History of Beekeeping in Taranaki
My name is Nick Wallingford. This was a talk that I was going to give to a Southern North Island field day that was to be held at Eltham Apiaries in late 2021. COVID led to the cancellation, but I’d still like the chance to give my talk!
Introduction to the Talk
I came to New Zealand in August 1974 to work for Trevor and Gaye Rowe at Eltham Apiaries. Within the first day or so I met Chris Brommell, a neighbouring beekeeper from Manaia.
Trevor died a bit over 20 years ago. As I was preparing this talk I learned that Chris, too, had died, only a year or so ago. They were the first two NZ beekeepers I ever met…
My first exposure to the ‘older beekeepers’ of Taranaki came from Trevor’s stories about the previous owners of the hives we were working.
Trevor started his beekeeping in the 1960s. But he talked about the beekeepers of the 1950s and earlier. Names like John Lloyd in Manaia, Cliff Leatherbarrow around the mountain in Oaonui, and Roy Brewster in New Plymouth. Even picking from that 1950s decade, I could probably find some interesting historical stories for Taranaki.
Roy Brewster, for instance, is the one who built a 6 sided house in New Plymouth. “NO RIght ANgles in Nature” – NORIAN. He wrote (bad) poetry about “Norian Thoughts” and packed his honey with the Norian label. He tried building some six sided hives (a bit larger than a 12 frame Langstroth hive) – they appear to be real works of joinery art. But even his own brother said they were pretty useless. And very heavy.
No, I’m going to go a bit further back, just briefly, to the early part of the 1900s, then through the hard economic times of the 1920s and 1930s. And finishing for the most part around 1950.
Early Taranaki Beekeeping
Traditionally, beekeepers in Taranaki have tended to favour apiaries to the south of the mountain, with the experience that the eastern side was too prone to rain and wind. Most of the beekeepers I’ll talk about are from the south and west of the mountain…
The first reference I can find to beekeeping in Taranaki described the uptake of beekeeping in Manaia – this was about 1884. The moveable frame hive had been recently introduced, Isaac Hopkins was making trips around the country to teach, encourage and pontificate about beekeeping.
Starting in 1906, the Nicholas brothers (from Hawera) produced what was probably the first commercial crop of honey in Taranaki – about 10 tons. They ran about 500 12-frame hives – with staple spacing of all of the frames.
Soon after, a beekeeper from Masterton named William Lenz – Kuripuni Apiaries – had extended his beekeeping operation into South Taranaki. At one point, Lenz had as many as 800 hives (in 8 apiaries!) In 1913, Lenz decided to sell all his Taranaki hives, but there weren’t any other bee operations big enough to deal with them.
Henry Penny and Herbert Gilling
So enter a group of (mostly) South Taranaki beekeepers led in part by Henry Penny and Herbert Gilling, both from the Okaiawa area, along with others: Allan Bates from Kaponga (there’ll be more about him later), and one of the Nicholas brothers (the ones that produced 10 tons of honey a few years earlier). These beekeepers got together and formed the New Zealand Co-op Honey Producers’ Association – the HPA. And it was a true co-op, in the sense that one could join simply by supplying honey, with the membership fee being deducted from the payment – no money required “up front” – cash was not always easy to find back then.
Initially the HPA acted as a ‘vehicle’ to buy Lenz’s bees and sell them off in lots to the HPA members. But the HPA did a lot more for Taranaki beekeepers, and for the greater NZ beekeeping industry.
Herbert Gilling had built up quite a nice honey extraction plant in Hawera, and co-op members were encouraged to use it. From there the HPA could then act as a marketing body to sell the honey, leaving the beekeeper to keep bees. A supply of beeswax foundation was available through another co-op member, TRW Nicholas – I think a son of one of the two Nicholas brothers… And the HPA even took on the role of equipment supplier, providing the best deals for its members – they bought Alliance Box Co to make woodware. At one point, they even considered setting up a honey tin manufacturing company. The HPA approach really left the beekeeper to keep bees…
Throughout the 1920s, the HPA was the major stabilising influence for the NZ honey market. Sadly, WWI resulted in the liquidation of the UK agent, and HPA members spent the next decade trying to pay off those debts. As always, the crops went up and down in size. And the abilities to export that part of the crop surplus to NZ consumption was critical. The HPA was of a size, and had adequate support, to supply on large contracts for sale into England.
But a situation that has faced beekeeping many times happened: there were two record seasons – followed by an absolute disaster for production. HPA members began to compete quite openly with their own organisation – their own co-op. And the HPA failed by 1931.
The HPA – started here in Taranaki – provided support for Taranaki beekeepers for about 20 years, and provided stability in a decade of hard times. It was through such beekeepers as Henry Penny and Herbert Gilling that this cooperation in the honey industry lasted as long as it did…
Allen Bates
Another prominent beekeeper of those early times in Taranaki beekeeping was Allan Bates, born in South Taranaki in 1888. He started keeping bees while young, and he attended the 1912 beekeeping conference, the year before the National Beekeepers’ Assn was formed. It was called the Beekeepers’ Federation before that. Allan started working in industry affairs that long ago, and continued for much of his life.
Allan’s beekeeping was based in Riverlea, just the other side of Kaponga.
When WWI started, he left his 300 hives on a ‘shares’ basis with other beekeepers to take care of them. He claims he got lucky with his military service. He stayed in England, got a position where he just had to give two 40 minute lectures about bees and beekeeping each day, and he got a promotion besides.
In one letter back to the NZ Beekeeper magazine he describes a bicycle trip to visit Buckfast Abbey. And though he didn’t refer to him by name, it was clear that he had been hosted by a young Brother Adam, only a few years into his respected bee breeding programme. Allan returned to South Taranaki, beekeeping and industry work. In 1920 he became a National Executive member for 2 years, VP for 1, President for 2 and back to the Executive for another 3 years – 8 years in all.
Allan was based south of Kaponga, and when I worked for Trevor in 1974, Allan’s old apiary sites often had a trout fishing stream nearby. And really nice old totara hive stands, two hives to the stand.
Allan was one of the proponents of “Taranaki beekeeping”. The area didn’t have too many good autumn sources, so beekeepers developed a different style of management. Allan, and others, would take the clover crop off the hives, and then knock the hive back to only about 6 frames of brood and a few frames of honey. The colonies were plenty strong enough to get away the next spring, but in the meantime did not eat so much of the stores…
Allan was also something of an engineer. He developed a honey creamer (well, a honey grinder – not ‘creamed honey’ as I know it). But he also designed an automatic packing machine. There were many of these around the country, pumping honey into 1 lb cardboard pottles. And as Trevor Rowe would drive us through Kaponga, he would point out the old building where Allan had the engineering work done.
Allan left Taranaki in the mid 1940s, moving first to Katikati and shortly afterward to Matamata. He continued queen breeding there, with Cliff Bird eventually taking over. He had a reputation for a good strain of bees that dated back to his Taranaki days before the moves.
Gilbert Kirker
Finally, I’d like to introduce one of my favourite people in NZ beekeeping that few beekeepers have ever heard of…
Gilbert Kirker grew up near Wellington, but started beekeeping in Taranaki in the middle 1930s. He bought hives and set up a small operation at Tataramaikau, over on the northern side of the mountain. I’m almost certain he bought the hives from Duff Maxwell.
Duff was the nephew of a woman who owned The Elms, the mission station buildings in Tauranga. Maxwell set up the Eutoca Honey brand there in Tataramaikau. A lot of Eutoca’s honey was sold in about 24oz – 1.5 pound jars, with the artwork on the lid itself – quite a unique packaging for the time.
Anyway. Gilbert Kirker set up a beekeeping business with Stanley Ford, running as many as 600 hives to the north, west and south of the mountain. They had an old factory at Pungarehu.
Gilbert Kirker was committed to orderly marketing and to the National Beekeepers’ Assn, to the point that nothing could keep him from a beekeeping meeting. In 1934, he was fined 10 shillings for roaring down Broadway in Stratford at a blistering 42 miles an hour on his way to a beekeepers’ meeting! Though the newspaper article did not say, he may likely have been in his bee truck, with a few supers tied on the deck.
At the 1937 NBA conference, Gilbert was elected to the Executive of the National Beekeepers’ Assn. But he quickly recognised his own strengths – he took on the role of General Secretary for the NBA, and managed to resurrect the NZ Beekeeper magazine. The magazine was around from 1914 to 1922, but there had been no official industry magazine since then.
So Kirker, with no experience in the field, started publishing the quarterly NZ Beekeeper magazine, all in an old factory around the mountain in Pungarehu…
But here’s where it starts to get sad: his beekeeping partner, Stanley Ford, had to go off to the war, leaving Gilbert to take care of their hives. Gilbert advertised repeatedly in the NZ Beekeeper for a “youth to learn apiary work”.
So for several seasons, until the end of 1942 Kirker took care of all of the hives on his own, as well as producing the NZ Beekeeper magazine. Neighbours referred to hearing him bang away on his old typewriter into the night in the old factory in Pungarehu.
In late 1942, Kirker was obliged to resign as Editor, expecting that he would soon be called up to active service himself. He basically ‘set his affairs’ in order, as he expected to be overseas quite soon.
He made arrangements for Cliff Leatherbarrow from Oaonui to take care of the hives until either he or Stanley Ford returned from overseas.
But the really sad part? He died in his honey shed before he ever got called up. Changing oil in his old truck and he was overcome by the fumes.
Gilbert Kirker’s reputation seemed to pass quickly and quietly out of the beekeeping industry, and left few traces for me to learn more. But I’ve avidly read the magazines he published, and the work he did for the wider beekeeping industry.
Taranaki Beekeeping in 1950
I’ll end with 1950, when the Journal of Agriculture did a good story about Taranaki beekeeping. There were at that time about 350 apiaries in Taranaki, with a bit over 10,000 hives – about 30 hives/apiary. Taranaki had 10 full time beekeepers, pretty much one for each major town or district. Beekeepers would rationalise by swapping areas with each other so they would have the hives as close to home as possible. The area wasn’t considered fully stocked, but there weren’t any districts capable of putting in a new 400 hive business without ‘encroachment’…
So a bit more than 10,000 hives in all of Taranaki. And manuka honey being such a problem that even in 1975 when I worked with Trevor, it would be saved for feed honey, allowing Trevor to take more of the lovely clover honey from around the mountain.
Things change, eh? That’s the stuff that makes history interesting.