Student beekeeper turns hobby into harvest

A budding Hauraki apiarist who took up beekeeping as a hobby during the Covid-19 pandemic has harvested his first batch of honey.
It comes after a raft of bee politics, two years of time and investment, and help from Google and the Thames Bee Club.
Bradley Murdock told The Profile that “being bored” during the Covid-19 lockdowns prompted him to make a beehive from scratch while as a student at Waitakaruru School.
Now in Year 10 at Hauraki Plains College, he recently harvested about 10kgs of honey, as well as a frame of honeycomb.
But tasting the fruits of his labour hasn’t come easy.
Last year, after buying his first lot of bees online and having them “shipped in the mail”, Bradley said the season for bees was pretty poor. The bees only made enough honey for themselves to get through winter and eventually, the hive was robbed and perished.
“Because they weren’t strong enough, they got robbed, which means bees from other hives will come and steal the honey and invade the hive,” Bradley explained.
“The [bees] I’ve got at the moment are a swarm that I caught.”
Bradley said when bees swarm, they leave the hive, “bunch up, and look for a new place to live”.
“The day I got them, it was raining, so they were just hanging out underneath an orange tree. I brushed them off and into a box.”
Bradley said not only did a flourishing hive depend on the season, it also depended on the hive’s queen.
“You can have good queens and bad queens,” he said.
This year, the new swarm has continued to thrive, and in late-February, Bradley extracted his first lot of clover honey.
He said his harvest tasted “a lot better and a lot fresher” than what could be found in the supermarket, and while he also makes candles out of the beeswax, Bradley said he never expected his lockdown hobby to take him this far, explaining that it all came about due to a memory.
“I remember going down to Taupō and there was a bee place there. We went there when I was a kid and I got some honeycomb ice cream,” he said. “Years later, I remember thinking how good it would be to have honeycomb ice cream.”
DETAILS: The Thames Bee Club meets monthly at the gardens on Mackay St, Thames. It involves networking and advice for hobbyists, with support from commercial beekeepers. The group can be found on Facebook.