Weather sweet for busy bees | Rural

Beekeepers in North Otago are having an  excellent season with the  reasonably mild start to the spring and timely showers of rain to keep the clover flowering.

Beekeeper Michael Lory, of Windsor's Snow Crest Apiaries, said the honey season was still in full swing and it had been excellent.

"The clover started flowering earlier this year with ideal weather conditions which helped it along and it hasn't stopped," he said.

Mr Lory operates 950 hives, two-thirds of which are located in North Otago and the remainder in the Maniototo.

Although he had managed, so far, to keep his hives free of the invasive varroa mite which kills hives if left undetected, Mr Lory said he had recently found the mite in one of his hives.

"I have some hives at a site on the northern outskirts of Oamaru and if the mite was going to be found, this is where I thought it would be," he said.

Mr Lory will  monitor his hives once he starts to take the honey off and is hopeful no further evidence of the pest will be found.

But if varroa is present, he is well prepared with treatment methods.

These include Bayvarol miticide strips, which cost about $50 per hive for each treatment and an organic method.

Controls also need to be rotated and treatment strips cannot be left in place for too long.

The varroa bee mite (varroa destructor), is a  parasite of honey bees that attacks adults bees and their developing larvae and pupae or brood.

It is transferred to new bee colonies on adult bees.

The mite leaves the bee and crawls into the brood cell where it starts feeding on the prepupa, laying its eggs, which, after hatching, leave the cell as adult mites when the bee emerges.

Tell-tale signs of varroa infestation include unexpectedly low bee numbers, a patchy brood pattern, small,
reddish-brown mites on the bodies of bees, crawling bees near the hive entrance, often with damaged wings or no wings, and sudden population crashes, especially in the autumn when hives may have honey stores but no bees.

Varroa mites have been responsible for wiping out the feral bee population and at least 20,000 managed colonies in the North Island since they arrived in New Zealand in April 2000.

They are believed to have arrived in North Otago after a hobbyist purchased hives off the internet.

It is unknown how the mite arrived in New Zealand, but a likely source is the illegal introduction of queen bees from a varroa-infested
country.

The pest could have arrived in a bee colony or swarm, which established in a shipping container and survived the trip to New Zealand without being detected.

Varroa is usually spread by live bees, however, there have been no live bee imports permitted into the country for at least 40 years.