How to Start Beekeeping in New Zealand

Starting bees in New Zealand is very doable for a backyard keeper, as long as you go in knowing it is livestock with real obligations rather than a set-and-forget hobby. Get the order right and the first year is rewarding. Get it wrong and you can lose the colony to varroa before you have learned much.

What it costs

Budget a few hundred dollars to get going. A new hive, a suit or jacket, gloves, a smoker and a hive tool will run you a few hundred dollars all up, and you can trim that with good second-hand gear. On top of the kit, a nucleus colony of bees typically costs somewhere around a couple of hundred dollars depending on the season and supplier. Registration is free, and the ongoing costs are varroa treatments and the small annual foulbrood levy.

The order to do things in

• Join a local beekeeping club and do a beginner course before you buy bees
• Learn to recognise American foulbrood, which you are legally expected to be able to do
• Buy your hive gear and set up a good site with morning sun and a flight barrier
• Order a nucleus colony from a reputable local beekeeper, not a caught swarm
• Register as a beekeeper and register your apiary within 30 days
• Set up a varroa monitoring and treatment plan from day one

Your first year

A nuc installed in spring spends the warm months building up, so expect to be learning to inspect, spotting the queen, and reading brood rather than harvesting much honey. Through summer you watch for swarming and keep monitoring varroa. Autumn is when you treat for mites and make sure the colony is heavy enough with stores to survive winter, which is the danger period for a first-year hive. Get the colony through its first winter healthy and you are properly underway.

The two guides worth reading before you start are the rules and the law and varroa management, because those are the two things that catch new Kiwi beekeepers out.