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In his twenties, Jim Jobbins built a fair number of houses on the Hibiscus Coast, but these days he’s more likely to be found in a protective suit in his Manly garden, attending to the needs of his bees. He says only people who are “old, mad or peculiar” keep bees, especially in their suburban backyards, and he is happy to number himself among that elite fraternity. Not one to do things by halves, Jim’s original two hives quickly became more than 10, and at times he has harvested 500kg of honey in a summer, much of which he uses to raise money for the community. He spoke to Terry Moore.
Seven or eight years ago I took over two beehives from a friend who couldn’t take them when he moved to Blenheim because at that time the South Island did not have varroa mite and we did. To learn about beekeeping, I got a book called Beekeeping in NZ from a neighbour who had brought some hives with him to Manly from Stillwater. As far as Council went, beekeeping in a built up area was fairly unregulated and the only rules seemed to be that you didn’t kill anyone, such as children walking past the property. I learned on the job, because if you make a mistake it instantly becomes very painful. You get stung all the time and I have become more immune to the poison as time’s gone on. My hand used to swell up to half its size again, and although stings still hurt, I don’t get that reaction any more. Although honey is sweet, it’s also very acidic and a lot of the pain from a sting is because of the acid. The acid also makes honey quite corrosive – that’s why dentists don’t like you to eat too much of it. It’s basically evaporated plant nectar and chemically similar to cane sugar.
I have 11 hives at the moment and have had as many as 14. In spring, I spend quite a bit of time and effort breeding new queens. The key to a successful hive is grafting new queens, and really nothing else matters. If you leave the bees to do this themselves, they tend to develop a “pauper queen” which is not a very good layer. You need a queen that will make 1500 babies per day – producing her own weight in babies every day. Beekeepers select queens from day-old larvae, which look like an immobile maggot, curved in a “c” shaped thread. The grafting process takes a bit of experience, and a $4 grafting tool, which is like a little shovel. The larvae sits in a bed of royal jelly and you put it in a Queen Cell Cup the size of your little finger and leave it in a hive that does not have a queen. Worker bees feed the queen rich food and she becomes much bigger and stronger; that diet also ensures that her female organs fully develop. Eventually the queen kills all the other females, but not the workers. Bee society is incredibly complex, with a lot of unusual sexual practices. The male bees are fairly useless – all they do is sit around expecting to be fed and thinking about sex, but they are neccessary in spring. A virgin queen needs to mate with 15 to 20 male bees in mid-flight over several days, killing each husband as she does so. Only then will she return to the hive permanently to begin laying eggs, and she will never fly again unless the hive swarms. If you have a good queen, you get floods of honey. My best hive can produce 120 tubs of honey (about 60kg) in a season, while the worst hives produce practically nothing. In a good year I’ve had 1000 tubs (500kg) in a season, and that takes some effort to use up. We donate a lot of it to reward volunteers in the community and give it to people like the bowls ladies. We also raised $700 for Whangaparaoa School at last year’s gala by selling honey and I supply a retired pasty chef, who makes us lovely cakes with it. One of the bonuses of beekeeping is that we make our own bread, and the recipe calls for a third of a cup of manuka honey, which could cost $10, so having free honey is great. At one stage I was selling live hives on Trade Me and they were usually beginner beekeepers, so I directed them to the right books and off they would go with a boot full of bees. I also talk to local primary schools and they’ve visited the hives to study them and ask questions.
The first varroa mite in NZ was found locally, in Blackridge Rd in Dairy Flat, around 15-20 years ago. Varroa mite is very dangerous – three quarters of the world’s food crops have bees somewhere in the pollinating process, and varroa mite is going to wipe them out. We are very worried about it. Varroa mites look like a speck of blood, about 1mm across; they suck the blood from the bees and lay their eggs in the bee larvae. They were probably already in my hives when I got them and last year we lost six of our hives while we were away sailing. Varroa has gone from domestic hives into the wild honeybee population and is destroying it. Wild bees used to do a lot of the pollination, but now they’re pretty much gone. Bumble bees and native bees are not affected by varroa, but they are not present in large numbers whereas a healthy honeybee hive might have 50,000 bees in it at the height of the season. We are containing varroa, using approved chemicals, but to wipe it out would require poisons so powerful they would kill the bees as well. The chemicals knock out about 99 percent of varroa, but populations soon build up again. Around five years ago I qualified as disease inspector, because I felt a sense of responsibility to assist in our biosecurity. I spend a bit of time inspecting hives locally and in Warkworth and Auckland for American Foul Brood, which is a deadly bacteria; if I find this, MAF is notified, the hive has to be burned and the bees killed. I’m also inspecting for pests and diseases we don’t have yet such as European Foul Brood and Small Hive Beetle. Thankfully I haven’t found anything yet. Every hive must be inspected once a year for any new diseases so we can be sure they’re not getting in. Bees are so important that the government has to police it, you can’t just set up your hives and start making honey – hives must be registered with MAF and inspected annually.
My background is in chemical engineering, but I started my working life as a builder and built quite a few homes here on the Coast. I also built my own 40’ Bob Stewart ocean going yacht in the backyard and launched it in 1987. When I was building homes, 40 years ago, there was a building boom and huge inflation, so land prices rocketed. There were a lot of people making money from property. I started a real estate company 25 years ago because building was hard physical work and I needed a change. Selling real estate is fun, and keeps you in touch with a lot of interesting people. We keep it low key and give our clients honey, so it’s a friendly way to do business. It also gave my wife Jenny and I the freedom to do more sailing and we could up-sticks and escape the NZ winter, sailing for four to five months every year. This is the first winter we’ve had in 20 years, and we’re starting to notice the cold. We generally escape to Tonga, Fiji, Vanuatu, Mayalysia or Borneo and like to get off the beaten track.
By December, the kanuka forest is in bloom and the hives I leave with a friend in Wainui and Waiwera are going well. There’s a lot of manuka and kanuka in that area, and in the Puhoi River valley. I prefer the heavy, dark chocolately ‘bush honey’ which is mainly manuka, that comes from those hives whereas the hives in my Manly backyard produce light, white honey that comes mainly from pohutukawa flowers. My honey is really multi-flora honey, except when the pohutukawa is flowering, because bees go for the easy option and if they find a large, rich source of nectar, they go for it. The hives can be left for months in the winter, but in the summer you have to clear out the honey to give the bees enough room in the hive. By February I am probably spending one whole day a week extracting honey – it’s a messy job. A wet summer is the main influence on whether it’s a good year for honey, as the bees don’t fly when it’s wet.
There are a few issues related to having beehives in a suburban area. Council workers know we have bees and try to avoid spraying outside our property. Insecticides are toxic to bees and gardeners need to be aware of that. Some people drench their vege gardens in sprays and that’s bound to have an effect on bee populations. I have to spray my tomatoes, but am careful to do it before flowers have formed. Beekeeping is not a lot of work, but you do need time throughout the summer to harvest all the honey. I have an electrical extractor now, which saves manually spinning the honey. You cut the wax top off the honeycomb with a hot knife and spin each frame in the extractor, which is the size of a large rubbish tin. The honey is filtered and then you eat it: you can’t add anything, or it’s not honey. When I first started, it was a bit like home brew and a few jars exploded because it started fermenting, so it was a learning process. You need around $1000 worth of equipment and to register and have the annual inspection. If you have an office job, beekeeping gets you out in the sun and in the natural environment. There are also a lot of social organisations for beekeepers, although I don’t have time for that because if I’m not working with the bees, I’m diving, fishing, selling real estate or spending time with my family.
