Articles

​Like any food product, honey needs to be handled safely before it can be sold. In New Zealand, safety standards cover everything – processing, testing, packaging and labelling. If you want to sell your honey, you need to meet these standards – and prove that you’ve met them. But before you do that, here’s our rough guide to safe processing and packaging:

​​​Honey is a high-value product, so if your bees are producing a lot, it makes sense to think about selling the excess. But it’s not quite as simple as jarring it up and taking it down to your local market. Because honey is a natural, ‘wholesome’ product, people tend to forget that it does have risks, and that food safety requirements apply. Making sure your honey is suitable for sale involves a number of different tests, to find out what test you need to be doing check out our guide on to honey testing.

Everyone knows that bees make honey, but beginner beekeepers are often surprised by exactly how much they produce.

After a long, cold winter spent huddled inside, everyone is looking forward to spring – bees included. For your hives, spring is a time of intense activity. Egg-laying, brood-raising, and nectar-gathering all start to ramp up after being almost non-existent in winter.

What is the best brood box strategy for your hives – one box or two? Ecrotek outlines the pros and cons of each option.

Spring is nearly here, the days are getting longer, and it's time to get ready for increased population and swarming.

Expert advice from Ecrotek – the gear, methods and tips you need to safely capture and relocate a swarm of bees.

Whether you want 1 or 1000 hives, beekeeping can be a hugely rewarding hobby. Beehives take time; they need to be managed carefully...

The idea of a bee swarm is pretty alarming to most people. We imagine a horde of aggressive bees crawling over us and covering us with stings – scary stuff. But in reality, swarming is natural bee behaviour, and in this state bees are usually fairly docile and harmless. As summer approaches, it’s good to know what to do about swarms without hurting the bees – or yourself.