(COUNTRY MUSIC) - (WHISTLES) - Always a favourite on every rural road ` (DOG BARKS) (BEES BUZZ) - It's a decent swarm. - They learned beekeeping in their teens. - You pick up all the jargon through the books, but you don't pick up the habits of bees, and the bees certainly haven't read the books. There's an old saying, 'You can ask two beekeepers a question, 'and you'll get four different answers' ` you've gotta give it a crack for yourself. Captions by Faith Hamblyn. Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. www.able.co.nz Copyright Able 2024. - Manawatu brothers Daniel and Matthew Mason come from a family which is big on resourcefulness and DIY. - We've taken trees down on Mum and Dad's block here. I think Dad actually planted the tree that we were milling today, so it's pretty cool. - Brother Christopher runs the sawmill, and he's a mechanic, so he does have a lot of experience with machinery, so that's always pretty helpful. - It's something we sort of can do together. It's good fun. It's always smells good. It's pretty exciting. Dad wants these trees gone, so he gets that solution, and we'll get the timber. (WHIRRING) (GENTLE MUSIC) - Daniel and Matthew use the timber to build hives, boxes and frames for their bees. At only 26 and 28, the brothers are already seasoned beekeepers. - We started beekeeping when I was 12; Matthew was 14. Started off as hobby, and just enjoyed it so much, we sort of wanted to do it more and more. - We loved being outdoors in nature. - Four-wheel-driving, woodworking. Something different every day, which is pretty cool. And we love honey, so we just kept building more hives. (CHUCKLES) - Mm. Yeah. - With around 800 hives now, the boys buy in some bee-box components, but they still make their own when they can. - Today we're making frames. - Yeah. - Once the timber's dressed, we'll cut it down to size, and then we'll and buzz it, and then also, we'll rip it down to the individual components. The final step is to get a plastic insert like this, where you can use the straight beeswax sheets, and we staple a bottom bar on there, and we place that in each box, about nine frames, yeah, ready to go for honey or brood for the bees. - It's cool to be able to do it ourselves, but also helped save us money, initially, when we were getting started. - Dad didn't let us have a PlayStation when we were growing up or anything. He'd sort of just of push us out to do something. - Yeah. I think Mum and Dad always, sort of, appreciated reusing resources, or materials that we have on hand. - That resourcefulness is visible everywhere in the small farm and honey plant that the brothers bought in their early 20s. - This building must be at least a hundred years old. I think it's been a blacksmith. It's been a woolshed. We put a new floor in. - It was falling apart when we got here. - Yeah, the sheepyards were there, and we removed them, laid some concrete and reroofed. - And we worked on the other sheds as we could afford it, really. And we've still got quite a bit more work to do. - We enjoy making things. - And we got time in the winter, really. - The woodworking's a perfect winter job, when we don't have any beekeeping to do. - That looks pretty good. - Yeah. (WHIRRING) - The winter and spring months give Daniel and Matthew time to concentrate on the health of their bees. - That one's pretty heavy. - We're just giving them a bit of a disease check. - That one's a bit more honey. - None of them need feed, do they? - Nah, nah, they're looking pretty good. It's like a varroa treatment, a new one we're trialling. This is a dense cardboard impregnated with oxalic acid, so that's an organic acid, naturally occurring in honey, and it's deadly to the varroa mite. But this is new to us. We're trialling this. Putting strips in like this is a lot of work, and obviously taking them out's a lot of work. These being cardboard, hopefully, the bees'll be able to just chew them up and remove them themselves. (BEES BUZZ) - The other very labour-intensive bee work at this time of year is breeding queen bees. - We've got two or three breeder hives here, which we've mainly selected for their prolific honey production. And I'm just trying to find a frame of larvae with the larvae and that really young, under 24 hours old, before there's any chance of the worker larvae having being fed pollen or honey. - These very young larvae can potentially become queen bees by being fed nothing but royal jelly. - That'll mean that the final queen from that larvae is higher quality, and therefore, the hive that she leads will be higher producing. You can just see the tiny larvae there, and the smaller the better. So I'm just transferring that into the cell cup. It's, uh, quite a delicate, fine sort of process. This is the start of the cycle, quite a crucial step in the process, as, sort of, the make or break for whether or not we'll have enough queen cells in 10 days. - That's the frame that Daniel's grafted, and we just try to get it into the hive as quickly as can before the larvae dry out, and then I just also supplement a bit of feed for them, cos they do need a lot of feed to produce good queen cells. - This is the lead-up to the honey flow at the moment. And if we don't get it right now, the hives won't be in the peak condition for the honey flow. - And that honey flow is about to begin. (SHEEP BAA) Manawatu beekeepers Daniel and Matthew Mason bought this land in Bunnythorpe when they were in their early 20s. It's home to their honey processing plant, and it's where they farm a small mob of sheep. - Go on. Oi! - Shh! Shh! - These are our Suffolk cross. Oi! - Shh! - (LAUGHS) As Suffolks, they're, sort of, pretty crazy. They were just head-butting the top rail and jumping it. We had to rebuild the yards about a year or two ago. A good 50% of the timber is from the old yards, so that saved us a lot of money. - Pretty nice, just drenching only taking half an hour. You don't get really get sick of it, like on a big farm. - I think we've only got about 20 here, so it's not too big a job. Shh. (GENTLE GUITAR MUSIC) - At their parents' place, Daniel and Matthew have another small mob of sheep, and, of course, more beehives. - It's early November now, and it pretty much just gets busier and busier from here. Yeah, it goes pretty quick leading up till Christmas. The bees just keep working, and, um, the honey flow really ramps up from now. - That looks good. - That looks pretty strong, eh? - Yeah. - The bees have gotta be, like, they're so active. It's pretty rewarding to see, you know, one of our own queen cells mated like that. - This hive already has about four, five frames of brood, so she's been pretty busy. - It's good. - Yeah. Yeah, she's started laying too. Look at that, Matt ` there she is. - Oh nice. She's mated and looking really good, nice and golden. - We're finding the ones that haven't mated, putting another queen cell in there, and the ones that have mated, we're giving them a feed, and we'll continue to build them up for the honey flow. - This one, the queen cell we put out has failed for whatever reason, so the queen's laying mainly male bees. the hive'll die eventually, as the male bees can't collect any honey, so I'll have to kill that queen and, um, put a new one in there. - That's pretty good, though, so we've got only one of these four not laying. - Not laying, yeah. - Cos this one going really well. - Daniel and Matthew breed queen bees to populate their own hives and to sell to other beekeepers. - Some beekeepers are just too busy with their own business, so it's really helpful for them if they can get their queens through another beekeeper. Also it helps bring in different genetics to your business ` we always buy in a few queens from other companies too. - Today is day nine of the queen-raising cycle, and Daniel and Matthew are at their breeding-hive site to collect any successfully grafted queen cells. But they're distracted by a familiar sight in a nearby tree. - We've just spotted a swarm. Could be from our own hives or a neighbour's. We're gonna try to catch it. - It's a decent swarm. WHISPERS: Careful there. - Pretty good. - Yup. (BEES BUZZ) (BEES BUZZ) Perfect. - That got 90% of them, so I think the rest'll just... - Go back. - Go back, yeah. They're bloody good. - Sunset is just an hour away, and tomorrow morning, beekeepers will arrive to buy whatever queen cells Daniel and Matthew manage to retrieve tonight. - These are nine-day-old queen cells today, and tomorrow they need to go into a beehive. They'll hatch the next day. Tomorrow morning, our customers are gonna come and, uh, pick these up, and they'll spend all of the day tomorrow putting them out into new hives. - That's good grafting there. We've only missed one. - Yeah. - Bloody good. 31 out of 32. - These are looking like really good queen cells too ` the wax is nice and light. You can see royal jelly at the base of the queen cell, which, sort of, shows at that they've, um... the queen's had an abundance of royal jelly while she's been developing. Yeah, so you definitely don't want her to run out of that. - We started about 10 years ago, doing this, and it's certainly quite hard thing to get right; like, it can go wrong quite often, and then it's very hard to pinpoint exactly what is going wrong. - We have to look after them, so that they are viable for clients. - Keep them warm and get them back to the incubator as quickly as possible. - The brothers waste no time getting the queens home to keep warm ` in the fridge. - It does look like a fridge; it is a fridge, but we've jacked it up with a little system that automatically turns the light bulbs on and off, to keep the temperature at about 34, 35. This whole unit costs $35, roughly. It works as good as a commercially available one. - The queens will stay in the warm fridge overnight, and by this time tomorrow, they'll be in new hives, all over Manawatu and beyond. - It's pretty important to have a good queen in the hive ` that, sort of, sets the whole beehive up for the season, so a bit of pressure there for the other beekeepers, cos it's their business on the line. It's time to save big bucks in Big Save's Big Sale. Big beds. Big couches. Big lounge suites. See the big picture. Be a big deal. Have the big idea. Only at Big Save. (GENTLE GUITAR MUSIC) - Every Friday morning in autumn and spring, beekeepers from all over the lower North Island come to Bunnythorpe, to buy ready-to-hatch queen bees from Daniel and Matthew Mason. - Oh, hey, Chris. - Hey, Chris. How you doing? - How's your season been so far? You do need a good queen in every hive. - How many were you after, Chris? - Yeah, 30, yeah. - Initially, we didn't have any money to buy a whole lot of queens, but we were able to rear our own quite cost-effectively. - As we, sort of, got better at it, we saw an opportunity to sell a few to other beekeepers as well. So that's been quite nice, to meet other beekeepers and talk to them, and, yeah, we still need them for our own hives. - Thanks for that. See you next week. - Cheers. - I think the queens look really good this week ` nice and big and full of royal jelly. Because there is a lot of pressure and our reputation on the line, it's nice to be sending out good cells. But, yeah, in a few days, we start the cycle again. - Later in the day, the Mason brothers' star customer arrives ` veteran beekeeper and mentor in many things, Gavin Lambert. - Hey, Gavin. How are you doing? - Oh, I'll get some cells today, eh? - Yeah, mate. - A lot of our hands-on beekeeping experience, we got through Gavin. - Oh, how many did you want today? - About 10. - Oh yeah. He took us out beekeeping. We helped him harvest his honey. - Gavin was very generous with his time and expertise. - I'll chuck you a couple of spares too, Gavin. - Yes, that'd be nice. - He'll come grab some queens off us. - We won't charge him for those. - Yeah, yeah. It's nice now too, we can actually give back a bit, with the queens or with our time. - You're stirring it one way, you wanna go the other way sometimes with it too. A bit like paint, you've gotta mix it two ways, and then you get the whole lot all one blend. - Oh, right, yeah, I see. Like that. - That's right. - Yeah. - See how it's much better ` it's sort of mixed more. - That is looking good now. - I'd be proud of that. - Gavin's really good at creaming honey, so we certainly take his advice. - That's perfect. - There's a lot to it, from the temperature to the starter, to even the honey you use. - The moisture content. - The moisture content has to be right, and a lot of that we've learned through Gavin. (WHIRRING) - With Gavin's tick of approval, the creamed honey is ready for bottling, with help from Daniel and Matthew's mum, Donna Mason. The pristine, certified honey plant used to be a woolshed. - It was a good shed. It was a big job to convert. - Covered in bird poop, cobwebs and dust and sheep manure and... yeah. - We had to take out all the old sheep droppings, re-concrete part of the floor, clean the beams, re-tin some of the roof ` bit of everything. - In characteristic Mason style, most of the gear is secondhand or repurposed, and the labelling of jars and lids is all done by hand. - We've heard labelling and screw top machine's over $100,000, so we certainly try to avoid those sort of investments to begin with. - But the honey dispenser is state-of-the-art. - This is pretty much the only machine in here that we bought brand-new. We sort of need to rely on this quite a bit, so... It also has the ability to, in the future, add a conveyor and an automatic dispenser sensor ` that kind of thing. So it's sort of future-proofed. - This final stage of the process is quite rewarding, just to see it going into the jar and, um, ready for sale. - We try to do a lot of the bottling over the off season. - This honey was produced during the last flow we had, in the summertime. - We're currently selling last season's stock, but we are running out. So hopefully we have a good season this year. - By early February, the hives are well and truly producing, ready to replenish those dwindling stocks. - Still a bit of a flow on too, so... - Yeah, they're looking really good, yeah, so there's a lot of honey down there for them, and there's a whole lot in the boxes here for us, so pretty good result on that hive. Matthew's one looks pretty similar too. Typically, the bees can get a bit wound up when you're harvesting their honey. We smoke them to mask any stress pheromones the bees produce, and it also tricks them into thinking there could be a forest fire coming, so they all start gorging themselves on honey, which will, you know, keep them preoccupied and not stinging us. It's very natural ` they all get straight back into work after we've finished; it's not really harming them in any way. This next one should be interesting, though ` it's got five honey boxes on, so we obviously got a bit optimistic with that one, but they do sometimes do that many. (BOTH CHUCKLE) - The hives are unusually heavy with honey ` a mixed blessing. - It has done well. - It's really done well. 100 kilos of honey, that hive. It can be quite strenuous work. I've actually had heatstroke on the job before. - You've gotta watch it on these hot summer days. - Shook my broom, and I was all shaking like this, so I sort of knew something was off. So we have to try to take electrolytes in and stuff like that. - Pretty hard to drink fluids when you've got the bee suit on and thousands of bees milling around, so you've gotta sort of get away from them a bit. But some bees will stick with the honey, all the way back to the extraction plant in Bunnythorpe. Today we're extracting manuka honey. So I'm taking the comb and putting it on the line. Manuka honey needs to be agitated before it'll come out of the comb, so Mum's on the pricker, warding off osteoporosis, and Matthew's putting it all into the extractor. Looks like a good result this year ` we've got full frames. Uh, really heavy boxes, so a lot of work, but, obviously, sort of a luxury problem, isn't it? It's really hot work, sticky work, but it's pretty good fun. It's bloody good to see the final result, like this. Matt and I have worked all year. It's pretty exciting to see that actually in a crop, that we can potentially sell. - # E papa waiari # taku nei mahi... # - We're at the Albert Street market in Palmy. It's every Saturday morning. When we began our business, we were only selling here ` that was our sole source of income. I was about 15, I think, and Daniel would have been 13. - Which has got the mildest flavour? - That one, yeah. It's a light sweet-flavoured honey. It's really nice to have our mum come ` she usually brings us a coffee down and, um, helps us to sell, so that's really helpful. They're really good supporters of us. - Being in business isn't for the fainthearted, and they have long days and work very hard. I'm just so proud of what they've achieved. - # E hine hoki mai ra. # Kia ora! - Next time ` - We've got over 300 varieties of fruit here. - My favourite one is the Flower of Kent ` that's the one that fell on Sir Isaac Newton's head. - It's old school. It tastes just like it used to taste. - It's almost like we're trying to create a new category in the drinks market. - That's next time on Hyundai Country Calendar. (COUNTRY MUSIC)