Preparing Leatherwood Honey hives for summer involves looking after queen bees, hives and production equipment.
Tasmania’s second oldest commercial honey producer R Stephens Apiarists, located at Mole Creek in the stunningly beautiful Meander Valley, has been producing Leatherwood Honey since 1920, are well versed in working with Tasmania’s seasons.
R Stephens hives are situated in the West Coast and Central Highlands of Tasmania, near Mt Arrowsmith. It’s a region well known for remoteness, beautiful mountains, harsh winters and unpredictable summers.
Hive maintenance
Queen Bee Breeder and fourth generation beekeeper Josh Stephens says Leatherwood Trees (Eucryphia lucida) have a very short flowering season, so the bees and beekeepers have to be ready to gather nectar as fast as possible.
Josh says preparing the hives and the whole production process for the summer production season is vital and starts with queen bees.
“We start with the queens because they are the heart of the hives, so we need to breed enough for the coming summer. I normally breed about 2,000 queens per year because we can’t import them into Tasmania, it’s a full time job.
“Without good queens you haven’t got good workers in the hives and without hives there’s no honey,” Josh said.
“We have 2,500 hives and I’m constantly breeding queens to keep up with them.
“In mid August we start inspecting all the queens in the hives to make sure they are healthy, then we start to feed them in preparation for the summer.
“If there is something wrong with a queen, we put a new one in the hive and carefully introduce them to the worker bees.
“It’s so important to have as many new, healthy queens as possible,” Josh added.
After harvesting of Leatherwood Honey is finished in late March/early April Josh and the other R Stephens staff members leave the hives in the Tasmanian wilderness until the last week in July to allow the intense cold to encourage hibernation.
The hives are brought back to Mole Creek in late June/early July and their maintenance takes place and any new queens introduced to the workers.
Equipment maintenance
Just as important as hive and queen maintenance is plant and equipment maintenance, because with such a short production period the business can’t afford a breakdown.
Josh says the bottling and packing plant is thoroughly inspected in winter with planned maintenance carried out, including bearing replacement.
“We have all the spare parts ready to go, even rebuilt engines for the trucks; at the end of winter everything is repaired ready for summer.
“We simply can’t afford a breakdown during the harvest season, it’s so short and there is so much honey to gather and bring back to Mole Creek,” Josh said.
Hive box maintenance
Admin Manager Teena Blair says once the hives are returned from the West Coast and repaired where needed they are placed in farmland in the Meander Valley (Queens are inspected and replaced during this period also) until late December where they produce Golden Bee Honey (clover/pasture based honey) before it’s time to return to the wilderness and produce more Leatherwood Honey.
Ms Blair says Leatherwood Honey harvesting continues daily until March or early April if the trees keep flowering, earlier if the trees stop flowering with staff making the grueling drive to the West Coast to bring hive frames back for honey extraction at Mole Creek every day whilst the bees are making honey.
“The drive into the wilderness from Mole Creek and return is incredibly hard, it’s one of the hardest drives in Australia and the staff are doing it twice per day.
“Beekeepers drive down early in the morning with empty supers (boxes) to replace supers taken from the bees in the days prior, and then returning with a truck loaded with supers full of honey, to be extracted – and the process continues daily until the honey flow stops.
“Extracting the honey continues at the factory in Mole Creek until the leatherwood trees stop flowering – and that is never at the same time in any given year – mother nature changes things up every year so the start and the end of the season is all dependent on her.” Ms Blair concludes.
Ends…..
For more information contact Richard Gerathy on 0419 203 075
Zip file of photos is at the link below.
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/elu70nsq98o4liud62jg7/Hives.zip?rlkey=2wevld9vogz1b2so6uwly9398&dl=0
