The Magic of Manuka

If you had asked me what Manuka was a year ago I’d have had no idea. To be honest, even after joining the local beekeeping association it was only mentioned when the Trading Standards Officer paid us a visit to discuss honey labeling.  A quick look around the local supermarket and I was blown away - £6+ for a simple jar of honey ... but what is the magic of this stuff?

Manuka Flower

My simple research has shown that traditionally New Zealand's active Manuka honey is used as a natural product both internally and topically on the skin. Apitherapy, the name given to treatment with natural honey, has been used by many different cultures throughout history. Such uses are now being reconsidered by a modern world in light of new research into the properties and uses of active manuka honey.

Manuka honey comes from New Zealand where beekeepers set up their hives in wild uncultivated areas in which Manuka bushes grow. The bees gather nectar from the flowers of the Manuka bush, which is indigenous only to New Zealand. The honey making process is enriched by the pollution free environment of New Zealand, and certain harvests of Manuka Honey have attracted the gaze of the medical and scientific community. Some of the Manuka Honey produced has been found to have some very special properties indeed. The honey is supposed to have strong anti-bacterial, but also fungicidal, skin regenerating , soothing to skin nerves, anti-inflammatory, anti rheumatic, itchiness relieving and anti-allergic characteristics. So good stuff then !

So what triggered my interest in Manuka at the end of my first season as a beekeeper? Well, a good friend of mine that has emigrated to New Zealand emailed me recently after reading the blog to tell me he is now keen to have a go at keeping bees as he has a paddock with several acres of Manuka ! To say I was a little jealous is an understatement. So I decided to find out if I could grow it here ..

I’ve found that Manuka can grow in many parts of the world apart from New Zealand.  Anywhere with a temperate to Mediterranean climate & acid to neutral soil & it will thrive. Manuka is the Maori name for the shrub Leptospermum scoparium, a beautiful evergreen ericaceous shrub also commonly known as the tea tree. The plant looks a bit like heather but the flowers are small and pink, and grows up to 8ft high, but generally shrubby-like. Manuka Bush With the average temperature in the UK having risen by 1°C since 1900, and expected to increase 5°C further by 2080, the type of foods we can produce in the UK suddenly look quite different. The growing season for plants has lengthened by about a month since 1900, soil and sea temperatures are slightly higher, and fewer frosts mean that species that never used to survive the winter are now able to do so. The main area of cultivation in the UK at present is an estate in Cornwall who appear to be charging £30 a jar for their Manuka honey which appears to only have 3% of Manuka in the blend to be marketed – I should add that this is as reported on many of the forums and is unsubstantiated.    Interestingly A Maori group from New Zealand last year was trying to stop the Cornish estate from marketing ‘Manuka Honey’. The Maori wanted to claim some of their profits, or get them stopped from growing the Manuka bush in the UK so that they could not make Manuka honey.  The owner of the business  in the UK was shown on New Zealand television in an interview, where he said:  “OK – we’ll give you back your New Zealand manuka bushes if you’ll give us back our European honey bee.”  And then he grinned.   Because the European honey bee is an IMPORT to New Zealand, and without it, New Zealand cannot make any honey at all, let alone the ‘Therapeutic Manuka Honey’. So next year I shall try and plant a small bed of Manuka just out of principle to see what happens in the following years ..

Autumn Feed and a Quick Survey

With the excitement of the honey extraction over and done with my thoughts turned to the manner in which I would prepare the hive for the winter as September is already upon us and the weather systems look variable to say the least.

I had decided to use Api Life Var over the course of 4 weeks on the hive and research from other local keepers indicated that I could feed at the same time and a quick visit to the local supplier let me get a new “English” feeder.  2Kgs of granulated white sugar and a litre of water were heated through to make  a heavy feed syrup and when cooled it was transferred to the feeder.

The hive was well mannered and although extremely busy had done well in cleaning off the frames in the top super and were sell on the way of adding stores to the other super. Stripping the hive I removed the queen excluder and had a look through the brood box but the queen was not visible although there was plenty of brood in all stages across the box and plenty of stores. I decided to effectively switch to brood and a half for the winter as the queen is so prolific; there are many threads of forums with views both for and against this course of action but I can see no technical reason why it should harm the colony over the winter period.

Putting the Api Life Var on the frame bars in the top of the super the crown board and feeder were replaced and the hive buttoned up – my intention being to return in a week and replace the Api Life Var sheet.

Much discussion has ensued post honey extraction about the best sort of honey jars and what sort of honey people actually want to buy. I therefore decided to generate a quick online survey to get a "quick & dirty" view of what our friends and family think about local honey and what they want us to do next year.

Having had a pretty good response I though I'd open it up to anyone who reads the blog. Please feel free to click on the link and pass on your views :

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/6F9BJZX

Harvesting Honey

Having decided that we had some spare honey to remove from the hive our thoughts turned to the processes involved – all new territory for us. A quick trip to Stockbridge meant we increased our beekeeping equipment holdings and that we now had everything we needed with the exception of the extractor. Luckily the local association has several and we were fortunate enough to be given a 24hr window over a weekend (No pressure then!)

A warm sunny afternoon allowed me to insert the clearer board with newly fitted porter escapes and I decided that I would return 48hrs later. Returning then it became abundantly clear that the bees were less welcoming than normal as I could hear the hum from some 20m away which is very unusual for my well mannered brood. Nevertheless they were still well mannered and the supers were clear of bees. I was surprised at just how heavy 2 full supers are and I was glad that the car was close. Returning home the kitchen was arranged with military precision as I had read with great humour the account in Bill Turnbulls book about honey extraction and I had no desire to have sticky floors, walls and clothing.

The planning worked and the process worked well, a few small blobs of honey escaped but nothing of any significance.  Pretty soon all the frames worthy of extraction had been emptied of their honey and the wax cappings had all been placed in a roasting tray for melting. Leaving the honey to settle in our new honey tank we scrubbed out the extractor using cold water as suggested and it worked a treat.

We had expected to get maybe a dozen jars from this extraction but as we started to fill the jars it became clear that this life changing experience was going to yield far more than a dozen.  In fact we filled the entire 32 jars and had a small bucket of honey left over for me to experiment with to try to make soft set honey – but that’s another story.

And of course we needed to replace the supers, 1 for them to clean out and 1 to fill the frames that we had extracted. My intention is to feed them shortly to help them get ready fro winter; my inspection as I replaced the supers showed that the queen was very active and the colony had 7 frames covered in brood of all stages and the remaining frames bulging with stores so I am content at the moment.

Although we have enough offers to take the current crop of jarred honey off our hands it has made us think about next year.  I intend changing the Nationals to 14x12 hives and I suspect that the colony will do much better so we clearly need to sort out the realities of potentially producing 100 jars of honey. Do we want to join the other beekeepers at the farmers market or shall we go elsewhere ….

And still it expands !

Imagine my surprise after a further 10 days when I found that the super had all its foundation drawn out and that much honey was to be found some sealed already. My plans for  the year were certainly changed when a week later I needed to put a second super on as the first was full of sealed stores.  I had not expected to even contemplate taking any honey from them this first year and we still had several weeks to go.

Still not spotting the marked queen I conducted an inspection with my son and my eagle eyed apprentice spotted a chewed open queen cell so we kept looking. Spookily enough we found a virile young queen busy laying in the outer frames.  The brood pattern looked extremely good and all very healthy so we surmised that supercedure had taken place.  Trapping her with a brand new queen cage I demanded the brand new marking pen – so much for my plans to practice on a drone and then deal with the queen! Could I get the pen to work? Absolutely not. Chortling adolescents do not help the matter; he only stopped when he realised he had a bee crawling up his leg .. Who’s laughing now! Ha.

Accepting defeat I removed the cage and was delighted to see her scuttle away.  I had been quite  worried about my careless approach and the length of time she had been “impaled”.  Shutting up the hive I took the pen home and found it working – clearly the ink had worked its way through the system - Great!

So where does this leave us? I have two supers on, one full of sealed stores and one at 50% although not much is capped so we have arranged to borrow an extractor for this forthcoming weekend, bought all we need and will be removing much honey from the frames so I am expecting much stickiness and mirth overall. More to follow.

Recording visits

Keeping a track of all the decisions, plans and visits is essential to ensure that you can explain your thought process to the wife when you come home and tell her that you need to spend several hundred pounds over the weekend. 

Post-its, notebooks, voice recorders, they were all considered but I opted for an online service (beetight) and I have to say it is extremely good. Clearly there are always things you would wish to see done differently or offered when they are not but overall the system is easy to use, allows both text and graphical entry. 

The prospect of entering data from a mobile device is fine but a Blackberry, leather gauntlets and propolis do not mix I have found …