Poverty Bay Beekeeping in the 1880’s…

By the early 1880’s there were bee hives and beekeepers in Poverty Bay.  Even before then there would have been people hunting out wild colonies to take their honey (and brood comb, well-received by Maori as a high-protein food).

Most of the stories I’ll relate have come from George Stevenson, a Poverty Bay beekeeper who started beekeeping in the early 1880’s and kept bees until he died at age 79 in 1925.  Stevenson was the first in the area to use moveable-frame hives, and wrote letters to various of the bee culture magazines in those early days of ‘modern beekeeping.’ 

Stevenson got started with bees in Ormond when he bought 50 box hives and transferred the colonies into Langstroth equipment.  He had the Langstroth woodware sent from Bagnall Brothers, near Thames – they were well-known for making good beekeeping equipment, mostly from kahikatea.  Stevenson’s first crop – about 1 ton from 48 hives, came from the nearby flax swamp, and resulted in a “negative profit” by the time it was put into kegs and sent to England.  He said the flax honey was so thick it would wreck combs when trying to extract it

The next spring he moved the bees to Waiohika (off the Back Ormond Road, not all that far from Ormond) where he says the hives did much better – £43 net for a ton of honey shipped to Edinburgh.  He was convinced the Makauri district was the finest area for beekeeping around, with miles of cabbage trees and flax swamps, and hills with scrubby bush.  The downside, however, was the flooding of the Waiapoa River…

Stevenson described the typical box hive that was in use in the Gisborne area at the time.  It had a detachable bottom board, and was 16” x 10” and only 8” deep.  (405mm L x 250mm W x 200mm H). That is quite small compared to a Langstroth box.  The top of this brood box was covered with a series of wooden strips from which the combs would hang.  The second box was the same, but only 6” high, about 150 mm.  That is the box that would be removed when filled with honey, all the comb cut out, and then the honey and wax could be pressed.

Stevenson said that though the hive was mostly well-designed, its small size created the main problem.  By the time the main honey flow started, the queen would have laid brood throughout that second box.  Some beekeepers waited until most of the brood had hatched before taking the box off to take the honey.  They would cut out the brood to throw away (or occasionally offer it for sale).  Only one beekeeper that Stevenson knew of would stack up more boxes for honey storage, the more ‘modern’ method of beekeeping.

There was a significant box hive apiary at Roseland, just outside of Gisborne.  It was managed at that time by Mr. W. Knights.  That apiary had between 400 and 600 hives (the reported number changed some over the years!)  Knights was a determined box hive beekeeper, and felt the additional cost of Langstroth gear was simply not worth it – he would rather press the honey and wax from the combs, without worrying about ‘removing’ frames for inspection or extraction.

Knights at one time had a developing trade in boxes of comb honey.  He built small containers with a wooden top and bottom, and glass sides.  Several of these boxes sat on an inner cover, with a hole in both cover and box to allow bee access.  The bees would fill the boxes with 5 lb. of comb honey each!  Though he hoped to have thousands of these for the market in England, it never really eventuated.  Instead, he would mostly produce honey by pressing the combs –  about 1 ton per 100 hives, so not a great yield per hive, but remember how small the box hives were.

Thomas U’Ren was another major box hive beekeeper from Te Arai, keeping about 250 box hives and producing about 2 ½ tons of honey.  He used most of his crop as the sweetener for a range of fruit wines.  He produced 20 casks of various grape, peach, elder and other fruit, saying that the wine certainly gave him better returns than from honey alone.

Stevenson described another local beekeeper with a bit of acerbity.  Mr. Bolton, a schoolmaster at Matawhero, was described as an enthusiastic hobbyist with a model small apiary  who knows what to do – but doesn’t do it.  

Some local farmers would keep a few box hives and then sell the honey “in the rough”, simply cut from the boxes (and not pressed).  The product was a combination of honey, pollen and some brood, but at 2 to 2 ½ d per pound, it found some buyers.

At that time, still in the early to mid 1880’s, there were only two beekeepers using Langstroth-type hives.  As well as Stevenson himself, there was James Adams, a stationer in Gisborne, who had 10 or 12 hives in the town.  These two – Adams and Stevenson – were the stalwarts of the Poverty Bay beekeeping organisation over many years.

Stevenson said that American foulbrood had not been present in Poverty Bay until the cold and wet spring of 1884.  The large box hive apiary at Roseland, 400 to 600 hives, was completely wiped out over two seasons.  Diseased boxes of dead hives had been left piled in the middle of the apiary, and it didn’t take long for the disease to spread.  The box hives would have provided a special challenge, given that inspection for AFB was not really possible.

In 1885 Stevenson began to find AFB in his own hives, with more than half showing visible signs of disease in the centre frames.  He said he got rid of those middle frames and soon the hives were strong and prosperous with no more signs of AFB.  That didn’t last long, but he continued to try variations of schemes to get rid of his AFB.  

He tried another “experiment” during the next July.  He had as many as 4 or 5 frames in some hives with diseased larvae.  He got rid of those (1200 frames in spring 1887!), then sprayed the remainder of the brood combs, and all of the bees, with a 1:400 phenol mixture.  The frames were moved into clean boxes, with clean covers and bottom boards.  That gear had been cleaned by boiling in a strong solution of carbolic acid.  A lot of work, but still he continued to have cases of AFB.

Stevenson made an interesting claim when he noticed that with two apiaries on either side of the Waipaoa River, one was destroyed by AFB, but the one on the other side (owned by Thomas U’Ren) had not been infected with AFB at all.  Stevenson claimed that “moving water” might have an impact on the spread of AFB…