvest per year. We inquired why - they told us that, during spring, all of the beehives (and they had 800 colonies, a 'small' operation) were used for pollinization of kiwis and avocados. So, in spring, bees would not collect nectar to product honey, only pollen! You can see on the photo a typical operation moving colonies to orchards for polination - the bees might travel hundreds of km overnight, and stay on the orchard between 8 - 13 days before moving to the next one. I believe our bees are very happy of NOT doing any of that! ...
Swiss Bees
The FIBL in Switzerland undertook a 4 years study, partially sponsored by Aldi, to understand which were the traits for the 'best' type of bees - health, vigour, vitality, free of pest, strenght, nectar and pollen reservers and and over-wintering survival rates were measured in 78 colonies from 400m to 1500m altitude. Well, bad news for beekeepers, it seems that there is a strong correlation of all these factors with aggressiveness. The more aggressive bees are, the best they seem to make. We know it well.... every year we have a couple of 'difficult to deal Colonies' which are particularly succesful in honey producing, but also particularly painful -in more than one way- to deal with. Our trick? double masks, Wellington boots, double pair of trousers and a lot of calmless when we handle them. It helps, but still we come out with 7 - 14 stings for each of us. Our only confort is that it seems that being stung from time to time improves the human inmune system...or that they say!.
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