Articles
Establishing Your Beekeeping Club – Where to Start
Can’t find a local beekeeping club to join? Here’s Ecrotek’s guide on where to start setting up your own.
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Not too sunny, not too windy, just right
For beginner beekeepers, beehive positioning may not seem that important. Many newbies simply pop their brand new hive in a flat spot, without considering how temperature, wind exposure, damp, and even direction might affect their bees.
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Beginner Beekeeping: Bee Hive Inspection Notes
Learn about keeping detailed beehive inspection notes – Ecrotek outlines what to track, what to write and why it’s important.
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Harvesting Propolis
Bees – they’re clever little things. As well as buzzing around making delicious honey, they’re also hard at work making a compound called propolis. Propolis is used as a sealant in their hives, as well as an embalming agent to cover surfaces. Propolis is also the bees’ disinfectant – one of nature’s most powerful antimicrobials, it cleans and sterilises the inside of the hive.
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Ecrotek | Essential Spring Jobs for Kiwi Beekeepers
Spring is here – and a checklist of essential spring jobs Kiwi beekeepers need to do to keep their hives healthy – from Ecrotek
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Preparation, placement, patience – safe beekeeping practices
Beekeeping involves working with a large number of unpredictable living things. So of course, there are risks and dangers.
But if you follow safe beekeeping guidelines, you should be able to minimise the risk to you, your family, your neighbours, and your bees. It’s about being well-prepared, thinking about the placement of your hives, and – most importantly – being calm and patient when you work with bees.
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Ecrotek | Essential Spring Prep for Kiwi Beekeepers
Gearing up for spring? Here’s how to get your hives ready, essential spring prep for Kiwi beekeepers – from Ecrotek.
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Spring of swarms – how to safely capture a bee swarm.
Expert advice from Ecrotek – the gear, methods and tips you need to safely capture and relocate a swarm of bees.
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Two hives are better than one
Many hobby beekeepers start with one hive. It’s easy to see why: a single hive is less of an investment in terms of money, it takes up less space in a small garden, and it seems easier to manage. But starting with two hives – or more – is often a better idea.
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